Vilnius Summit, Education Code, Bialiacki – Belarus Civil Society Digest
In the last week a number of events on Belarus took place alongside the Vilnius Summit. BўROOM, Reality Check gathered experts, political figures and activists to discuss various issue on Belarusian civil society.
Eco-workshops for children launched in Minsk. Teachers teach young Belarusians on green consumption of energy. Belarusian Association of Journalists revealed the preliminary results of its survey – 50 journalists fell under police detention in 2013.
Two years have already passed since politically motivated verdict on Ales Bialiacki.
The Vilnius Summit and Belarus
BўROOM in Vilnius. On 28-29 November a creative civic space BўROOM was held in Vilnius. Opened by Vice-Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, Petras Austrevicius, BўROOM run in parallel with the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit to attract local, Belarusian and international attention to Belarus. The photo exhibition by Belarus Press Photo, civil society Fair, actual roundtable discussions, an official EaP CSF side-event on human rights issues in Belarus, informal chats with Belarusian activists, national cuisine were open to anyone offline and via broadcasting live by Euroradio.
EaP Civil Society Conference in Vilnius. Civil Society Conference “Eastern Partnership Reality Check: Political Challenges and Future Agenda for Civil Society” was held on 27-29 November in Vilnius, as an official event by the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU Council. The event brought together civil society leaders from the EaP countries (including Belarus) and the European Union, as well as distinguished political figures and public activists.
Statement of the Belarusian National Platform of support of the Ukrainian partners. On 26 November the Belarusian National Platform of EaP CSF issued an appeal to express the support for the Ukrainian CSOs which speak in favour of further European integration of Ukraine. The signers expressed sincere solidarity and support to Ukrainian National Platform and in through it – to all the Ukrainian CSOs actively working for the benefits of their country towards European integration.
Civil Society Activities
Study visit on adult education. On 18-21 November ten representatives of Belarusian civil society organisations working in the field of adult education took part in a training visit to Lithuania. The visit was organised by the Association for Life Long Education (ALLE) to establish contacts with the Lithuanian providers in this field.
Open Libraries in Barysaŭ. In November, three apartment houses in different areas of Byrasaŭ, Minsk oblast’, set up “Open Libraries” in the halls. The idea to organise residents’ communication in such an interesting and unusual form belongs to the local Pravincyja women’s association.
Eco-workshops for children in Minsk. This is a new joint project of alumni of the School of environmental activist (by Green Alliance network), EcoDom NGO and the Centre for Environmental Solutions with the support of the Ў Gallery. The first meeting was devoted to green consumption. In a very simple and fun way teachers together with volunteers told to children how not to harm the environment and human health, how to save water, energy and how to choose healthy products in the store.
Inclusion can become a mainstream. On 11-12 November the UNDP office in Minsk hosted a workshop "An inclusive development agenda after 2015: the practical prospects for people with disabilities in Belarus" attended by representatives of national and international organisations, people with disabilities, foreign experts. On 14 November Association for Life Long Education (ALLE) together with the Office for the Rights of People with Disabilities conducted a roundtable "Inclusion in non-formal education" aimed to develop practical recommendations for CSOs to adopt an inclusion principle in their educational programs.
Study visit on national security. On 7-10 November Belarus Security Blog in cooperation with the Estonian CSOs organised a study visit to Estonia. The visit aimed to study the Estonian experience in the organisation of national defence and civilian control over it. The Belarusian activists had a series of meetings with representatives of the Defence Forces, representatives of political parties and academic community of Estonia.
GPSA 2nd Call for Proposals. The Global Partnership for Social Accountability announces its 2nd Call for Proposals. The Call for Proposals is open to CSOs and CSO networks based and operating in any of 33 eligible countries, including Belarus. Grant amounts will range from $500,000 to $1,000,000. Deadline to submit proposals is on 6 January 2014.
DisRight Office’s specialists prepared proposals on amendments to the Education Code. There is a possibility that the next year the Education Code will be amended. The DisRight Office’s lawyers have prepared concrete recommendations concerning the Code, namely, they propose to introduce to the document several terms, such as “inclusion” and “discrimination”.
Global Fund to provide $9 million to fight tuberculosis in Belarus. The UN-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will provide a grant of $9,080,000 to Belarus to finance the second stage of the Stop TB Strategy. An agreement to the effect was signed on 27 November in Minsk by Belarusian Deputy Health Minister Ihar Hayewski; Sanaka Samarasinha, the UN Development Program’s resident representative in Belarus; and Yawhen Spyavak, an HIV-positive representative of civil society.
Interaction between State and Civil Society
Ales Bialiacki: Two years since politically motivated verdict. On 24 November 2011, the Court of Minsk’s Pershamaiski district convicted Ales Bialiatski, the leader of the Human Rights Centre "Viasna". Ales Bialiacki was found guilty in tax evasion on a large scale and was sentenced to imprisonment in a high security penal colony for a period of 4.5 years and a confiscation of property. On 25 November Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), reminded the Belarusian authorities of previous calls by OSCE Chairpersons-in-Office for the release of human rights defender Ales Bialiacki and added his voice to theirs, calling Bialiacki’s case a violation of OSCE commitments.
Independent expert on state TV. On 25 November a national state-run TV ONT in a talk-show program “Pozitsya” by Vadim Gigin discussed a topic on relations between the EU and Belarus, namely, what impedes cooperation and how to establish a productive dialogue. Both official and independent experts, including Denis Melyantsov, a senior analyst of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS), were invited to participate in the discussion.
BAJ discusses how to protect journalists. In 2013 about 50 Belarusian journalists fell under police detention, including four administrative arrests – the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) sums up the preliminary results of the year.
Belarus Digest prepared this overview on the basis of materials provided by Pact. This digest attempts to give a richer picture of the recent political and civil society events in Belarus. It often goes beyond the hot stories already available in English-language media.
Belarusian Military Cooperation With Developing Nations: Dangerous Yet Legal
Milex-2011, Military Exhibition in Minsk.
On 26 November, unknown militants believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda attacked two Belarusians in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. One was killed, another severely wounded.
The men worked for the Yemeni presidential security service for about a year, as reported by the Reuters news agency, referring to local security sources.
International media and human rights organisations regularly accused the Belarusian regime of collaborating with “extremist” governments and groups around the world.
In 2000s, the Wall Street Journal Europe claimed that Belarus sold arms to Hamas, as well as to a series of countries labelled as sponsors of terrorism. Later on, Belarus was implicated of illicit arms sales to Cot-d'Ivoire and Sudan. However, no firm evidence of illicit deals ever appeared.
The evidence points out another reality – of Belarus doing risky business, though with legitimate governments.
Supporting the Global War on Terror
Commenting on the recent incident in Yemen the Reuters noted, “Citizens of countries in the former Soviet Union are not previously known to have been targets for Yemen's al Qaeda branch or other Islamist militant groups.” Working for the Yemeni presidential security service, the Belarusians clearly joined the Western side of the global war on terror. Lukashenka might be unscrupulous, yet he knows that in the global crusade against terrorism he cannot afford ambiguousness.
The experts killed in Sanaa worked there with the implicit knowledge of the Belarusian government. Chairman of Belarusian Military Industrial Committee Siarhei Hurulyou stated that the Belarusian experts worked on a “Belarusian” contract but declined to say which enterprise concluded the contract.
Belarusians badly need money and are willing to go on the most risky missions in order to make a living. In March 2007, two Belarusian transport aircrafts of Transaviaexport were shot down in Somalia, and eleven pilots and technicians died. The issue was again used in the domestic political struggle inside Belarus. Transaviaexport officially claimed that the first machine was chartered by the UN Security Council to bring cargo for the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
Some other commentators claimed that the aircraft participated in illegal arms deliveries for armed African groups. The only evidence they produced were photographs of the first aircraft with military equipment inside. This equipment was not something that itself could be viewed as incriminating, as the peacekeeping mission would have needed this equipment as well. Furthermore, Transaviaexport at that time was registered as an official UN air carrier and transported UN cargo around the world.
Fighting for the Ivorian Government
The most suspicious case of Belarusian military involvement in developing world relates to domestic political confrontation in Cote-d'Ivoire in the early 2000s. In August 2004, the French Defence Minister claimed that nine French soldiers were killed as a French military base there was bombed by the Ivorian government air force. It was Belarusian military specialists that piloted the Ivoirian aircrafts, according to the Defence Minister. Both Ivorian and Belarusian defence ministries refuted the accusations.
In 2010 Wikileaks published a cable from the US embassy in Paris. It reported a conversation with a former Togolese minister which had fled afterwards to France. He said that nine Belarusian military experts were detained in Togo after the raid on the French military base but Paris had displayed no interest in persecuting the Belarusians.
Most of the Belarusian media quite uncritically assessed the words of former Togolese official without reporting that he was in a very specific situation of looking for support as he talked to Americans and it could potentially influence his statements.
Actually, the French might have had good reasons to let the detained Belarusians go back then, as the legal grounds for persecution were weak. After all, the Belarusians worked for the Ivorian government and France was not a party to the convention against mercenaries.
Choppers for Nigerian Special Forces
Belarusians work for the government in Western Africa as well. Belarus-Nigerian cooperation within the military sphere reportedly started in 2003, long before the Belarusian embassy opened in Abuja last year. The two governments reportedly signed an agreement on military technical cooperation in June 2010.
A high-level Nigerian Defence Ministry official told the Belarusian delegation visiting Nigeria in 2011 that relations between the two countries shall not start and end with commerce but they should consider one another "partners in military development".
In 2010, Minsk sold two helicopters Mi-24B to Abuja. Belarusian “Belspeczneshtekhnika” since the early 2010s has been providing maintenance to Nigerian Mi-35 attack helicopters, and Nigeria sent its pilots and engineers to Belarus among other countries to receive training.
Alongside the Belspeczneshtekhnika, the Nigerian air force uses the services of Alenia Aeronautica and AgustaWestland. Belspeczneshtekhnika is responsible for the choppers of the 97th Special Forces Group in Port Harcourt, a main region of oil extraction and the very heart of rebel activity in Nigeria.
Last year, the Belarusian ambassador in Nigeria Vyachaslau Biaskosty stated that his country is willing to render Nigeria technical assistance to tame terrorists threatening the African nation. That includes humanitarian aspects. In 2012, the Nigerian government sent scores of former Niger delta rebels to Belarus (as well as South Africa and Italy) for university studies.
No Deal with the Ethiopian Dictatorship
The Belarusian regime might look unscrupulous, yet it certainly avoids conducting overtly risky deals and has some understanding of humanitarian issues. A case in point is cooperation with Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi.
In early 2000s Belarus hoped to revive old links with Ethiopia as a former Soviet ally. After all, Belarusian MTZ tractors were being assembled there since as far back as 1984. Minsk managed to secure some defence contracts which, according to Ethiopian media, in the early 2000s was worth more than $100m.
In the summer of 2005, this cooperation came to an abrupt halt. In July 2005, after post-election violence in Ethiopia, eight Ethiopian pilots undergoing 6-month training in Belarus applied for political asylum. These pilots, according to some sources, learned to fly the most modern version of the Su-27 fighter jet. This training was extremely important for the Ethiopian regime because this African country had at the moment almost no more pilots trained to fly these Soviet jets.
After the Belarusian authorities rejected their requests, the Ethiopian pilots left for another country. The Belarusian government did not hamper them. The Ethiopian diaspora boasted of bringing the pilots out of Belarus. Yet given the control the Belarusian regime had in the country and effective non-existence of an Ethiopian diaspora in Belarus, it was undoubtedly the Belarusian government which facilitated the escape of the Ethiopian pilots. In a parallel development, fierce pressure by the Ethiopian government resulted in Djibouti returning the dissident pilots to Addis Abeba but failed to produce such results with Minsk.
Belarus paid dearly. Ethiopian ruler Meles Zenawi broke relations and they did not revive them while he was alive. Political contacts resumed instantly after the Ethiopian strongman passed away in August 2012.
The quoted cases show that the Belarusian leadership is not interested in confrontation with the West as such, either on ideological or geopolitical grounds. Belarusians look even for the most risky contracts in developing world for the sake of money, yet Minsk so far has demonstrated that it knows where the redlines set by the West lie.
Essentially, Lukashenka tried to earn money by avoiding confrontation with the West at the same time. This is important to consider in order to understand the opportunistic and non-ideological foreign policy of Belarus over almost the past two decades.
