Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House to speak on this important matter and acknowledge that Senator Ward has previously tabled a motion on this issue.

I do not need to repeat the litany of actions that have eroded democracy in Belarus. They include the extension of the number of years that a president can serve from five to seven, in 1996; the referendum to remove the constitutional term limits in 2004; the arrest and beating of his opponent, Alyaksandr Kazulin, in 2006; and the widely condemned way that the election was run in August 2020. As has been outlined, that election is widely regarded as not fair, not free and not credible. There is a litany of ways in which democracy is being chipped away.

Senator Ardagh spoke very well about the report by the UN High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, who has personal experience of a creeping dictatorship in Chile. She has written very strongly around the human rights breaches, particularly the treatment and violence meted out to journalists. The most high-profile case - it has rightly been described as piracy - was the abduction of the journalist, Roman Protasevich, from a Ryanair plane. We also know that journalists within Belarus have been subjected to abuse. We have heard reports of hundreds of political prisoners and of gendered violence and gendered abuse. We have heard about psychological abuse in the threats and in their execution. We know there are very strong women in the movement for democracy within Belarus. Ms Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has been spoken about and she has a strong connection to Ireland. Many other women have been very strong and they have been the target of gendered abuse. Additionally, students and students' unions have been targeted. According to the Belarusian Students Association, an independent student union, 466 students have been detained, almost a third of whom are women. Many were put under administrative detention or fined amounts that were unachievable for a student thus leaving them unable to pay and we know that six students have been sentenced to imprisonment.Most recently the entire Belarusian Students Association executive was forced to flee after raids by the Belarusian authorities on its offices. These are the blocks and threads of society, including journalists, unions and students and each of these groups are being targeted.

This is an extraordinary area of concern but what action can we take and what action should we take? It is vital that we press for the release of political prisoners and for free elections. There is an investigation being carried out by the International Civil Aviation Organization into the Ryanair incident. As was mentioned, sanctions are a valid and legitimate tool and they are being used. I refer to the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union on Rosneft in occupied Crimea and the sanctions on goods from there. It was found in that case that it is a matter of public policy to have sanctions when human rights are being violated and when it is legal within our trade law. It is appropriate that they are being used in that case but as has been said, it is shameful that sanctions are still not being used or looked to by Europe for Israel, even though it is a legitimate tool. We know that from the Rosneft ruling and we have never heard why that cannot be deployed. It is important to note that the European Council's actions and sanctions in May 2021 against Belarus specifically focused on technologies used in surveillance and we know that the tools and technologies of oppression are an appropriate area for sanctions in respect of Israel. Let us use these tools, let us look to every diplomatic tool we can use and let us use them wherever human rights violations are taking place. I support the strengthening of our use of such tools.

I want to focus on the people fleeing Belarus. We have heard about the weaponising of vulnerable migrants but I had an unease when we heard the phrase. Belarus is carrying out an abuse in that respect but we should not treat vulnerable people as weapons. Belarus may choose to do so but we must not. It is not a sufficient defence for Europe regarding its human rights obligations that it would point the finger and say they are being used in an appropriate way, that people are arriving at the border in a way that is inappropriate and condemn the actions of Belarus. We must be responsible for our actions. We must not allow people to be treated as weapons and we must not treat them as weapons. We must treat them as human beings and human rights holders to whom we have obligations, including obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

In that context, last month we saw four people left stranded on the Poland-Belarus border die of hypothermia. Poland has sent thousands of troops to the border and built a razor wire fence along its length. On Thursday it extended a state of emergency which bars journalists and aid workers from accessing the 3 km deep strip for a further 60 days. Amnesty International has reported that satellite imagery and other photos and videos show evidence of the pushback of refugees in August and there have been concerns around the evidence of an unlawful pushback which has occurred as armed Polish border guards surrounded the refugees' camps. This violates international law, particularly the principle of non-refoulement, given that we know the human rights situation in Belarus is completely unacceptable.

This is in no way to lessen the condemnation of the human rights violations of Lukashenko and the Belarusian authorities. Europe must show clearly that it takes human rights violations seriously where they are occurring in Belarus, that we take human rights' standards exceptionally seriously within the European borders and that we will not just demand better human rights policies but that we will model them as well. That is one of the ways we can show that this tactic by Belarus will not have an impact or erode the commitment of the European Union to proper and robust action against Belarus.

I thank the Minister and I commend Senator Ward for giving leadership on this issue in the Seanad. We have a good and strong record in the Seanad of working on international human rights issues across the board and of trying to have cross-party collaboration on those issues.