Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko: 'A good belting can be useful for a kid'

The president of Belarus has rejected a prospective law against domestic violence as Western “nonsense”, adding that a “good belting could sometimes be useful for a kid”.

President Alexander Lukashenko said while he is personally against the physical punishment of children, it can be useful in raising youngsters.

His comments came as he said a draft bill criminalising domestic violence needs more work.

“It’s just nonsense taken from the West,” said President Lukashenko. “We will proceed exclusively from our own interests, our Belarusian Slavic traditions, and our life experience.”

The president cited his own experience, saying he frequently punished his oldest son which served as a good lesson for his younger son.

Mr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for 24 years, keeping rigid Soviet-style controls over the economy and showing little tolerance for dissent or independent media.

He has often lashed out against the West, especially for its approval of same-sex marriages, saying: “they [the West] will soon have no families left, with men marrying other men”.

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The current Belarusian law does not contain specific regulations against domestic violence.

The prospective bill drafted by the Interior Ministry and Mr Lukashenko’s own administration, covers all forms of domestic violence.

The Orthodox Church has criticised the domestic violence bill. Pavel, the Metropolitan of Minsk, has said that “parents mustn’t be deprived of the right to raise their children”.

The Catholic Church in Belarus also has spoken against the document, with Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the archbishop of Minsk, urging Lukashenko in an open letter to “be guided by national interests and spiritual values of the Belarusian people and not to follow disastrous secularist trends and gender ideology leading to the destruction of traditional family”.