Note: This is section of the A Belarus Miscellany Web site, to make it easier to find factual, accurate, information about the various ways the Belarusian people, language, culture, independent state, etc., are being threatened today. If you only read and believe pronouncements of the Belarusian dictatorship, you will have no idea what is taking place in Belarus!
Belarus is undergoing a very serious crisis, make no mistake. If you are not already aware of the overwhelming, multiple ways that Belarus is being threatened, the links that follow should help make that clear.
The Lukashenka regime, having taken total control of Belarus, is using one factor to give a fake "legitimacy" to its totalitarian rule of Belarus: time. The longer it is allowed to control Belarus, the further Belarus is in debt to Russia, the more the intellectual and cultural leaders flee Belarus, and the more Belarus becomes impoverished. . . .
The policies of the current regime ruling Belarus are very similar to the Czarist Russian and Soviet-Russian policies that had the destruction of Belarusian national identity, language, and culture as part of its goals.
The last university in Belarus to use Belarusian as its primary language of instruction (Polacak) was closed in 1838! The Soviet and Lukashenka regimes that followed continue with this destructive policy.
I think it is very useful to see listed in one location what happens to those who disagree with the dictates of Mr. Lukashenka in Belarus. Many people ask, "If things are so bad in Belarus, where is the opposition to Mr. Lukashenka?" The following list should give a significant, if partial, answer to that question.
Also note that in Mr. Lukashenka's vocabulary, "opposition" connotes "traitor" to Belarus. (There is a serious problem in that Mr. Lukashenka sees himself as "Belarus"; that is, that the interests of Belarus are identical to his own!) Mr. Lukashenka has his own vocabulary, and of course it is based on that of Soviet/Russian propaganda. He repeatedly demonstrates his un-comprehension of multi-party democracy, yet he uses the word "democracy" to refer to his totalitarian rule of Belarus.
"Disappeared" Belarusian Leaders & Media Representatives
May 7, 1999: Belarusian opposition activist and former Interior Minister, General Yury Zakharenko
September 16, 1999: Opposition leader Viktor Hanchar (Gonchar) and his associate Anatoly Krasovsky disappeared.
July 7, 2000: Press photographer for Russian Public Television (ORT), Dmitry Zavadsky has been missing since his kidnapping at the Miensk airport. Zavadsky had been previously jailed in August, 1997, along with Pavel Sheremet, an ORT reporter, for their alleged illegal border crossing as part of a news story they were reporting. Zavadsky had formerly been Mr. Lukashenka's photographer.
Belarusian Leaders On Trial and/or Jailed
"The European Union calls for an 'immediate stop of criminal show proceedings conducted for clear political reasons against members of the opposition.' " (Source: BelaPAN, No. 45; Friday, May 12, 2000; 9:20 p.m.)
Journalist (and member of 13th Supreme Soviet [parliament]) Valery Shchukin
Supreme Soviet deputy Uladzimir Kudzinau (Vladimir Kudinov) -- was sentenced to 7 years of jail for "bribery," but served four years. MP Kudzinau claims that his imprisonment was purely politically motivated - MP Kudzinau took part in the impeachment campaign against Mr. Lukashenko in November, 1996.
Former Minister of Agriculture Vasily Leonov was sentenced to 4 years of jail for alleged "misappropriation of property and abuse of power" (his property was also confiscated and sold, including a summer cottage, and his relatives were not allowed to purchase it).
Other Prominent Belarusians Who are Harassed, etc.
Tamara Vinnikova, ex-chairperson of the
National Bank (Once a senior member of the Lukashenka regime, she escaped from Belarus in 1999 after being jailed in early 1997, and had been placed on trial. She had also disappeared from house arrest for some time, and then re-emerged in radio interviews from an undisclosed location earlier this year [2000]. )
Mr. Hanchar's driver, Yevgeny Lychov, who was with Mr. Hanchar shortly before his disappearance, is now abroad. The private weekly newspaper Svobodniye Novosti has a video of Mr. Lychov's questioning. He says that Mr. Hanchar was shadowed prior to his disappearance. Mr. Lychov says that witnesses saw two cars block the jeep, in which Messrs. Gonchar and Krasovsky were driving, break the side-windows in the jeep and take the two men away in different directions. Mr. Lychov says that he told the story to investigators, but they failed to include the testimony in their report. (Source: BelaPAN, No. 30; Wednesday, May 10, 2000; 4:40 p.m.)
Lawsuits, etc., against the Lukashenka Regime
Yury Belenky, deputy chairman of the Conservative Christian Party, is trying to sue police officers who beat him up on March 25, 2000 [at the demonstration that was not allowed]. A district prosecutor in Minsk has refused to bring criminal charges against police officers who beat up Yury Belenky, deputy chairman of the Zenon Poznyak-led Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian Popular Front. The complaint was rejected, although there was video footage of the beating and the beaters had been identified. Mr. Belenky was notified that there was no evidence suggesting that a crime had been committed against him.
According to Mr. Belenky, executing an order to prevent the demonstration, several police officers attacked him, hit him in the face with a truncheon, put his jacket over his head, knocked him off his feet and kept kicking him. After the beating, Mr. Belenky was taken together with other detainees to an Internal Troops base, where a doctor diagnosed a brain concussion.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) continues to press for a thorough investigation into arrests of journalists in Minsk during a police operation to prevent a street protest on March 25 [2000]. According to the association, at least 28 reporters were groundlessly arrested while performing their duties and had to spend hours in police custody. Arrested journalists received no explanation about the reasons for their detention. Journalists were searched and beaten. Film shot by press photographers was exposed. Police intentionally damaged video cameras of two Russian film crews.
The Belarusian constitution of 1994 was totally gutted by the fake "referendum" of November, 1996. No international body recognizes this referendum as a legitimate election.
Summary and Analysis by the Belarusian Helsinki Group (in Russian): ЅԅЅ̈́ӌ-96. (Note: Although this Web site is also in English, there is more content that is only in Russian, including this analysis.)
" 'As of November 27 [2000], Belarus is being ruled by a Russian occupation government, consisting entirely of Russians, Russian generals and FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service] functionaries,' Zenon Poznyak, leader of Belarus' nationalist Conservative Christian Party, has commented on this week's government shake-up in Minsk."
"On November 27, Belarus' chief of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko, sacked the country's prosecutor general, State Security Committee (KGB) chairman, as well as the head of Belarus' obscure Security Council. Mr. Poznyak believes that the reshuffle was ethnically motivated and resulted from a lack of national consciousness within the Belarusian government."
" 'Moscow is waging a unique war against Belarus, invading the country without a single shot," Mr. Poznyak said. "I have repeatedly warned that once Russia's special services take over Belarus they will gradually remove and later eliminate all Belarusians in the Belarusian government, including Sheiman, Matskevich, Antonovich, Pashkevich, Myasnikovich and others. Moscow will liquidate Lukashenko last, not until they have trained their own Kostunica.' "
"Mr. Poznyak called on the 13 Supreme Soviet (the Lukashenko-disbanded parliament that the EU and the US still consider Belarus' only legitimate legislature) to set up a truly Belarusian government to "put an end to the destructive influence of Russian-German diplomacy." (Source: BelaPAN, No. 6; Friday, December 1, 2000; 10:30 p.m.)
Belarus tops the list of CIS states as far as the inflation rate, which constituted in the year 2000, 168.6% of the 1999 level. (Source: Charter '97, April 11, 2001)
. . . Yet Official Belarusian government statistics make it sound as though Belarus' Soviet-style, "command" economy were thriving. Even a very brief visit to Belarus by a visitor from the non-ex-USSR would dispel that fantasy (beginning with the empty, international airport with only a couple of flights per day, and continuing to the choices available in its stores, markets, etc.):
Under Mr. Lukashenka, Belarus has become a very poor, rundown agricultural country that cannot even feed itself. It has almost no foreign investment (other than Russian), with poor healthcare, high alcoholism, a shrinking, despondent society, etc.
There is no foreign investment since no one considers Belarusian investment worth the risk under the mercurial, capricious edicts of Mr. Lukanshenka (there is no rule of law, and there are no predictable banking or investment laws or courts).
Many people feel that the Lukashenka regime, whether through traitorous scheming or sheer total incompetence, only survives through Russian support --but for a dear price: the eventual absorption of Belarus as the "northwest province" that the Russian czarist regimes spoke of.
Probably the most important of all of the rights denied to the people of Belarus. Without access to timely, accurate, uncensored information representing at least several points of view, it is impossible to imagine the people of Belarus developing beyond the current crises. In addition to being about the information in media (that is, television, radio, newspapers, etc.), this topic is also about the school system and books.
Harassment of news media. In 1997, the Belarusian National Assembly (appointed by Mr. Lukashenka, not democratically elected and not recognized internationally) passed a law "On the Press and Other Media." (Radio 101.2, Nasha Niva, Naviny / Svaboda, etc.)
Use of Soviet-era textbooks (instead of un-censored books written in the post-Soviet era and that are said to be warehoused).
Shrinking population; extent and cost of Chornobyl disaster; poor pay for health care professionals; poor state of healthcare facilities; too little, too late recognition (if at all) of AIDS, drug and alcoholism problems, etc.
Belarus is the country most affected by the Chornobyl disaster. Second only to the effects of the disaster itself is the inability of the regime ruling Belarus to recognize the seriousness of the disaster and then to deal with it. The failure of the ruling regime's general economic policies exacerbate the crisis.