Sec. 2. FINDINGS
2,027 words·~9 min read·
/statute-compilations/comps-9727/sec-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
## SEC. 2 FINDINGS Congress finds the following: ####
(1)The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, done at New York December 19, 1966, was ratified by Belarus in 1973, guaranteeing Belarusians the freedom of expression and the freedom of association. ####
(2)Alyaksandr Lukashenka has ruled Belarus as an undemocratic dictatorship since the first presidential election in Belarus in 1994. ####
(3)Subsequent presidential elections in Belarus have been neither free nor fair and have been rejected by the international community as not meeting minimal electoral standards, with the jailing of opposition activists frequently used as a tool of government repression before and after the elections. ####
(4)In response to the repression and violence during the 2006 presidential election, Congress passed the Belarus Democracy Reauthorization Act of 2006 (Public Law 109–480). ####
(5)In 2006, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13405, titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Undermining Democratic Processes or Institutions in Belarus”, which authorized the imposition of sanctions against persons responsible for— #####
(A)undermining democratic processes in Belarus; or #####
(B)participating in human rights abuses related to political repression in Belarus. ####
(6)In March 2011, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 105, which— #####
(A)condemned the December 2010 election in Belarus as “illegitimate, fraudulent, and not representative of the will or the aspirations of the voters in Belarus”; and #####
(B)called on the Lukashenka regime “to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners in Belarus who were arrested in association with the December 19, 2010, election”. ####
(7)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues to engage in a pattern of clear and persistent violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. ####
(8)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues to engage in a pattern of clear and uncorrected violations of basic principles of democratic governance, including through a series of fundamentally flawed presidential and parliamentary elections undermining the legitimacy of executive and legislative authority in that country. ####
(9)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues to subject thousands of pro-democracy political activists and peaceful protesters to harassment, beatings, and imprisonment, particularly as a result of their attempts to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of assembly and association. ####
(10)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues to suppress independent media and journalists and to restrict access to the internet, including social media and other digital communication platforms, in violation of the right to freedom of speech and expression of those dissenting from the dictatorship of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. ####
(11)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues a systematic campaign of harassment, repression, and closure of nongovernmental organizations, including independent trade unions and entrepreneurs, creating a climate of fear that inhibits the development of civil society and social solidarity. ####
(12)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has pursued a policy undermining the country’s sovereignty and independence by making Belarus political, economic, cultural, and societal interests subservient to those of Russia. ####
(13)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, continues to reduce the independence of Belarus through integration into a so-called “Union State” that is under the control of Russia. ####
(14)In advance of the August 2020 presidential elections in Belarus, authorities acting on behalf of President Lukashenka arrested journalists, bloggers, political activists, and opposition leaders, including 3 leading presidential candidates (Syarhey Tsikhanouski, Mikalay Statkevich, and Viktar Babaryka), who were barred from running in the election by the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Belarus. ####
(15)While the 3 opposition candidates were imprisoned, 2 of their wives and 1 of their campaign managers (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Veranika Tsepkala, and Maria Kalesnikava) joined together and ran in place of the candidates. ####
(16)Thousands of Belarusian people demonstrated their support for these candidates by attending rallies, including 1 rally that included an estimated 63,000 participants. ####
(17)On August, 5, 2020, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 658, which calls for a free, fair, and transparent presidential election in Belarus, including the unimpeded participation of all presidential candidates. ####
(18)On August 9, 2020, the Government of Belarus conducted a presidential election that— #####
(A)was held under undemocratic conditions that did not meet international standards; #####
(B)involved government malfeasance and serious irregularities with ballot counting and the reporting of election results, including— ######
(i)early voting ballot stuffing; ######
(ii)ballot burning; ######
(iii)pressuring poll workers; and ######
(iv)removing bags full of ballots by climbing out of windows; #####
(C)included restrictive measures that impeded the work of local independent observers and did not provide sufficient notice to the OSCE to allow for the OSCE to monitor the elections, as is customary. ####
(19)Incumbent president Alyaksandr Lukashenka declared a landslide victory in the election and claimed to have received more than 80 percent of the votes cast in the election. ####
(20)The leading opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya— #####
(A)formally disputed the government’s reported election results; #####
(B)explained that her staff had examined the election results from more than 50 polling places; and #####
(C)found that her share of the vote exceeded Lukashenka’s share by many times. ####
(21)On August 10, 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was detained while attending a meeting with the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Belarus and forced to flee to Lithuania under pressure from government authorities. ####
(22)On August 11, 2020, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius announced that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was safe in Lithuania and has continued to be one of the strongest voices supporting the pro-democracy movement in Belarus within the European Union and globally. ####
(23)On August 18, 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya announced the formation of a Coordination Council to oversee a resolution to the crisis in Belarus and a peaceful transition of power by subjecting the Council’s senior members to violence, detention, and forced exile. The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has sought to stop the work of the Coordination Council. ####
(24)Before the European Parliament on August 25, 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya stressed that a “peaceful revolution” was underway in Belarus, and that “It is neither a pro-Russian nor anti-Russian revolution. It is neither an anti-European Union nor a pro-European Union revolution. It is a democratic revolution.”. ####
(25)On or around September 6, 2020, opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava and members of the Coordination Council, including Anton Ronenkov, Ivan Kravtsov, and Maxim Bogretsov, were detained by authorities who sought to forcibly expel them to Ukraine. Ms. Kalesnikava tore up her passport at the Ukrainian border in a successful effort to prevent this expulsion, subsequently disappeared, and was discovered in a Minsk prison on September 9, 2020. ####
(26)On August 11, 2020, the European Union High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, issued a declaration on the presidential election in Belarus stating that the elections were neither free nor fair. ####
(27)On August 28, 2020, United States Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun declared that the August 9th election in Belarus was fraudulent. ####
(28)Following Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s September 23, 2020, secret inauguration, the United States, the European Union, numerous European Union member states, the United Kingdom, and Canada announced that they did not recognize Mr. Lukashenka as the legitimately elected leader of Belarus. ####
(29)Since the sham election on August 9, 2020, tens of thousands of Belarusian citizens have participated in daily peaceful protests calling for a new, free, and fair election, and the release of political prisoners. ####
(30)According to Amnesty International, on August 30, 2020, Belarusians held one of the largest protest rallies in the country’s modern history in Minsk and in other cities, which was attended by at least 100,000 people who demanded the resignation of President Lukashenka and an investigation into the human rights violations in Belarus. ####
(31)Women have served as the leading force in demonstrations across the country, protesting the police brutality and mass detentions by wearing white, carrying flowers, forming “solidarity chains”, and unmasking undercover police trying to arrest demonstrators. ####
(32)The Government of Belarus has responded to the peaceful opposition protests, which are the largest in Belarus history, with a violent crackdown, including, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur, the detention by government authorities of more than 10,000 peaceful protestors as of September 18, 2020, mostly for taking part in or observing peaceful protests, with many of these arrests followed by beatings and torture at the hands of Belarusian law enforcement. ####
(33)According to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, at least 450 detainees have reported being tortured or otherwise ill-treated while held in incommunicado detention for up to 10 days, including through— #####
(A)severe beatings; #####
(B)forced performance of humiliating acts; and #####
(C)sexual violence and other forms of violence. ####
(34)At least 4 Belarusians have been killed at protests, and dozens of Belarusians who were detained during the protests are still missing. ####
(35)The Belarus Ministry of Defense threatened to send the army to confront protestors, warning that in case of any violation of peace and order in areas around national monuments, “you will have the army to deal with now, not the police”. ####
(36)The Government of Belarus, led illegally by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has consistently restricted the free flow of information to silence the opposition and to conceal the regime’s violent crackdown on peaceful protestors, including by— #####
(A)stripping the accreditation of journalists from major foreign news outlets; #####
(B)detaining and harassing countless journalists. #####
(C)arresting dozens of journalists, 6 of whom report for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; #####
(D)halting the publishing of 2 independent newspapers; and #####
(E)disrupting internet access; #####
(F)blocking more than 50 news websites that were covering the protests; and #####
(G)limiting access to social media and other digital communication platforms. ####
(37)Internet access in Belarus has been repeatedly disrupted and restricted since August 9, 2020, which independent experts and monitoring groups have attributed to government interference. ####
(38)Thousands of employees at Belarusian state-owned enterprises, who have been seen as Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s traditional base during his 26-year rule, went on strike across the country to protest Lukashenka’s illegitimate election and the subsequent crackdowns, including at some of Belarus’s largest factories such as the BelAZ truck plant, the Minsk Tractor Works, and the Minsk Automobile Plant. ####
(39)After the employees of state media outlets walked off the job in protest rather than help report misleading government propaganda, Lukashenka confirmed that he “asked the Russians” to send teams of Russian journalists to replace local employees. ####
(40)On August 19, 2020, European Council President Charles Michel announced that the European Union would impose sanctions on a substantial number of individuals responsible for violence, repression, and election fraud in Belarus. ####
(41)On October 2, 2020, the Department of Treasury announced new sanctions under Executive Order 13405 on eight individuals “for their roles in the fraudulent August 9, 2020 Belarus presidential election or the subsequent violent crackdown on peaceful protesters”. ####
(42)Similar sanctions have also been applied to Belarusian human rights violators by the Government of Canada and the Government of the United Kingdom. ####
(43)Against the will of the majority of the Belarusian people— #####
(A)Alyaksandr Lukashenka appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to provide security assistance to his government, if requested; and #####
(B)President Putin has agreed to prop up the Alyaksandr Lukashenka regime by— ######
(i)confirming that a Russian police force was ready to be deployed if “the situation gets out of control”; ######
(ii)providing significant financial support; and ######
(iii)sending Russian propagandists to help disseminate pro-regime propaganda on Belarus state television. ####
(44)The Governments of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada have— #####
(A)condemned the violent crackdown on peaceful protestors; #####
(B)refused to accept the results of the fraudulent election; and #####
(C)called for new free and fair elections under independent observation.
Connectionstraces to 1
Traces to 1 document
1 reference not yet in our index
- Pub. L. 109-480
Citation graph
cites case law
Cites 2Cited by 0 across 0 sources