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Patriarch Kirill praises Belarus’s re-elected president despite new curbs

31 January 2025

Alamy

The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, casts his ballot at a polling station in Minsk, on Sunday

PATRIARCH KIRILL of Moscow has praised Alexander Lukashenko on his declared re-election as President of Belarus, despite fears of new restrictions on religious freedom and church activity.

“Despite many difficulties, you pay great attention to the spiritual and moral state of society and support traditional family values,” the Patriarch told President Lukashenko in a message on Monday. “For decades, you have been selflessly serving the Belarusian people, defending state and national interests, promoting the country’s sustainable socio-economic development, and strengthening foundations of a peaceful, prosperous life for your people.”

The message was published as Mr Lukashenko was proclaimed victor with 86.8 per cent of votes, after an alleged 87-per-cent national turnout in Sunday’s election, which initiated his seventh term after 31 years in power.

The Patriarch said that the “resounding victory”, which was rejected as rigged by Western governments, should strengthen regime “interaction” with the Belarusian predominantly Orthodox Church, bringing “many benefits” to its people.

Independent media have reported, however, that parishes in the Church have been cut from 1737 under a new December 2023 law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations, which requires all religious associations to re-register by July 2025, and prohibits religious activities deemed to infringe Belarus’s “sovereignty, constitutional system and civil harmony”.

Belarus’s smaller Roman Catholic Church has also had its parishes cut by at least a dozen from the 500 registered a year ago, while 86 Orthodox, RC, and Protestant clergy have faced arrest, according to human-rights monitors, since August 2020, when Mr Lukashenko’s last disputed re-election was followed by harsh repression and international sanctions.

The country’s church leaders had not published any congratulatory messages to President Lukashenko by midweek, although several senior clergy, including the Orthodox Bishop Antony (Daronin) of Grodno-Volkovys, were shown on state TV encouraging followers to vote in Sunday’s tightly controlled ballot.

Besides that of Patriarch Kirill, post-election messages of support for President Lukashenko were sent by President Putin of Russia and leaders of Moscow-aligned states from the former Soviet Union, as well as from China, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

The election was condemned as a “sham”, however, in a statement this week by the European Union, the UK, and other countries, which said that it had been held “in a climate of ongoing repression, marked by a clampdown on civil society, arbitrary detentions, and restrictions on genuine political participation”.

New Western sanctions have been announced against Belarus, which currently has 1250 political prisoners. More than half a million of its 9.4 million inhabitants have emigrated since 2020, mostly to neighbouring Poland and Lithuania, in an exodus attributed by the sociologist Hienadz Korszunau to increased repression.

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