Lukashenko releases 15 prisoners on the eve of the elections in Belarus by Reuters

Written by Mark Trevillian

(Reuters) – The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, issued a pardon for 15 prisoners on Friday, in what the official media described as a humanitarian gesture two days before the elections in which he is scheduled to extend his continuous rule in 31 years.

On Sunday, Lukashenko, the ally close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, won a five -year term.

Official media said that Lukashenko issued an excuse for eight people who were convicted of extremist activity and seven governed by drug crimes. No names were given.

The exile opposition says that Sunday’s vote is just a meaningless claim because all its prominent critics were imprisoned or forced to flee, and independent media has been banned and banned.

“This is a non -democratic practice at all,” European Union Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Anita Heber told reporters.

This week, Belarus accused European politicians of interfering by condemning the vote before it happened.

Lukashenko, 70, faces four other candidates, but none of them made any serious challenge or criticism. He said he was very busy so that he could not follow the election campaign, but he made a calm to the voters this week by announcing that retirement pensions will rise by 10 % from the first of February.

Political analysts say that the veteran leader hopes to exploit the elections and successive payments from the release of prisoners to try to reform relations with the West, which imposed waves of sanctions on Belarus because of its human rights record and supporting the Russian war in Ukraine.

They say his efforts have become more urgent, and he is considering the possibility of peace talks in Ukraine this year and is trying to secure gains for himself and Bellarosia if the conflict ends.

Protests that followed the 2020 elections

The massive protests almost toppled Bluchanko from power after the recent elections in 2020, when Western governments supported the opposition’s assertion that he falsified the results and stole the victory from its candidate, Svyalana Zikhanskaya.

He used his security services to crush the demonstrations, and arrested tens of thousands of people.

Since then, the European Union and the United States have refused to recognize it as a legitimate leader of Belarus. He denies forging votes and says that it is the people who chose to keep him in power.

Lukashenko, in a speech in front of a crowd in Minsk on Friday, said that the Belarusians learned the lessons of these protests and that similar demonstrations will not follow these elections.

“We were about to destroy ourselves, so let’s be open about this,” Lukashenko said in a video posted on the website of the government news agency.

“… we will not repeat what happened in 2020.”

The Viasna Human Rights Group, prohibited in Belarus as an extremist organization, says that there are about 1,250 political prisoners, even after the release of more than 250 prisoners last year. Many of them were patients or the elderly, or on the verge of completing the duration of their sentences.

Lukashenko denies the existence of any political prisoners.

Tskhanoskaya, opposition leader in exile, told Reuters in an interview this week that Lukashenko was playing his “usual game” of the release of prisoners in the hope of obtaining rewards from the West.

She said: “What you call elections in the democratic world has nothing common with this event in Belarus. Because it is often like the rituals of tyrants when they re -appoint themselves.”

In the interviews held on the streets of the capital Minsk, the residents responded with caution when they were asked about the elections they expected.

“As before, as it was always. What should you think?” A woman said she declined to be named.