Republic of Belarus (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome these sanctions. In part, I welcome them because I speak both as a Member of this House and as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In that capacity, I had the great privilege, in November 2019, of going to Belarus as part of a team monitoring the parliamentary elections—although to describe them as either “parliamentary” or “elections” is stretching the definitions rather a long way. At the end of a rather interesting day, we were, on the one hand, watching ballot box stuffing, but, on the other hand, being kept as far away as possible from where the counting was going on—so we could not actually see anything.

In the last polling station that I and my Armenian colleague went to, at the end of a very long day, I witnessed five candidates on the ballot paper. They had a photograph of each candidate and a brief description. There were four males of indeterminate age, all looking rather similar, and a much younger, very attractive woman. Who came top of the ballot for that constituency? Surprise, surprise—the young woman. The young lady in question turned out to be the—at that time—22 year-old Maria Vasilevich, an ex-Miss Belarus, which was one of her qualifications for being elected. The second qualification—and perhaps the clincher—is that she was the current mistress of the then 64 year-old President Lukashenko. Our Prime Minister has a way of putting his friends into this House; President Lukashenko has his own way of putting his friends into their Parliament.

I should say in addition that the UK delegation to the parliamentary assembly is very concerned about the situation in Belarus and is committed to trying to help. Quite a few of us have adopted prisoners in Belarus who are currently suffering; we write letters and hope that they get through to them and their families. Just this morning, the leader of the UK delegation to the parliamentary assembly, John Howell, Conservative MP for Henley, sent me a WhatsApp message saying that he has just adopted a lady called Iryna Zlobina, who is in prison because she was guilty of collecting money to go towards paying the legal expenses of those who had been arrested for taking part in what the Government regard as illegal demonstrations. She is now serving time in prison.

On these sanctions, I welcome the fact that this has resulted from working closely with the EU. Her Majesty’s Government, for various reasons we will not go into, seem to have a slightly tortured, love-hate relationship with the European Union at the moment—clearly, something fishy is going on. It is incredibly important that we work in lockstep with the EU; President Lukashenko is hoping above all that the unity among those appalled by what he is doing will fracture over time because we have not got our act together and are not acting as one. Please remember that.

There is an opportunity to take further action against the families of some individuals who have vast sums of money, some of which is domiciled in the UK, usually through offshore companies. The son of a gentleman called Mikhail Gutseriyev—a Russian oligarch who is very involved in Belarus—who is a UK citizen and, even worse, I am ashamed to say, an old Harrovian, for some strange reason happens to own a £40 million office block in London. It is not immediately obvious why, but I suppose that is the sort of thing one happens to have if one has a very rich father and access, through the Panama papers, to all sorts of offshore trusts. We could and should do more to demonstrate that that sort of egregious behaviour by extended families of clearly corrupt people will not be tolerated by this country.

I also ask that we continue to support the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as much as possible to make sure that she has the support and funding to carry out her important work in Belarus and that human rights observer groups are supported. Every time we hear of arrests, intimidation and egregious events such as that, we must not stay silent but must say something. It will get noticed.

Finally, the impossible-to-pronounce leader of Free Belarus—I have written it out phonetically; I might let the noble Earl borrow it next time—Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, is the wife of the opposition leader who was going to run in the election, as noble Lords will know, until President Lukashenko decided the easiest way to win was to put his main opposition rival in prison, which is quite a neat way of doing it. It is very important that we formally recognise her as the effective leader of Free Belarus and assist her, invite her over here, and engage with and listen to her as much as possible. That is all I have to say.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, with his direct experience of his visits to Belarus; it was fascinating to hear about that. I have not been to Belarus but am active in the All-Party Group on the Abolition of the Death Penalty; we have sought to engage with those brave individuals, including former parliamentarians, who have sought to work with us for the abolition of the death penalty there. Belarus is the only country in wider Europe which retains it. I understand that four people were executed in 2018.

That is one element of a whole range that the noble Earl indicated in justification of these measures, which I and my party support. The justification is not only in the high-profile events we have seen in recent months but, as the noble Lord alluded to, in a pattern of practice which is diminishing democracy, reducing people’s ability to have properly elected representatives and opening up the concern that there will be internal repression of its own people.