BELARUS DIGEST

Joseph Stalin

Among the officers of the Polish army killed in Katyn there were many people from West Belarus that was part of the Second Polish Republic before 1939. In particular, one of two generals killed by the Soviets was Bronisław Bohatyrewicz from Hrodna, who had also been a commander of Belarusian national self-defence units in 1918-1919. According to historians’ estimates, about a quarter of the 14.5 thousands people killed in Katyn were Belarusians.

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The council of the Polish city of Kraków has declared Aliaksandr Lukašenka, the President of Belarus, persona non grata in the city. It is a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Union of Poles in Belarus.

The city council has passed a resolution which appeals to the European Parliament to take all possible effective action against the Belarusian state to protect the rights of persecuted Poles in Belarus.

The conflict around the Union of Poles of Belarus is quite far from what it may look like at the first glance. The specific is that the conflict has no nationalistic background at all.

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The Vancouver Sun publishes an interview with four Belarusian fans at the 2010 Olympic Games. It’s a great pleasure to see the guys wearing sweaters with the historical Belarusian coat of arms Pahonia on them.

VANCOUVER — Belarus is a small land-locked country sandwiched between Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The population is only 10 million, and mostly centered around the capital, Minsk.

But what it lacks in size, Belarus makes up for in Olympic spirit.

Thursday, Belarus picked up its first two medals of the 2010 games in the men’s and women’s biathalon. The same day, Ilya Kunitski, Pavel Kazlou, Pavel Surkov and Zmicer Kazak arrived in Vancouver to cheer on their country’s athletes.

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Belarus Police cracks down on Polish activists. Photo: AP.

Tensions between Belarus and Poland rise as Belarus police arrested about 40 members of a Polish ethnic group. This is a continuation of increased pressure put against the Union of Poles in Belarus.

The Union is uncontrolled and unrecognized by the Belarusian authorities and competes with a pro-government organization of Poles. The Financial Times today devoted an article to the conflict:

Belarus, a country of about 10m, has a Polish minority of about 400,000, a remnant from pre-war times when western Belarus was a part of Poland. The Union of Poles in Belarus became the country’s largest nongovernment organisation after most opposition groups were driven underground by Mr Lukashenko, prompting the government to form a pro-regime Polish organisation in 2005 which took over the assets of the independent group.

Mr Lukashenko’s government was pushed to warm ties with Europe when his Russian allies tired of propping him up through cheap oil and gas and began to demand world prices for energy. Belarus’s ramshackle economy needed investment and new markets to survive, and Mr Lukashenko released all of his political prisoners in 2008 as a way of improving relations with the west.

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The chapter on Belarus was included in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide published earlier this year. The three volumes account for more than 1300 pages of important and timely information. This set has an ambitious scope with the goal of offering the most up-to-date international overview of key issues in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Eighty-two countries are represented. Belarus chapter was written by Viachaslau Bortnik, Belarusian human rights defender and LGBT activist.

Bellow we provide excerpts from the chapter.

Overview of LGBT Issues in Belarus

While homosexual activity is no longer considered a crime in Belarus, and the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual relations is equal, LGBT rights still remains a marginal topic in public discourse and does not play any role in national and or local politics.

Homophobia remains widespread throughout the country country, and instances of harassment and discrimination appear occur regularly. Many Belarusians believe consider homosexuality to be a disease, and some see it as a sin, but few consider it a legitimate sexual orientation.

President Lukashenka and members of Parliament parliament often make negative statements about homosexuals, which strengthens strengthening the homophobia in society.

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Taciana Šapućka. Photo: svaboda.org.

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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Belarus authorities has threatened to introduce censorship on the Internet about a year before the next presidential election. Under a recently published draft decree “On Measures for Revising Use of the National Segment of the World Wide Web”, websites and Internet users would be strictly controlled by the government and a special unit of the Presidential Administration.

The international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders has made a statement of protest expressing its concern over the plans of the Belarusian government to tighten control over the Internet:

Government tightens grip on Internet
Published on 6 January 2010

Reporters Without Borders is worried about the government’s plans to tighten control of the Internet in a country where free expression is already restricted. President Alexander Lukashenko acknowledged on 30 December that his government is putting the final touches to a bill to this effect. The draft decree was leaked to the media on December 14, 2009. The discussions around it remain secret.

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While Belarus authorities are raising funds to build a new nuclear power plant, the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster are still puzzling the scientists. The British Guardian devoted an article to the increased cancer and infant mortality rates in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, which suffered the most from the disaster.

The UN’s World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency (responsible for promoting peaceful use of nuclear energy) report that only 56 people have died as a direct result of the Chernobyl-released radiation and about 4,000 will die from it eventually. Another UN Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl. Those “on the ground” have different figures – the Belarus National Academy of Sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers eventually and the Ukraine Academy of Science gives even higher figures. As the Guardian explains:

The mismatches in figures arise because there have been no comprehensive, co-ordinated studies of the health consequences of the accident. This is in contrast to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, where official research showed that the main rise in most types of cancer and non-cancer diseases only became apparent years after the atomic bombs fell.

A coordinated effort to study the consequences of the largest anthropogenic disaster in human’s history is indeed necessary. This would serve not only Belarus, but many other countries.

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To be precise, the Belarusian officials have not yet approved the introduction of additional measures to regulate Internet in Belarus. However, Belarusian independent media have published a realistic draft of the document and the document has been discussed by the government.

Introduction of this new regulation would give the regime in Minsk additional instruments to regulate the last area of free speech in the country, which the Internet indeed is. The number of internet users in Belarus is relatively high (the official number is over three millions). In fact, an average Belarusian internet user is generally not too interested in politics and opposition websites, but nevertheless the potential auditorium for on-line oppositional media is quite significant.

Another question is whether the officials would actually use the instruments for real repressions, which may seem less likely considering the closer ties with EU. Still, self-censorship has become a common practice in the Belarusian information sphere. Knowing that one is being identified and traced by officials, both readers and writers will be much more cautious and less willing to risk being sanctioned for viewing websites criticizing the regime. This is the sad reality of a European country, just 2 hours flight away from Berlin, in the early 21st century.

The authoritarian Belarus is introducing censorship on the Internet in the coming days, about a year before the presidential election. In the future, websites and Internet users would be strictly controlled by the government and a special unit of the Presidential Administration.

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