European Parliament calls for the exclusion of Belarus from the Euro 2024 football championship qualifiers, because the regime of Alexander Lukashenko will use it for propaganda purposes, writes Politico.
More than a hundred members of the European Parliament (EP) from all major political parties have called on UEFA to exclude the Belarusian national team from participating in the Euro 2024 test matches. The letter sent to UEFA director Aleksander Čeferin states:
«The very fact of participating in UEFA Championship by the Belarusian national team will be later used by Lukashenko and his propaganda team to prove he is well-received in the international community.
This would be an offense to the victims of the Russian aggression in Ukraine and to all the Belarusians who were forced to flee from their homeland as well as those who stayed in Belarus and now must live in fear and terror.»
Lukashenko’s regime is already under European Union sanctions for human rights abuses, violent crackdowns on the opposition, and helping Russia wage a full-scale war in Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the year, several oppositionists, including Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and the opposition leader in exile, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, have been sentenced to more than ten years in prison for treason and organizing opposition protests.
UEFA has already imposed sanctions on Belarus for its role in the war: international matches cannot be held in the country and Belarusian teams cannot play against Ukrainian clubs. However, Belarusian clubs and national teams are still allowed to compete in international tournaments.
The letter of the MEPs states that the current measures are inadequate and do not reflect the violations of the Belarusian authorities in the field of human rights. Polish MEP Tomasz Frankowski, who took part in writing the protest letter, said that
the decision to ban the national team from participating in the competition is always difficult, but circumstances determine that it is necessary.
In the fall of 2022, Cihanouska also called for the exclusion of the Belarusian national team from all international competitions and criticized national team players for their loyalty to the regime.
Read also: Belarus sentences Tsikhanouskaya to 15 years in prison