Members Of The Scottish Parliament Urged UEFA To Suspend The National Team Of Belarus From International Competitions
19- 10.10.2025, 20:55
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The parliamentarians have also prepared a gift for Belarusian political prisoners.
Members of the Scottish Parliament sent an official letter to UEFA with an appeal to suspend the Belarusian national soccer team from participation in international competitions, held under the auspices of the organization. The letter was signed by 18 members of the Scottish Parliament.
We recall that October 12, the Belarusian national soccer team will arrive in Glasgow, where they'll play a qualifying match for the World Cup against Scotland. The match is actively opposed by local human rights activists.
"Continuing to support our country in the upcoming match, we urge UEFA to suspend Belarus from all international soccer competitions under its jurisdiction," the letter says.
The reasons for such a step include "ongoing and well-documented human rights violations" and complicity in the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
One of the letter's initiators, Scottish MP Fulton MacGregor, gave a comment to Charter97.org.
- UEFA must fulfill its human rights obligations and take a principled stand by suspending Belarus from international soccer competitions. The regime of Alexander Lukashenko brutally persecutes its citizens, imprisoning thousands of people for peacefully expressing political dissent. Every person arrested is a victim of an authoritarian system that suppresses dissent and crushes basic freedoms. At the same time, Belarus continues to enable and support Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, providing a springboard for attacks that have claimed countless lives.
Just as Russia was suspended for launching the war, Belarus must be punished for complicity in the violence and repression. European soccer should not turn a blind eye to dictatorship and war. It's time for UEFA to give a clear signal: there is no place in the European soccer family for regimes that trample on human rights," said Fulton McGregor.
In a comment for the site Charter97.org, the organizer of a series of protests against the match, representative of the human rights organization Libereco Ken McBain called the current national soccer team of Belarus a "dictator's team":
- For me it's a match of the Scottish national team against a dictator's team. We support many Belarusian footballers who have stood up for freedom and spoken out against Lukashenko. We support the soccer players who should be playing for Belarus in Scotland with their heads held high, proudly representing their country, but can't because, like everything else in Belarus, soccer is poisoned by Lukashenko's policies. We support the Belarusian soccer players whose careers and lives have been ruined by their decisions not to support Lukashenko. If UEFA really believed in its values, it would respond to political interference in Belarusian soccer.
Although I am Scottish, I would be more than happy to root for the Belarusian national team - but not under this dictator and not at a time when this team is expelling players for speaking out in favor of freedom.
Ken McBain said he prepared a gift for two Belarusian political prisoners: soccer fans and members of the MTZ-RIPO fan club, brothers Tamaz and Timur Pipia, sentenced to more than 6 years in prison each. Upon their release, the soccer fans will be able to receive Scottish national team shirts signed by members of the Scottish Parliament.
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