Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis calls on the international community to stand in solidarity with journalists detained and imprisoned in Belarus, and to seek their release
On 24 June, at a virtual high-level event "Media Under Attack in Belarus: International Action Needed as Human Rights Crisis Intensifies” organised by the Permanent Mission of Lithuania in Geneva in cooperation with the non-governmental organizations —PEN America and the Human Rights House Foundation — the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis called on the international community to stand in solidarity with journalists detained and imprisoned in Belarus, as well as to seek their release, including Raman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega.
At the high-level event on the margins of the 47th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), Landsbergis highlighted the ongoing repression of journalists and serious human rights violations in Belarus, and voiced his support for the mechanisms established by the UNHRC for monitoring the human rights situation in Belarus.
“The international community must send a clear signal to the Belarusian regime that everyone responsible for gross violations of human rights, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, and forced disappearances will be held accountable,” said Landsbergis.
The European Union’s Special Representative for Human Rights Eamon Gilmore, the Foreign Ministers of Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovakia and the Senior Bureau Official for the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Ambassador Erica Barks-Ruggles also spoke at the event. The discussion was attended by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus Anaïs Marin, Raman Protasevich's mother, journalists, and representatives of international non-governmental organisations.
This event aimed at drawing the international community's attention to the deteriorating human rights situation in Belarus, especially the situation of the media, and at identifying concrete actions for the protection of human rights in Belarus.
A live event recording can be found on the Human Rights House Foundation’s YouTube Channel.
