Obama sharply criticizes Belarusian strongman

President Obama slammed the authoritarian leader of Belarus on Saturday, during the final portions of his European tour and a day after indicating the administration would pursue new sanctions against the country.

Speaking at a joint news conference with the Polish prime minister, Obama said Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Belarusian strongman, had showed “total disregard for democratic values, the rule of law and the human rights of his own people.”

The president’s comments came not long after several candidates who opposed Lukashenko in a December presidential election were convicted and sentenced to prison for protesting the election’s results. 

Lukashenko won 80 percent of the vote in a race that neutral observers have called rigged and tainted by fraud.

For his part, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland – who has seen a journalist from his country detained in Belarus – also sharply criticized the man sometimes referred to as Europe’s last dictator. 

{mosads}“There is no future for such dictatorships as the one which is represented today by Lukashenko in Belarus,” Tusk said.

In a statement released on Friday, the president said the U.S. would look to install new sanctions against state-owned enterprises in Belarus – a move he said was aimed at Lukashenko, not the Belarusian people.

Earlier this year, the U.S. and the European Union froze assets that Lukashenko and his top associates held in their territory, and imposed sanctions on a large state-held company.

Two of Lukashenko’s opponents in last year’s election – Dmitry Uss and Nikolai Statkevich – were sentenced to prison terms of more than five years recently. 

In his Friday statement, Obama called those two and three others “courageous activists” and said “their trials were clearly politically motivated and failed to meet even the most minimal standards required of  a fair and independent judiciary.” 

The president has since left Europe, and is scheduled to visit tornado-ravaged Missouri on Sunday, his first full day back in the U.S.