Belarus

Belarus

Dark dance

Apr 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

What is going on in Belarus? And in its ruler's head?

AMERICA calls it the “last dictatorship in Europe”. It has political prisoners, police crackdowns, state-run media and a security service called the KGB. So Belarus's image could do with polishing. Its irascible president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, seems to accept this: Tim Bell, one of Britain's top public-relations men, was recently seen in Minsk, where he was in talks about a consultancy contract. As a Tory spin-doctor, he helped turn Margaret Thatcher into an election-winner. As Lord Bell he represents rich eastern Europeans such as Boris Berezovsky, an émigré Russian oligarch.

Mr Lukashenka's opponents have highlighted the irony that Lord Bell's visit was followed by a blitz on the opposition. Over 20 journalists from Belarus's independent media (chiefly foreign-based radio stations and small-circulation papers) were detained. The ostensible reason was an investigation into insulting cartoons of Mr Lukashenka on the internet. Defaming the president is a criminal offence.

On March 25th the police violently broke up an opposition rally to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Belarus's short-lived statehood after the first world war. Around 80 people were arrested. Opposition activists were harassed as well: in Vitebsk, Yelena Borshchevskaya, a schoolteacher, was marched from her school by KGB officials and taken home, where they undertook a six-hour search in which they confiscated computer equipment, storage materials and a photocopier, as well as an identity card belonging to Olga Karach, a local politician.

Shortly before the latest crackdown, Mr Lukashenka had ordered the American embassy in Minsk to cut its staff by half. On March 31st Belarus announced that it was reducing the size of its embassy in Washington and would expect America to make further cuts too.

Yet only a few weeks ago Mr Lukashenka had seemed to be going in the opposite direction, putting out feelers to the West, allowing the European Union to open an office in Minsk and releasing all but one of his political prisoners. That reflected official nerves about an economic squeeze by the Russians, who are driving a hard bargain on gas. Russia has little sympathy for Mr Lukashenka's swaggering and bombastic ways.

American sanctions on Belarus's main petrochemical company may have provoked the sharp response against their embassy, but they do not explain the wider crackdown. Some say there is a feud in Mr Lukashenka's circle, between those who want to keep control and those who think their only hope is rapprochement with the West. Or it may reflect the Belarusian leader's capricious thought processes. Lord Bell is used to difficult clients, but Mr Lukashenka may prove a tough challenge even for him.

Belarus

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Heart of darkness

Mar 13th 2008
From Economist.com

A ray of hope from Belarusian exiles

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LIKE a stub of candle, even a small bit of history is a comfort when you are in a dark room. Belarus looks pretty gloomy under Alyaksandr Lukashenka. An earthy collective-farm manager, he won the last freely contested election in 1994 against a representative of the old Soviet nomenklatura.

Many people (including your columnist) thought that any change was bound to be for the better. It wasn’t. The new regime pioneered the kind of authoritarian rule, bombastic and occasionally murderous, that has now spread to Russia. In retrospect, 1990-94 looks like the heyday of Belarussian freedom.

With one exception. For a few months in 1918, Belarus enjoyed its first fragile taste of independence. As the Soviet regime consolidated its hold, the government fled, first to Lithuania, then to Prague.

The 90th anniversary of that first proclamation of statehood is on March 25th. It will be celebrated by both the opposition in Belarus and by the Belarusian National Rada (BNR), an émigré assembly and government-in-exile that has doggedly maintained a vestigial existence for the past nine decades. From the authorities’ point of view there is nothing to celebrate. Belarus was from the beginning a Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the great Soviet Union. Any suggestion to the contrary is bourgeois nationalist claptrap.

The idea of maintaining loyalty to a country that even nonagenarians would not remember might seem impossibly quixotic. But experience suggests that when governments-in-exile keep going, history rewards them.

The Polish government-in-exile, marooned in London after the war, was welcomed back to Poland when communism fell to present the newly elected Lech Walesa with the presidential insignia. The “People’s Poland” imposed at gunpoint by the Soviets was revealed for the sham it had always been. The exile government’s presidents—stalwart members of the suburban Polish émigré community in London—are now officially recognised as former heads of state.

East Timor’s government-in-exile returned home victorious when the Indonesian occupation ended. Exiled politicians and diplomats from the Baltic states came home happily too.

The danger is to wind up too soon. Ukraine’s émigré leaders declared victory rather promptly in 1991. The Belarusians, wisely in retrospect, decided to wait and see. The BNR now presents a poignant symbolic challenge to the regime at home, and is a focus of unity for the opposition.

Slowly, real-world politicians are beginning to take it more seriously. The BNR’s president, a personable Canadian artist named Ivonka Survilla, is in Strasbourg this week to be formally received at the European Parliament, along with a bevy of Belarusians from both the diaspora and the domestic opposition. The BNR, normally secretive for fear of endangering its members in the homeland, has issued a public statement urging the outside world not to forget the Belarusian cause, and to protect those inside the country who want to celebrate the anniversary.

Politics seems to be thawing a bit inside Belarus too. The regime has responded to feelers put out by European countries, including Poland, and has released almost all political prisoners. Only one remains: Alyaksandr Kazulin, an outspoken figure who seems to have attracted Mr Lukashenka’s personal ire. American sanctions on a big Belarusian company, Belneftekhim, seem to have bitten hard too. The tempestuous Mr Lukashenka abruptly expelled the American ambassador last week.

Mr Lukashenka has flirted with the West before and it would be too early to declare a change of heart. But whether because of the country’s economic plight (Russia is driving a much harder bargain on gas) or for some other reason, some rusty wheels are in motion. The BNR’s loyal supporters hope that theirs may turn too.