<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Socialist Parliamentary Group has urged the Government to reject the legitimacy of the recent presidential elections in Belarus, to support “the opposition and Belarusian civil society in their cause in favour of a democratic transition in the country” and to demand the withdrawal of Russian nuclear weapons deployed in the country.</strong></h4> In a non-legislative motion presented on 7 February for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Socialist Group recalls that the candidacy of President Aleksandr Lukashenko obtained 86 per cent of the votes on 26 January, “according to data from the Belarusian Government in presidential elections criticised by the international community” and described as a “farce” by the European Union. Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, thus secures his seventh term in office. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was not invited to observe the elections, but the OSCE itself issued a statement on behalf of all member states of the organization, including Spain, in which it stated that “the presidential elections were neither free nor fair and their outcome was predetermined by the Government of Belarus.” According to the PSOE, President Lukashenko’s government “is recognized as one of the most repressive in the world.” Currently, there are more than 1,250 political prisoners in the country, many of them in unacceptable conditions that violate their rights, and the Report on the Committee against Torture adopted at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly concluded that “the Belarusian authorities practice torture systematically and with impunity on their territory.” Moreover, while more than 500,000 Belarusian citizens have gone into exile since 2020, including opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (who claimed to have won more than 60% of the vote in that year's elections and who "has championed the cause of a democratic transition"), Lukashenko's last term has been characterized by "a series of institutional reforms to perpetuate the dictator's power in the event of a future succession." In addition, the motion continues, Lukashenko's regime has supported and participated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "In exchange for funding, Belarus has become another instrument in the foreign policy of Vladimir Putin's regime," denounces the PSOE. “It was from Belarusian territory that the Russian army launched its attempted invasion of kyiv in February 2022 and, since then, Russia has used the country as a support base for its war of aggression, as denounced by the Government of Ukraine and the European Union, among others,” it added. In March 2023, according to the Non-Law Proposal, Russia installed tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, including, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), nuclear warheads for Iskander-M missiles, which can reach targets 500 kilometres away. “It is in this context of repression of any form of opposition in domestic politics and submission to the will of the Kremlin in foreign policy that the 2025 presidential elections have taken place,” the Socialist Group highlights. “Such a context makes it impossible to grant legitimacy to the electoral process,” the text continues, recalling that the European Parliament, in its resolution of 22 January 2025, considered the Lukashenko regime to be illegitimate and denounced the “lack of freedom and transparency in the so-called presidential elections in Belarus”. For all these reasons, the Non-Law Proposal of the Socialist Parliamentary Group urges the Government to “reject the legitimacy of the 2025 presidential elections in Belarus for not complying with the minimum international standards of a democratic process”, to support “the Belarusian opposition and civil society in their cause in favour of a democratic transition in the country” and to support “the decisions of the European Council to sanction individuals responsible for the perpetuation of autocracy in Belarus and the repression of the opposition, civil society and the media”. The European Union also calls on the Belarusian government to “end the practices of torture” and “the impunity with which they are carried out” and to demand the release of all political prisoners and to facilitate “a democratic transition that culminates in the organisation of fair, free and transparent elections”. Finally, it calls on the Spanish government to “denounce the support of the Belarusian government for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and demand the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the country”.
