Political Quotes

“in the last few years, we have seen dictator after dictator tumble across the world: Qadhafi in Libya, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Saleh in Yemen, and eventually Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Yet there is one dictator who hangs on. He is the last dictator in Europe. You may not be familiar with his name, but they certainly know him in neighboring countries. He is the strong-man President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. For more than 20 years, he has ruled Belarus with an iron fist--using a barbaric combination of repression, intimidation, and torture to maintain power. He is so bold as to continue to call his security services the KGB. Can you imagine in today's world calling your security service the same name as the dread security service of the Soviet Union, the KGB? Under Lukashenko's reign, elections have been consistently rigged, arrests have been made for political purposes, and the public's basic freedoms of speech, assembly, association, even religion--which we take for granted--are severely restricted. As shown in this photograph I have in the Chamber, this is Alexander Lukashenko, the last dictator in Europe, the President of Belarus. On December 19, 2010, Lukashenko was given an opportunity to ease the iron grip of his police state and move closer to democracy by holding a legitimate Presidential election. He could not bring himself to do it.…”