{"id":393752,"date":"2024-10-01T11:46:18","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T09:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/10\/01\/lituania-corte-penale-lukashenko\/"},"modified":"2024-10-04T19:30:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T17:30:44","slug":"investigate-lukashenko-lithuanias-request-to-the-international-criminal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/10\/01\/investigate-lukashenko-lithuanias-request-to-the-international-criminal-court\/","title":{"rendered":"“Investigate Lukashenko”: Lithuania’s request to the International Criminal Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – “Impunity cannot continue, and justice must be done.” With these words, Ewelina Dobrowolska<\/strong>, Lithuania’s Minister of Justice, announced on Monday (Sept. 30) that Vilnius has officially requested<\/a> the International Criminal Court<\/strong> to open an investigation into the regime of Belarus’s president and strongman, Alexander Lukashenko<\/strong>, among Vladimir Putin<\/strong>‘s staunchest allies.<\/p>\n

Lithuania would like the strongman in Minsk to respond to alleged crimes against humanity,<\/strong> including, among others, forced mass deportations<\/strong> (mainly of African and Middle Eastern refugees<\/strong>, whom\u00a0Belarusian authorities have pushed to EU borders<\/strong> on several occasions in what Brussels considers an act of hybrid warfare<\/strong>), persecution of political opponents<\/strong>, and detention of political opponents in inhumane and degrading<\/strong> conditions.<\/p>\n

Since the 202020 elections, <\/strong>which the international community has branded as rigged in “White Russia,” there has been a recurrence of repression against dissent<\/strong>, with the imprisonment of thousands of opponents and activists and the flight of the symbolic figure of the opposition to Lukashenko, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya<\/strong>, who now lives in exile in Vilnius. According to Tsikhanouskaya’s estimates, about 300,000 Belarusian citizens have fled the country<\/strong> in the past four years, and more than 60,000 are in the Baltic Republic.<\/p>\n

The Hague-based Court conducts investigations against individuals<\/strong> to verify allegations of crimes against humanity<\/strong> and war crimes<\/strong>. Lithuania had been very active in urging the institution’s legal action against Putin<\/strong>, for whom an international arrest warrant<\/strong> was issued in March 2023. Now, Vilnius would like a similar warrant for Lukashenko.<\/p>\n

Belarus has never signed the 1998 Statute of Rome<\/strong>, which defined the Court’s mandate, and thus is not technically under the institution’s jurisdiction. However, if its president were to set foot on the territory of a state that has ratified it, the authorities of that country would be required to arrest him, should an international arrest warrant be issued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vilnius is pushing for judges at the Hague-based institution to initiate proceedings against the president of Belarus and issue an international arrest warrant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":393685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[28294,28295,29167,28877,27853],"class_list":["post-393752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-alexander-lukashenko-en","tag-belarus-en","tag-ewelina-dobrowolska-en","tag-court-penal-international-en","tag-lithuania-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393752"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394646,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393752\/revisions\/394646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}