EU imported over €10 million worth of Belarusian furniture in September: call for tougher sanctions

The largest European furniture retailers continue to sell products from Belarus. In September this year, EU states such as Germany, France, Belgium, and others imported Belarusian furniture worth more than 10 million euros. We are talking, among other things, about products produced by the forced prison labor of Belarusian correctional colonies. In particular, political prisoners of the Lukashenko regime.

A new investigation by the British organization Earthsight evidences this.

Earthsight's investigation helped establish the link between forced prison labor in Belarus and most of Europe's major furniture retailers, such as IKEA, BUT, Poco, and XXXLutz. The facts show that more than 8,000 prisoners in Belarusian correctional colonies are actively involved in felling forests and manufacturing wood products, including furniture.

Both the prisoners themselves and sources in the Belarusian leadership told Earthsight that Belarusian correctional facilities are closely linked to two state-owned woodworking factories, which directly or indirectly supply their products to the EU.

Earthsight managed to gather evidence that it was in these colonies that many political prisoners of the Lukashenko regime are currently held or were held. For example, human rights defender Oles Bilyatsky, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Current and former prisoners testify that the colonies are rife with torture, ill-treatment of political prisoners, and appalling conditions of forced labor.

In 2022, after the start of russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Belarus fell into international isolation. IKEA announced its refusal to use Belarusian wood. Following the appeals of 125 public organizations from Ukraine and worldwide, the EU and some other countries introduced sanctions against wood from both Belarus and russia.

However, the introduced sanctions are incomplete. In particular, they do not apply to furniture, and the Lukashenko regime benefits from this. Earthsight shows that in September 2022 alone, European companies, particularly Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, and other countries, imported over 10 million euros worth of Belarusian furniture. These products, including those produced in penal colonies, are sold by most major EU furniture retailers.

According to Earthsight, the EU should urgently expand the list of sanctions on wood products from Belarus, including furniture, paper, and wood pulp. This is dictated not only by the violation of human rights during the production of such furniture but also by the complicity of Belarus in russia's invasion of Ukraine.