Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka congratulated Bashar al-Assad on re-election as Syria’s president. The Syrian dictator has been at war with opposition for three years, but Mr Lukashenka believes that under his leadership ‘Syria will successfully fight against terrorism and foreign intervention in its domestic affairs’.
The presidential elections took place on June, 3. The Supreme Constitutional Court announced on June, 4 that turnout for the election was 73.42% and Bashar al-Assad won by a wide margin (88.7%).
It was the first multi-candidate election in decades since the Ba’ath party came to power in a coup. Some domestic and foreign-based Syrian opposition groups boycotted the election and the vote did not take place in large parts of Syria under rebel control: there was no voting in roughly 60% of the country.
During the Arabic spring Aliaksandr Lukashenka voiced support for the Syrian dictator. ‘He is a very genteel and decent man! He is very kind,’ Mr Lukashenka said.
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According to various human rights organizations and the United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government.
{movie}Al-Assad troops drop cluster bombs over residential areas.|right|16897{/movie}
The death toll of the Syrian war allegedly surpassed 300,000: in 2014 the United Nations announced it would not continue estimating the ratio of fatalities due to its inability to track down the proper data. Observers are kept away of the war zone. The U.N. commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria confirms at least 9 intentional mass killings in the period 2012 to mid-July 2013, identifying the perpetrator as Syrian government and its supporters in eight cases, and the opposition in one.
