2024-09-26 15:59:34
It was only revealed in the spring that Jörg Dornau runs an onion farm in Belarus. Now a witness is making serious allegations against the AfD politician.
The Saxon AfD politician Jörg Dornau is said to have political prisoners work for him on an onion plantation in Belarus. This is reported by the opposition Belarusian portal reform.news, citing witness statements. According to this, Dornau personally checked the work of the prisoners on his farm, a former inmate of the nearby prison in the city of Lida told reform.news.
Andrei, as the portal calls the anonymous witness, ended up in prison for 15 days in February because he had “liked” a post critical of the government on the Internet, the report says. During this time he also worked on the Dornau farm and saw the German politician with his own eyes. “A tall, bald man who drove up in a car with German license plates,” Andrei remembers. “He also came to the warehouse where we sorted onions together with regular workers.” But he was not forced to work, says Andrei.
Dornau is said to have paid the prison in Lida the equivalent of five euros per day for the prisoners’ work, reports reform.news. The money was not given to the prisoners, however, but was used to maintain the prison. The fact that Dornau runs an onion farm in Belarus only became public knowledge at the beginning of the year. Because he did not report the income from the farm to the Saxon state parliament, the presidium of the state parliament imposed a fine of almost 21,000 euros on the AfD politician in August.
Dornau has not yet responded to t-online’s inquiries about the latest allegations from Belarus. A spokesman for the Saxon AfD parliamentary group in Dresden told the “Bild” newspaper: “Our group does not comment on anonymous accusations as a matter of principle.”
Belarus has been ruled by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. After the 2020 presidential elections, Lukashenko used sheer violence against the opposition to stay in power. Lukashenko is a close ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, whom he also supports in the war against Ukraine.