UK imposes new sanctions against Lukashenko's regime on anniversary of rigged elections in Belarus

The UK Foreign Office announced on Friday that sanctions will be imposed on four individuals and three legal entities from Belarus to mark the fourth anniversary of the country's rigged presidential election.

The UK sanctions list includes the heads of four Belarusian penal colonies where political prisoners and activists are illegally detained and three Belarusian defence and military-industrial enterprises that maintain ties with Russia.

In addition to the sanctions, the UK has announced the allocation of £2.5 million "to supporting Belarusian human rights and civil society causes, including further funding to the International Accountability Platform Belarus – a coalition that collect, verify, and preserve evidence of gross human rights violations constituting crimes under international law allegedly committed by Belarusian authorities".

"Four years on from the brutal scenes we witnessed in Belarus, Lukashenko’s relentless crackdown on civil society has shown no signs of abating," commented UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

The UK government reported that since August 2020, the Belarusian regime has detained more than 40,000 people on trumped-up political charges and opened at least 12,000 politically motivated criminal cases.

"According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, a Belarusian non-governmental organisation, 1389 political prisoners remain incarcerated in Belarus, including human rights defenders, journalists, members of the democratic opposition and trade unionists," the statement said.

The day before, the European Union also condemned the Lukashenko regime's four years of repression, recalling its complicity in Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.