Political Quotes

“it was last February that I went to Belarus. I had been invited to go to Lithuania to speak to the Parliament on the 20th anniversary of their independence from the Soviet Union, and I took a second trip into Minsk, Belarus, a neighbor nation, because there was a political crisis. It was February, and since the Presidential election in the December before, there had been a wholesale effort by Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, to imprison his political opponents. With so many significant events going on in the Middle East, there is an understandable risk that we lose sight of events happening in countries such as Belarus. In Belarus, under Aleksandr Lukashenko, if you have the temerity to run for President or protest a fraudulent election, you will find yourself thrown in a KGB jail where you are likely to face torture and harsh prison sentences. If this sounds like a throwback to the Cold War in the Soviet Union, that is exactly what it is. Not only is Belarus a throwback to the worst political abuses of the old Soviet era, but the government's enforcers of this bankrupt system still call their police the KGB. On Saturday, the Lukashenko regime continued its nightmare of totalitarian rule when it convicted one of the country's opposition Presidential candidates and former Foreign Minister Andrei Sannikov to 5 years in prison. You see, Mr. Sannikov had the temerity to run against the dictator of Europe, Lukashenko.…”