MINSK, 22 November (BelTA) – A number of NGOs were closed in Belarus because they broke the law, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said in an interview with BBC on 19 November, BelTA has learned.
The BBC journalist cited the number of NGOs that were shut down in Belarus recently.
“We did not touch people who worked for the good of Belarus, who helped people. But those who used your assistance, got funding from you and smashed everything up here - if we have not liquidated them already, we will do it in the near future. We will massacre all the scum that you financed,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
At the same time, the president expressed readiness to sort things out if some of the NGOs were shut down for no good reason: “If they were shut down, there must have been a reason for it. If you think that some non-government organization was liquidated for no good reason, I will figure it out within a day. If someone got into this list by mistake (if they helped animals as you say), we will remove them from this list.”
Aleksandr Lukashenko cited the example of the Minsk office of a UN structure which representatives were caught using the organization's funds earmarked for people with disability to financially support protesters. “Mention the office of the United Nations Organization. What was it involved in? They used the money meant for charity purposes to finance the protests. They hired lawyers and so on. Is this part of their job description? Or partly the Red Cross and so on. Mention them,” the president said.
He expressed confidence that the same applies to the organization that protected animals. “I am sure it was just a cover that they protected animals. They got money for their existence and for revolutions there, not revolutions, but riots. So do not hide behind such words,” the Belarusian leader said.
The head of state was sure that by asking such questions Steven Rosenberg deliberately tried to create a certain picture instead of covering objective facts. “Show Babi Yar in Belarus, where murdered people are lying around [it pertains to the investigation of the genocide in Belarus during the Great Patriotic War and identification of mass graves that are comparable, among other things, to Babi Yar in Kyiv]. Show it,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
