Lithuania’s submission to the ICC states that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Lukashenko’s regime is involved in “deportations, persecution and other inhumane actions” against Belarusian civilians.
It states that the Belarusian regime “has forcibly relocated hundreds of thousands of legal Belarusians to neighboring Lithuania” and other countries that have ratified the ICC Statute.
Lithuania’s submission emphasizes that the intention of the Belarusian regime is “to get rid of all critics and opponents by any means in order to strengthen the regime’s authoritarian power”.
It can be “considered a large-scale and systematic attack on civilians”, says Lithuania.
The Belarusian opposition leader in exile Svyatlana Cihanuuska, who lives in Vilnius, has expressed her support for Lithuania’s request to the ICC.
“Crimes committed by this regime (..) must not go unpunished. Lithuania’s courage gives us hope that the world will finally hold the regime accountable for the atrocities it committed,” Cihanouskas said in a statement.
It states that since the repression after the 2020 presidential elections, approximately 300,000 citizens of Belarus have been forced to leave the country.
According to the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice, more than 60,000 citizens of Belarus currently live permanently in Lithuania.
After the 2020 Belarusian presidential election, the results of which were falsified so that Lukashenko could be declared the winner, mass protests began demanding change. Protests were brutally suppressed.
At the end of 2020, the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office already started a pre-trial investigation for crimes against humanity in connection with the Lukashenko regime’s violence against peaceful protesters.
2024-09-30 20:58:26