BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/07/2006

Belarus - a retrospective of a failed political spring

"thenewfederalist.eu" launches a weekend on Belarus

Friday 14 July 2006 - Peter Matjasic

What is happening with this phantasm country everybody knows it exist, that its capital is Minsk and that some things there simply never change. And I am not referring the cold winters and vodka but rather the countries President Lukashenko and its Government.

This weekend we offer you several articles in connection with Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship.

The country has been completely overlooked by the world after the collapse of the Eastern block and it was not until the last EU Enlargement in 2004, when Belarus suddenly became 'our' neighbour that this country slowly made it on the EU agenda.

A lot of hopes were put into this years March presidential elections and after the successful democratic revolutions in Georgia (Rose revolution in winter 2003/04) and Ukraine (Orange revolution in winter 2004/05) there was a wave of optimism that something similar might happen in Belarus.

Some of our contributors were following the developments prior, during and after these highly anticipated Presidential elections, which sadly ended with an overwhelming victory for Mr. Lukashenko. It seems that he learned the lessons from the previously mentioned democratic revolutions and how to suppress them better then his democratic opposition on how to seize their chance.

However, Belarus is neither Ukraine nor Georgia. It is far less important strategically to either the US or powerful European states, while the EU's role in such cases is repeatedly proving disappointing and unsatisfactory.

As the G8 Summit convenes this weekend in St. Petersburg we felt it would good to remind ourselves that Belarus should be an important item of the agenda in relations between the EU and Russia. Sadly we are also too aware of the fact that energy policy and the needed stability for providing oil and gas to Europe has priority over human rights and democracy.

So, let us take a look back on what happened in Belarus and outside it prior to the March 2006 elections, some civil society actions in support of the democratic forces in Belarus (e.g JEF's Europe wide action Give the Citizens of Belarus a voice!) and the analysis that followed. Moreover, we can offer two very personal and very different experiences of the situation in Belarus.

Enjoy the read.

Source:

http://www.taurillon.org/article.php3?id_article=905