Germany says Belarus must stop repression

Berlin, Germany “will not rest” until Alexander Lukashenko's regime ends its repression against the Belarusian people, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock vowed on Thursday at the Charlemagne award ceremony honouring three Belarus opposition leaders.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo won this year’s International Charlemagne Prize, a prominent annual German award that honours service towards European unification.

Sentenced by Minsk last September to jail for 11 years, Kolesnikova was represented by her sister at the ceremony in the western German city of Aachen. Baerbock underlined the violence and repression faced by democracy activists in Belarus, as she acknowledged that Europe had for years been wrong in its handling of Lukashenko's regime.

“The belief that cooperation is possible to a certain extent even with dictators like Lukashenko may have made us act too hesitantly toward the Belarusian regime,” she said.

Hopes to bind Minsk to change through trade also turned out “to be an illusion”.

“For me as German foreign minister, it is clear that in the future we have to look more critically, act more decisively when our values and freedom are being attacked,” she said.

“We will not rest until Lukashenko ends the violence and repression against your people,” Baerbock told the activists.

She also urged Kolesnikova's sister to tell the activist that her “hopes are not in vain”.

Kolesnikova, who was convicted for violating national security and conspiring to seize power, is a former flute player.

Tikhanovskaya was a political novice and stay-at-home mother of two until the arrest of her husband, who had launched a presidential campaign against Lukashenko.

She took his place on the ballot and is widely believed to have won the August 2020 vote, claimed by Lukashenko as a victory.