BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

December 26, 2005

The Unenviable Task of Being a Dissident in Belarus

President Lukashenko has done everything he can to avoid a new "coloured" revolution.

(Angus Reid Global Scan) Wilson Lam - Beginning in less than a week, organizing anti-government protests in Belarus will be a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison. In a sense, this is a marked improvement for demonstrators: being detained is presumably preferable to being shot at, which the police has also been authorized to do.

Aleksandr Lukashenko has been the president of Belarus for 11 years and his ever-diminishing tolerance for political opposition is remarkable. In his three terms as president, Lukashenko has gagged the media ("discrediting Belarus' standing abroad" can bring a five-year prison term), tampered with elections and the constitution, and jailed those who oppose his rule.

Criticizing either Lukashenko or any of his top officials has already been outlawed for sometime. Both the United States and the European Union (EU) have expressed concern with Lukashenko's campaign against dissents, saying recently-with regard to the country's latest laws restricting political activity-that they "have the potential to severely undermined freedoms of assembly, association, and expression in Belarus." The Belarusian security services told reporters that the laws are designed specifically to prevent demonstrations such as those that occurred during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

A presidential election is scheduled for Mar, 19, 2006, and the opposition has by and large rallied in support of a physicist named Alexander Milinkevic. In all, eight people have submitted their registrations to be presidential candidates, including Lukashenko.

Given Lukashenko's crackdown against political dissension, opposition groups have had to devise less overt ways to express their dissatisfaction with the government. They have, for example, urged Belarusians to turn off their lights on the 16th of each month and place a candle in a window. Some 100,000 households took part in the first such demonstration and that number has reportedly grown each month. Another idea was born when an opposition activist turned his blue denim shirt into a makeshift flag at a protest before he was beaten unconscious by the police. Opposition groups have since adopted blue denim as their official attire and colour.

As Lukashenko and his officials have been shunned by most Western countries on account of his government's deplorable human rights record, the president has in recent months begun a concerted effort to court the backing of China.

On a visit to China last week, Lukashenko heaped praise on his hosts, who in turn granted him a loan to take back to Belarus. On perhaps a more distressing note for the former Soviet republic's opposition groups, Lukashenko also bought internet blocking technology from the Chinese government, who has an infamous record internationally for disrupting the spread of any information that contradicts the official accounts. Until recently, the internet in Belarus was the one remaining mass medium that Lukashenko's government did not control.

When Lukashenko first ran for president, three years after Belarus seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, he won based largely on the popularity he had garnered as chairman of an anti-corruption parliamentary committee. Both at home and abroad, he was considered a viable reformer for the country.

Despite the current resurgence of the economy, attributable at least in part to the region's construction boom, Belarus is very much dependent on foreign supplies of energy, particularly from Russia. This vital trade relationship has led to increasingly close ties between the two countries. Indeed, in 1999, Belarus and Russia engaged in a merger of both their tax systems and currencies.

Whatever else may be said of Lukashenko's obstruction of political activities in his country, opposition groups are beginning to find that general apathy may become their biggest concern. The current strength of the economy and the potentially astronomic personal cost in agitating for change have congealed into a uneasy complacency in much of the country's citizenry with the status quo.

Source:

http://www.angus-reid.com/analysis/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/10354