Europe's ‘last dictator' flexes iron fist; Belarus President shuts down pro-democracy groups, instills climate of fear

MINSK, BELARUS--In Alexander Lukashenko's Belarus, this was considered a threatening gathering.  Two human-rights lawyers were making tea on an ancient gas stove while Zinaida Gonchar, the wife of a former opposition leader who disappeared without a trace almost five years ago, updated journalists about the search for her husband.

“I still don't know what happened to him, and I don't know what to do about it,” Ms. Gonchar said, her eyes glowing with deeply embedded anger.

No one has seen or heard from Viktor Gonchar, a former chairman of the country's central election commission, since he and a friend were dragged off the streets of Minsk in September, 1999, two months after he declared that Mr. Lukashenko, the President, was illegally clinging to power. It was one of a spate of political “disappearances” that year.

“There are, of course, people who know what happened,” Ms. Gonchar said. “You should ask Lukashenko.”

Sitting around the bare kitchen table, everyone in the room was aware that the KGB could bang on the door at any minute. The secret police keep an office in an apartment block directly across the courtyard from this tiny law office, which is disobeying a government order to stop its human-rights work.

“The KGB didn't change very much from Soviet times, neither their name nor the essence of their work . . . so of course they are still feared,” said Valentin Stefanovich, a lawyer with Viasna (Spring), one of dozens of non-government organizations that have been shut down in Belarus over the past 12 months. Almost all were involved in democracy promotion or human-rights monitoring.

Thirteen years after the Soviet Union fell and Belarus became an independent state, Mr. Lukashenko has restored the climate of fear that Soviet leaders used for decades to keep citizens in line. Dubbed “the last dictator in Europe” by the European Commission, the President has ruled this country with an iron fist for 10 years. He said last week that he is considering bending the constitution so he can stay on past the current two-term limit, and no one in the country has the ability to oppose him.

The European Union is expanding May 1 to take on board other former Soviet clients that have become functioning democracies. Two of Belarus's immediate neighbours will be included: Poland and Lithuania. But just beyond the union's new borders, Mr. Lukashenko is tightening the screws as if to make sure that Belarussians don't catch a whiff of the changing political winds. Although it sits in the heart of Europe, this country of 10 million people is increasingly an island unto itself.

Ahead of this year's parliamentary election, and a likely referendum on whether he can remain in office for a third term or beyond, Mr. Lukashenko's government has forced opposition parties to reregister, driven much of the independent news media underground and effectively made public protest a crime that can cost a person his or her job. The country's most prominent opposition politician, Anatoly Lebedko, faces up to five years in prison on charges of slandering the President in a television interview.

Even the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, one of the rare European institutions that counts Belarus as a member, is worried that it too will soon be forced out as the President's paranoia deepens. The organization has yet to be invited to monitor the August parliamentary vote, and its international staff were pointedly given three-month visas that expire just ahead of the election.

“Things are not getting better; they are deteriorating,” said Heidi Smith, spokeswoman for the OSCE office in Minsk. “Lukashenko is power-hungry, and I'm quite convinced [the current clampdown] is an attempt to preserve power at any cost.”

International pressure on Belarus has been escalating, but with little noticeable effect so far. Last week, Washington threw its support behind a United Nations resolution that would condemn Belarus for the disappearance of dissidents, the absence of free elections and its tight restrictions on all religions besides Orthodox Christianity. The EU is reportedly considering implementing economic sanctions over the same issues.
Even long-time ally Russia has turned up the criticism under President Vladimir Putin, who is said to personally dislike Mr. Lukashenko. The Belarussian leader recently complained that Moscow has begun funding opposition parties.
It is unquestionably true that Mr. Lukashenko has supporters at home. He is considered to have won fairly the 1994 presidential election against five other candidates, on the strength of popular support for his promises to return stability after three years of post-Soviet chaos.
He's done that much, and gone about creating a reasonable facsimile of the Soviet economy of the 1970s, although social order has been balanced by stagnant growth and a lack of interaction with the outside world, besides Russia. His 2001 re-election was widely seen as tainted, but the 49-year-old Mr. Lukashenko still wields a thick power base among rural residents and citizens nostalgic for Soviet days.

Andrei Savinykh, a spokesman for Belarus's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the criticism against Mr. Lukashenko's regime is unfair. He said the country's human-rights record is “not worse” than those of other former Soviet republics on good terms with the West.

Minsk is being targeted by the West because it pursues an independent foreign policy and has resisted pressure to privatize its state industries, he said. “We do not fit into the idealistic model which is pictured by some politicians . . . We prefer to think for ourselves.”

But those who have run up against the state say Mr. Lukashenko has clamped down on opposition to the point where only outside pressure can offer Belarussians hope of change. If not, Belarus may get one more Soviet tradition imposed on it: the “president for life.”

“I don't know what to compare the current situation to — maybe the dictatorship in South Korea in the 1950s,” said Viktor Ivashkevich, former editor of a newspaper that was closed two years ago after running articles alleging corruption inside the presidential administration. “I do know that as soon as Lukashenko leaves, the whole totalitarian regime will collapse.”

The Globe and Mail; 19 April 2004