Thursday, 10 June 2021 (YJC) _ US Ambassador to Belarus said US will impose new sanctions on Belarus "soon".
The United States, in coordination with allies, will impose new sanctions on Belarus "soon," US Ambassador to Belarus Julie Fisher said Tuesday.
The US envoy to Minsk -- who has been denied a visa to take up her post there -- said the Biden administration is working with partners like Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom "on new rounds of sanctions to promote accountability" for human rights abuses committed by Belarus' strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko and his government.
The White House announced in late May that the US was working with allies to develop "a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Lukashenka regime associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23" -- when the Belarusian government forced a Ryanair flight to land in order to arrest Raman Pratasevich, a journalist and opposition activist.
Fisher told lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday that "as announced by the White House on May 28, additional sanctions are coming and they are coming soon."
Fisher declined to offer specific names of those who might be targeted by the sanctions, but said she does think "there is an opportunity to apply Magnitsky sanctions," which are aimed at those involved in significant human rights or corruption.
"We've been very closely looking at exactly which authorities we can apply to a variety of individuals," she said. She also said the Biden administration was "focused on a new executive order on the earliest possible timeline."
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