BELARUS DIGEST

The ousted leader of Kyrgyzstan said Wednesday from exile in Belarus that he is still president of his Central Asian country.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev was deposed in an April 7 uprising that left 85 people dead in the Kyrgyz capital. He fled last week to neighboring Kazakhstan and arrived in the Belarusian capital earlier this week.

Bakiev Insists He’s Still Kyrgyzstan’s President
By RFE/RL
April 22, 2010

In his first public comments from exile, Kyrgyzstan’s ousted leader said he remains the legitimate president of the country and called on the international community not to recognize the interim government in Bishkek.

Speaking in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, Bakiev said he was retracting a handwritten letter of resignation brandished by the authorities who forced him from power.

“I do not recognize my resignation,” Bakiev said, pledging to “explain later” before going on to say: “Nine months ago, the people of Kyrgyzstan elected me their president and I swore to serve them. There is no power that can stop me from fulfilling my oath. Only death can stop me.”

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In September 2009, the President of Poland Kaczyński sent his condolences to the President of Belarus because of the death of two Belarusian pilots in a crash of Su-27 fighter plane at an air show. Today, state leaders around the world are condoling with the Poles at the loss of President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others in a plane crash near Smolensk.

On April 10, Lech Kaczyński was flying to commemorate the deaths of thousands of Poles murdered by the Soviet Union and buried in the Katyn Forest just across the eastern border of Belarus. On March 5, 1940, Joseph Stalin signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish prisoners of war in the camps of Ostashkov, Starobelsk, and Kozelsk. Only in 1990 did the Soviet authorities admit responsibility for the Katyn murders.

Because of the fog, it was difficult for the pilots to land in Smolensk airport, near the Katyn Forest. Polish media report that air traffic controllers had advised the Polish pilots not to attempt to land at the airport, but turn around and head for Minsk, the capital of Belarus. The obscure military aerodrome near Smolensk lacked the necessary navigational equipment to receive planes in heavy fog. Despite these warnings, Polish pilots, apparently under pressure from their VIP passengers, decided to take the risk of landing in Smolensk. Perhaps, the Polish delegation had its own reasons not to land in Belarus.

Few people outside Warsaw and Minsk know that Lech Kaczyński was one of the staunchest defenders of human rights in Belarus and a vocal critic of its president. Just last month, condemning the detentions and trials of activists of the Union of Poles in Belarus, Lech Kaczyński wrote a personal letter to Alyaksandr Lukashenka defending the Polish minority. Having received no response from the Belarusian authorities, Lech Kaczynski appealed to the European Union’s institutions though the President of the European Union Herman Van Rompuy and European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek.

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The German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung began its article on Boris Kit’s 100th anniversary with a scene from revolutionary Petrograd:

In February 1917, a small boy is running with his mother on the streets of wintry St. Petersburg. The mother pulls him to a back street to one of the magnificent avenues of the city of the tsars. There are many people running around. They wave red flags, they sing and shout. The mother says, “Look, Boris!” The boy shifts from one foot to the other – “I want to go home, mama, I’m cold!

Boris Kit was born on 6 April 1910 in St Petersburg (then Petrograd). As a young kid he witnessed the Russian revolution. In 1933, he got his Master’s degree from Vilnius (then Vilnia) University and began to teach mathematics at the Belarusian Gymnasium. In 1939 he became its director. After Stalin incorporated Vilnia into Lithuania, Kit moved to Western Belarus where he worked on establishing Belarusian schools.

He was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis and then had to flee Belarus at the end of the World War II. Boris Kit has made a distinguished career as a rocket scientist and a professor at the University of Maryland in the United States. Michael Scanlan, Charge d’Affaires in Belarus, recently named Boris Kit and Tadeusz Kosciuszko as two Belarusians who have made profound contributions to the development of America.

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In his article for the Jamestown Foundation the known expert on Belarus David Marples portrays Andrei Sannikau who recently announced his willing to run for the presidency.

Sannikau Throws His Hat in the Ring

The Jamestown Foundation
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 56
March 23, 2010
By: David Marples

A key opposition leader in Belarus has declared his candidacy for the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2011. Andrei Sannikau, the leader of the civic movement European Belarus, held an interview with “bloggers” in mid-March to outline his policies and answer questions. His decision reflects long-term disillusionment with recent attempts by the United Democratic Forces (UDF) in particular to engage in dialogue with the Lukashenka regime and support Belarus’s membership of the Eastern Partnership Project. Ironically, Sannikau is also the most overtly pro-European of all the candidates to date, though he wishes to replace the Lukashenka regime with a completely new administration and state structure.

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The American Comedy star Lisa Kudrow has found her Belarusian roots in NBC’s project Who Do You Think You Are. Her ancestors were Jews from the village Illia, Minsk province of Belarus. Some of her relatives have been killed during the Second World War.

The World War has put an end the Jewish Belarus after 800 thousands Belarusian Jews have been exterminated by Nazis. Every eighth victim of the Holocaust came from Belarus. Many Belarusian Jews have emigrated to the United States since late 19th century.

Lisa Kudrow has traced her family back to Belarus on the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?

The former Friends actress, who is an executive producer on the genealogy programme, has been filming her own appearance, Metro reports.

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What do you think is the difference between Belarus and Eastern Ukraine?

Despite being as much slavophilic, predominantly Russian-speaking and Soviet-nostalgic, the Belarusian society seems to be less pro-Russian then the population of Eastern Ukraine. There are fewer ethnic Russians in Belarus than in Ukraine. Because of president Lukašenka’s policy towards Russification and neo-Sovietism, there have been no tensions regarding mass introduction of the national language as in Ukraine. Groups potentially advocating a unification with Russia have never been too active in Belarus.

The question “West or Russia” has never arisen in Belarus as sharply as in Ukraine. Belarusians are pragmatic in this instance, opinion polls show that equal parts of the population support integration with Europe and Russia – with a big proportion of those advocating them both at the same time.

For some reasons we have started hearing of pro-Russian organizations in the last months, especially with the scandal around Andrej Hieraščanka (Gerashchenko) a month ago. (more…)

A loud scandal involving the foreign Minister of Israel and money laundering via Belarusian banks is unfolding. Ze’ev Ben-Aryeh, the former Ambassador of Israel to Belarus, provided Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister of Israel, classified information when they met in Belarus in 2008.

That information suggested that Lieberman had accepted bribes and evaded taxes using Belarusian banks. Israeli authorities were hoping to cooperate secretly with the Belarusian authorities, but their ambassador kept a copy of the confidential files for himself, and later shared it with his boss Liberman.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

According to the statement released by police, Israel’s former ambassador to Belarus, Ze’ev Ben-Aryeh, allegedly showed Lieberman classified information regarding his investigation by police on allegations that he had accepted bribes and failed to report income to the tax authorities.

The documents had been sent to Ben-Aryeh by the Foreign Ministry to hand over to the Belarus government, whose help Israel required in tracing money transfers from a local bank.

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While Belarus itself has been stuck with its authoritarian ruler since 1994, an ethnic Belarusian in neighboring Ukraine has secured the highest position in the country.

Father of the newly-elected Ukrainian President Fiodar Uladzimiravich Yanukovich was born in 1923 in Yanuki in northern Belarus. Fiodar Yanukovich was very young when his father Uladzimir Yaraslavavich Yanukovich moved to Ukraine in 1920-s to work in coal mines. Uladzimir went there with his brother, who subsequently returned to Yanuki in Belarus.

There has been rumors that Fiodar Yanukovich was collaborating with Nazis while in Belarus. Reportedly, Baranovichi regional branch of NKVD, the predecessor of KGB requested in 1945 to “extradite” Fiodor Yanukovich back to Belarus on charges of collaboration with Nazis. However, the genuineness of this story is questionable.

In Ukraine, Fiodar worked as locomotive drive in Donbas, the region of Ukraine rich in coal. His first wife Olga died in 1952, when Viktor was just two years old. Fiodar later re-married and Viktor Yanukovich was brought up by grandmother. Being born in and having grown up in Ukraine, it is not surprising, that Viktor Yanukovich regards himself Ukrainian.

However, Viktor Yanukovich has not forgotten his Belarusian roots. He visited Yanuki, the birthplace of his father, at least twice. Once he went there on an official visit as Prime Minster of Ukraine with accompanied by his Belarusian counterpart Siarhei Sidorski and later paid a private visit. On both occasions, he met the local Yanukovichs and visited the local cemetery, where his grandfather’s brother and other distant relatives are buried.

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Google has dedicated today’s logo on its Belarusian website google.com.by to the 19th century Belarusian painter Napaleon Orda. The painter was born on February 11, 1807 in a manor near Pinsk into the family of a local landlord. The logo depicts Orda’s painting of the Čaćviarcinski palace in Hrodna.

Two years ago Google had also marked the birthday of Marc Chagall, another painter from Belarus.

Read the full story here

A story so outrageous and so boringly usual for Belarus: Ihar Slučak, a political activist, is being threatened by police because of his intentions to participate in local elections scheduled for April.

The Belarusian State University expells Taciana Šapućka, a member of the opposition organization Malady Front, after she had visited a conference organized by the European Commission in Brussel (see a story here).

Human Rights Watch has issued its new report (see p. 384) naming current political prisoners in Belarus: Mikalaj Aŭtuchovič, Uladzimir Asipienka, business people; and Arciom Dubski, another activist of Malady Front.

As it seems, an evolution of the Belarusian regime towards democracy, so much talked about in 2009, mostly still remains theory. Sadly, repressions against the opposition were and remain an instrument to run the country despite the government’s closer ties with the EU.

Homel-based young activist Ihar Sluchak, who studies in Estonia, during his holidays in Belarus faces pressure of the authorities.

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An interview with Michail Holasaŭ (Mikhail Golosov), a Belarus-born economics professor at Yale University. The initiative of these people is really worth admiration. It is very important for the Belarusian government to really seize this opportunity and to help economists from the Belarusian diaspora to realize their project.

Having Europe’s probably most backward and least reformed economy, where real market reforms might only have started a year ago or so, Belarus desperately needs the experience and knowledge of people like Michail Holasaŭ or Aleh Cyvinski (Tsyvinski). One should consider the example of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president and successful reformer, who invited young Georgian-born economists from the West to advise on economic reforms and even take key positions in the country’s government.

Economists with a global reputation have come to a conference in Minsk on December 28-29. They are united by Belarusian origin. And the desire to do something for Belarus. Naša Niva has talked to Mikhail Golosov, a professor of economics at Yale University (USA).

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Belarus is a lonely country and Belarusian is a lonely language ignored by its own state and by most Belarusians, who almost exclusively use Russian in their everyday life. The death of Vera Rich is a big loss for Belarus although most Belarusians will hardly even hear of it. And it is God’s big gift to us that there were and there are foreign friends of Belarus like her.
Vera Rich has also been known as a translator of Ukrainian literature to English. However, her work was much more vital and important for Belarus than for Ukraine, where the national language and the national culture are in a much better state. Ukraine has awarded Vera Rich with the Order of Queen Olga, one of the country’s most important awards. But despite her significant work in promoting Belarusian culture, she has been ignored by Belarusian officials who since mid 1990s continue the Soviet policy of Russification and discrimination of Belarusian national culture.

Her first translation of Belarusian literature to English was published by the Belarusian Munich newspaper Baćkaŭščyna in 1957. Vera Rich translated works by Janka Kupala, Jakub Kolas, Natallia Arsiennieva, Maksim Bahdanovič, Aleś Harun, Ciotka, Larysa Hienijuš, Zmitrok Biadulia, Kandrat Krapiva, Voĺha Ipatava, Nil Hilievič and others.

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