Washington Post - 08.19.2002

The Washington Post

Belarus Chief Responds to Critics With Crackdown

Activists, Journalists Targeted As Nation's Isolation Grows

By Susan B. Glasser, Washington Post Foreign Service

MINSK, Belarus -- President Alexander Lukashenko has embarked on a new crackdown against democracy activists and independent journalists, with his agents systematically harassing, arresting, firing or beating up people even remotely connected with the opposition in last year's presidential campaign.

At a time when Lukashenko, often dubbed Europe's last dictator, is more isolated internationally than ever -- even feuding with Russia, his neighbor and longtime ally -- he seems determined to respond not with reforms but with his most serious campaign of repression, according to interviews here last week with opposition leaders, Western diplomats and independent observers.

"For seven years, under this same president, we never suffered as much as this year," said Zhanna Litvina, president of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. "We are being paid back for our position during the presidential election. Lukashenko promised revenge, and now he is carrying it out."

In recent months, Lukashenko has taken on a dizzying number of would-be enemies, including the U.S. fast-food chain McDonald's, a European diplomatic mission and a trade union leader who dared to run against him in last year's election. An independent newspaper, Pahonia, or Pursuit, has been closed because of its coverage of the election, and for the first time, the criminal code is being used to prosecute journalists for insulting the president.

There are also smaller incidents that activists say have come to characterize life for them under Lukashenko, such as the arrest of a protester for the youth group Zubr. The protester was held for two days last month in a tiny cell so stifling that it caused the healthy 21-year-old to be hospitalized with heart problems. Then there was the husband of Valentina Polevikova, the opposition's campaign manager, who found himself drenched in blood and lying under a tree at 4 a.m. one recent morning after being severely beaten by mysterious assailants. "The bolts," Polevikova said, "have been tightened as never before."

Lukashenko, an admirer of Hitler and Stalin who rules this country of 10 million people with a strong hand, claimed victory last Sept. 9 in an election criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as "neither free nor fair."

Two days later, the terrorist attacks against the United States left Lukashenko free to operate far from the international spotlight. But when Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, enlisted in the U.S.-led anti-terrorist coalition and proclaimed a shift in policy toward the West, Lukashenko found himself without support from his most important neighbor.

"He's far more isolated now than a year ago," said a senior diplomat based here.

Last week, Putin offered Lukashenko a pointed indication of just how differently Russia intends to treat Belarus. For years, Lukashenko has agitated for a Russia-Belarus union that would merge the two economies and even allow him to dream of one day ruling the united state from the Kremlin. Putin used to play along, but on Wednesday he effectively called Lukashenko's bluff, offering him a deal under which Russia would effectively absorb independent Belarus after a referendum next year.

By Wednesday night, as Belarusan activists furiously churned out fliers against "Russian occupation," Lukashenko had returned to Minsk and called the integration plan he has worked so hard for "unacceptable."

With a newly wary Russia to the east, Belarus also faces the prospect of two of its neighbors, Lithuania and Latvia, joining NATO. Poland has already done so, leaving Lukashenko's critics to say, as U.S. Ambassador Michael Kozak has repeatedly said, that Minsk is nothing more than "a black hole in the center of Europe" between Warsaw and Moscow.

"Lukashenko understands he is facing more problems after the elections than before," said Andrei Sannikov, leader of the human rights group Charter 97 here. "The only way he knows how to deal with these problems is to tighten control, to get rid of all independent voices."

In an interview, the Belarusan foreign minister, Mikhail Khvostov, denied the existence of any systematic campaign against Lukashenko's opponents and said criticism of the government's human rights record by the U.S. State Department is simply another example of the "double standard" used to judge his country.

"The human rights situation in Belarus is not any worse than the situation of other countries" in the former Soviet Union, he said. As for prosecutions of opposition figures, he said, "The state is only demanding that people obey the law."

Despite Lukashenko's diplomatic problems abroad, Belarusans remain unwilling to take on the authoritarian government -- much more so than a year ago, when even those who didn't take to the streets before the election were "secretly hoping that something was going to change," as Yuri Khashevatsky put it.

"It's much worse than before the elections," said Khashevatsky, a documentary filmmaker who suffered two broken legs when he was attacked several years ago after his biting satire of Lukashenko, "An Ordinary President," appeared. This spring, he spent 10 days in jail for publicly protesting; he was arrested just hours after returning from the International Human Rights Film Festival in Prague. "They're trying to finally destroy those structures of the opposition that still exist."

By some indications, it's working. Public protests have dwindled to a token few, the ranks of opposition activists have fallen off sharply and even the most fervent anti-Lukashenko politicians say they are no longer sure of what course to pursue.

"We are not for him, but we are not against him either," said Nadya, a 21-year-old student eating at a McDonald's in downtown Minsk, one of several in the capital that local authorities are trying to close after Lukashenko declared American-style fast food unsuitable for Belarusans. Hers is a widely shared opinion, and opposition leaders say that even their followers are so demoralized that they have yet to agree on a new strategy.

Opposition leaders have spent the past year facing what they say is payback for their anti-Lukashenko campaign. Vladimir Goncharik, who became the unity candidate of the opposition last year but won just 15 percent in what he called the "rigged" polling, noted that "in political life there are purges -- zachistki -- just like in Chechnya," a reference to the widely criticized roundups of civilians conducted by Russian soldiers in the breakaway region.

After the election, Goncharik was forced out of the trade union federation he headed and couldn't find another job in Belarus; he now works in Moscow.

For Goncharik's campaign manager, Polevikova, the apparent revenge has been especially personal.

Like Goncharik, she was forced to leave her job at the trade union federation late last year. Then came the beating of her husband this summer. Now, she said, authorities are trying to take over the women's political party she heads, threatening her supporters and staging a whispering campaign about alleged misuse of union funds during last year's election.

"One-third of my party are union activists, and the union has already been grabbed by Lukashenko," she said. "So now they are threatening these workers." Mid-interview, she got up to take a phone call and returned visibly shaken to explain that it was her party leader in Vitebsk, calling to say she would be fired if she did not quit Polevikova's faction.

Nowhere has the recent crackdown been more apparent than in the independent press. Pahonia newspaper was shut down this year for an article during the campaign accusing Lukashenko of being linked to the disappearance and possible murder of several political opponents. Last week, a court heard appeals from the two Pahonia journalists who wrote the article and have been sentenced to up to 2 1/2 years in jail.

In another case, the newspaper Nasha Svaboda was ordered this month to pay $55,000 in damages to a top government official in a libel case concerning an article about Lukashenko's inner circle. Unable to pay the fine, exorbitant in a country where average salaries hover around $100 a month, the newspaper has instead stopped publishing.

"One by one, we are losing our independent newspapers," said Alexei Karol, editor in chief of Zgoda newspaper, whose offices were broken into this month.

Although Lukashenko was recently shown on state-run television proclaiming his government "under attack" by the independent press and demanding a new crackdown, senior Belarusan officials dismissed claims that they are persecuting their critics.

"We have no problem with freedom of speech in Belarus," said Information Minister Mikhail Podgainy.

In an interview, Podgainy alternately mocked independent newspapers for their small circulation and accused them of being agents for the U.S. government.