The European Union will raise the issue of introducing targeted sanctions against the Belarusian authorities if they do not fulfill the requirements to end violence against their population and do not start an internal dialogue. This was announced on Thursday by Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, Wiener Zeitung writes.
“The main demand now should be an end to the violence, the release of arbitrarily detained demonstrators and journalists, an end to the blockade of the Internet. First of all, for a comprehensive interstate dialogue to take place. I believe that the European Union is doing the right thing that if these steps are not taken by the Belarusian side, then we will certainly also raise the issue of targeted sanctions, ” the minister said on the ORF 2 TV channel, the newspaper quoted a speech at.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Thursday condemned the violent actions of the Belarusian authorities against the demonstrators, called for the release of people arrested at the protests, as well as to investigate the deaths of protesters. Earlier, the Austrian Foreign Ministry called on the Belarusian authorities to stop violence and unblock the Internet, and also announced the need to revise relations between the EU and Minsk.
We add that the Austrian Foreign Ministry on August 10 condemned the violence after the presidential elections in Belarus, called them not meeting international standards and the recommendations of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The office of the Austrian President said that the head of state, Alexander Van der Bellen, will not send a congratulatory telegram to his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, whom the Austrian authorities received on a visit to Vienna in November 2019.
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