The European Union has counted more than a thousand political prisoners in Belarus. This assessment is given in the statement of the main speaker of the European External Action Service Peter Stano on the organization's website.

Today, more than 1,040 people are being held as political prisoners in Belarus, including 33 media workers. Every day there are new sentences for political reasons, said Stano. The speaker also added that political prisoners in Belarus are subjected to abuse, and the security forces treat them cruelly. The European Union insists on the release of people from prison.

The published information is timed to coincide with the 18-month period since the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko as President of Belarus. Stano noted that the European Union considers the presidential elections in the republic to be rigged, and called the repressions that take place after them.

The last presidential elections in Belarus were held in the country on August 9, 2020.

According to the Central Election Commission of the republic, Lukashenko won them with more than 80 percent of the vote. However, representatives of the opposition did not agree with the official results, and soon large rallies began in Minsk and other cities of the country - according to some reports, up to half a million protesters took to the streets on some days. Protests and strikes stopped only by March 2021, for all the time the police detained more than 30 thousand people.