The horrors committed by the Lukashenko regime never ended. A member of the democratic opposition of Belarus revealed to Polish television that the Minsk dictatorship exploits political prisoners to make a profit. More than 1500 prisoners illegally arrested and condemned are tortured and brought to forced labour.
“Slave labour reigns in #Belarus today,” posted Pavel Latushka, Deputy Head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus, former Minister and Ambassador on Twitter. In an interview with Adrian Kowarzyk, a journalist at the Studio PAP, Latushka said that political prisoners are forced to work for monthly wages ranging from 0.3 cents to a maximum of 1.50 dollars.
Belarus has 47 prisons, pretrial detention centres and penal colonies. The production of this strange and inhuman “prison-industrial activity”, as Latushka described it, consists of artefacts, processed wood and metals, clothing, footwear, furniture and agricultural products.
Who buys the products? More than 20 countries worldwide. Some are also EU members (however, they are not mentioned). What is the revenue for the regime? Hundreds of millions of dollars.
The United Transitional Cabinet offered the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Union details about the exploitation of political prisoners by the regime of Aleksander Lukashenko.
The Cabinet called Poland and the EU to adopt an additional package of sanctions against all goods produced in Lukashenko’s prisons.
“Give Lukashenko an ultimatum” for the immediate release of the political prisoners, Latushka proposed. As the regime ignores European demands for the release of all political prisoners, an ultimatum “will de facto transform European demands into concrete actions,” said Latushka.
