The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has regretted Thursday the decision of the National Assembly of Belarus to amend the Law on Citizenship, assuring that it «will open the possibility» to deprive citizenship of living abroad.
«The European Union condemns this draft law, which is a further step in the brutal persecution of the Belarusian regime against all independent voices,» Borrell said in a statement released by the European Union’s Diplomatic Service.
According to Borrell, representatives of democratic forces, the media and civil society, who have fled the country to escape persecution, risk becoming stateless.
In this sense, the High Representative has maintained that these facts would be «a violation of international law», since Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the right of every person to a nationality and prohibits its arbitrary deprivation.
«The amendment of the Law on Citizenship is just another example of the growing lawlessness in Belarus. There are currently more than 1,440 political prisoners in the country, often held in inhumane conditions, trials are held behind closed doors and sentences are handed down in absentia,» the Union’s foreign representative detailed.
Meanwhile, he recalled that earlier this year Belarus expanded the scope of application of the death penalty to include «attempted acts of terrorism», a charge that could easily be formulated arbitrarily for political reasons and in the absence of any transparency or procedural guarantees.
«The European Union will continue to support a free, independent and democratic Belarus,» Borrell reiterated in his missive.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
