You're reading: Tymoshenko asks European politicians not to let Ukrainian officials freely travel to EU

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in her statement to the congress of the European People's Party (EPP), has asked European politicians to restrict the freedom of movement in European countries for representatives of the current Ukrainian authorities, the press service of the Batkivschyna Party has reported.

 EPP President Wilfried Martens read out Tymoshenko’s statement to the EPP congress in Bucharest on Thursday.

“Most importantly, it is time to restrict the freedom of those who are killing democracy in my country. Do not let the regime members and cronies travel freely to your countries to disseminate propagandist poison there. Do not let them make corrupt transactions via your countries and start investigating the cases,” reads the ex-premier’s address, which was posted on Batkivschyna’s Web site.

She also called on European politicians not to let the families of Ukrainian officials “indulge in your luxuries with money taken fraudulently from Ukraine’s hard-working people.”

“Only by denying these freedoms to those who are denying their fellow citizens freedom will the Yanukovych regime begin to realize that there are real consequences to its contempt for law and for Europe,” Tymoshenko said.

She also asked European politicians to send official observers to Ukraine to monitor the parliamentary elections on Oct. 28 and “shout out at every fraud they may see, but not only on the election day, but already now.”

Tymoshenko also said that this was now the 439th day of her imprisonment, adding: “Each night when the lock on the door clangs shut, I tell myself that I have survived another day, and will continue to survive whatever indignity this regime heaps upon me, as today this is my share of the struggle for freedom.”

“For that hollow thud that I hear each time the prison door shuts reminds me that the door to freedom, the door to Europe, to decent lives for my fellow citizens, is also shutting in Ukraine. The prison door that Viktor Yanukovych has built around my country is still not closed forever, but there is little time left before it is shut tight,” she said.

She recalled that “for the sake of a European Ukraine” the opposition and its leaders had united “to fight down homo sovieticus in Ukraine’s government once and for all.” In addition, Tymoshenko said she does not believe that she needs to restate the geo-strategic reasons why Ukraine matters to Europe.

On Oct. 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in signing gas contracts with Russia in 2009.

The former prime minister has served a prison term in the Kachanivska penal colony in Kharkiv since late Dec. 2011.