Angry Planet - Democracy on the Run in Belarus

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

Sometimes referred to as Europe’s last dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.Lukashenko, formerly in charge of a collective farm, has kept a tight grip on power and on the past. Belarus has kept Soviet symbols and economic policies long after they’ve gone out of favor elsewhere.Elections have been held regularly in the country, but have been neither free nor fair. The latest, in August 2020, is considered to be the least fair of all. Since then, there has been a cycle of lies, protests and repression.To help us understand the situation, we are joined by journalist and advocate Serge Kharytonau.Recorded 1/9/21Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. It was political achievement and a political move to talk to a journalist in the street, to talk on political topics or something related to the society, and God forbid to talk about the president of the republic. There are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know, we don't know. One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published. When genocide has been cut out in this country, almost within the community, and when it is near to completion, people talk about interventions. They will be met with fire, fury, and frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.

This episode was reported, just one day after the capital of the United States of America was stormed. Though the subject is Belarus, a country that is pretty small and pretty far away, we think there's some relevant lessons to be taken from it. We hope you'll enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt.

Sometimes referred to as Europe's last dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has ruled Belarus since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lukashenko, formerly in charge of a collective farm, has kept a tight grip on power and on the past. Belarus has kept Soviet symbols and economic policies long after they've gone out of favor elsewhere. Elections have been held regularly in the country, but have been neither free nor fair.

The latest in August 2020 is considered to be the least fair of all. Since then, there's been a cycle of lies, protests, and repression. To help us understand the situation, we're joined by journalist and advocate, Sergei Caritona. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for inviting. Glad to be here. We'd be remiss if we didn't just quickly mention events in the United States, rushing of the Capitol building. I was actually hoping, Sergey, that you could give us a little bit of perspective.

perspective. What does this look like compared to what your people have been going through in Belarus? It's really not correct to compare things in the United States and in Belarus, specifically the events that took place in the capital building yesterday, primarily because the elections in Belarus, as you correctly said, were never recognized as fear. Unlike the elections in the United States, there was no competition in Belarusian elections whatsoever, primarily because of the way the system, the electoral system is created and the fashion is being run by the people who are indirect working dependency from each other in Belarus and in the United States. I had a chance to witness the way elections and electoral commissions were formed. These are two very different things.

So I don't think we can talk about mass frauds in the United States and the protests and the assault of the capital that took place yesterday have nothing to do with the peaceful protests that are happening in Belarus because in case of Belarus, people are fighting against the tyranny. In case of protesters in the Capitol building, we're talking about the deconstruction of the very basics of democratic rule and the rule of law, which never existed in Belarus since Lukashenko came to power 25, 26 years ago. Thank you very much for your perspective. We'll go back now, and we're just going to talk about Belarus for the rest of this conversation.

I think probably the best place to start is, can you tell us a little bit about Belarus itself and its recent history? I was born in Belarus in 1989 and Lukashenko became the president when I was yet in the kindergarten. I'm now 31 and Lukashenko remains a self-declared leader of Belarus, a country where the whole system of power, the whole vertical of power is dependent on a single person, is built by the single person. works to keep that person in power and by that person, example, Lukashenko. For many years since Lukashenko won in absolutely democratic elections in mid-90s, he has been involved in establishment of the system that will not allow any dissident voices and that will not allow any dissident people in the system. Within those 25 years, slightly more, since he became a president,

Belarus has been transforming into a totalitarian state, where the electoral system does not work, where the courts are used for political repressions, where the death squadrons were created to get rid of political opponents of Alexander Lukashenko, including former Minister of Interior, who was kidnapped and presumably killed in 1999. After a series of political kidnappings and enforced disappearances, there was a short period of pressure on the press, the old school press. Since Lukashenko became a president, there has been no independent television that spoke about political or social topics. All of the TV channels belong to the government and are used to work as a PR service of Alexander Lukashenko himself. It's pretty much the same thing with printed media. Printed media were destroyed in early 2000s,

and it was the time when Internet became the big tool for spreading information to the outer world and sharing things about what happens in the country by independent journalists inside the country. And the removal of, we might call the conventional media by that of television and radio stations, led to the fact that Internet became a key source of information. for people inside the country. And it was one of the reasons revolution in 2020 became so fast and so well-organized. It was completely peaceful demonstration by the people who did not use violence against the police unless it was used for self-defense under given circumstances after initial

attacks by the law enforcement on August 9 and in subsequent days in August. what we're witnessing now, and by these massive arrests of civil population, since August 9, there were more than 30,000 people arrested so far. There's been at least 500 recorded cases of torture. That's the information that was provided by the United Nations. The situation that we are observing is a concentrated image of what was happening inside Belarus for a long time since Lukashenko came to power. However, for many people, the facts that the torture was widespread in Belarusian prison presents the facts that the democratic activists were being kidnapped, were tortured, were deprived of freedom. These facts remained the life of the others. Some facts that have no correlation to what we might call the general population. However, in August 2020, there's been probably not a single family that was not somehow related or connected to the people who suffered from the violence or the repressions.

And this is what makes the protests so sustainable. So far, they lost for almost half a year. And I'm pretty sure that we'll continue. This is because the social contract that Lukashenko was having with the population of Belarus, which we might slightly call basic social. guarantees in exchange of no interest for the politics, when different after the first deaths of civilians due to COVID-19, Lukshenko became one of the greatest, if it's the right word, to use COVID dissidents in the world. And he played tricks on COVID saying that you can treat this virus by riding a tractor, drinking vodka, going to sauna or playing hockey.

We have some people around here who have the same point of view. Look, I always, I was wondering, what does life look like now? Are there actual protests every single day? What form do the protests take? Yeah, the protests transformed since the seasons changed. So the summer was pretty warm and the conditions were pretty favorable for mass gatherings. Since the weather became colder, people thought that it's a lot safer tactic to get together in the residential areas, in the suburbs of Minsk, in places where people leave. The neighbors are gathering with other neighbors, and they arrange dozens, if not hundreds, of meetings and rallies across Minsk and in numerous provincial towns of the Republic. This is one of the things that makes the law enforcement and Lukashenko's regime so crazy about these people, because the rule of the self-declosed president was run on complete control of everything. So if only there was, let's say, a protest by a single person in the past, the police would come there immediately because they knew where it was happening. Now there's these myriads of events which are organized by neighbors and you cannot predict them.

So the police cannot go to the residential area X and arrest people over there because they don't know that people will be there. However, at the end of 2020, there were a few dozen of areas that were known for protests. So they were arranged a specific administrative status by the civil administration as the areas that require additional control. So their police forces were sent there and people were de facto sent into what we might call a ghetto, primarily because these were compact areas of residential housing where the protests were happening on a regular basis. In some cases, the police surrounded people in these areas and arrested them. In some cases, there were patrols in the night that were searching private apartments, that were breaking into private apartments, if they had a consideration that there might be someone hiding inside who previously participated in the protests or who has the sentiments for the opponents. When a person is arrested, do they then disappear into prison forever?

Are people released sometimes afterwards? So the practice now is that people are being arrested. Well, this practice lasts for dozens for many years. So when people were arrested, the police usually did not give information on what happened to those people. They were not providing any information on where to search for these people. Who is the person conducting the arrest? They never provided personal information of the law enforcement personnel. And even if the person was held in a certain detention center,

when, let's say, human rights activists, a family called there, that police workers would say that the person is not there, although they have, was delivered to a specific detention center. In early August, there's been people who were missing for a long time, mainly because of the scale of the arrests. Let's say there were reports of people who were brought to detention centers and the cells were designed for, let's say, for people, but there were dozens of people kept there at the same time, like 50, 60 people kept in a cell,

which is designed for, let's say, less than 10 humans. In many cases, the system was not able to process the administrative procedures for these people just because of the number of the inmates. As of now, the people are being arrested. This is something that is called arrest, but even according to the UN standards and the OEC standards, these practices were called the enforced disappearances, and the United States ambassador to OECE already called these facts the acts of domestic terrorism in Belarus, primarily because of the way the law enforcement that is still loyal to Alexandria Lukashenko conducts these operations, because the legal system in Belarus ceased to work. It simply does not operate anymore, and all of the power

of law enforcement is sent to deal with the political opponents of Lukashenko. and whenever things end up in the court, the results are always predicted, primarily because the loss of the system of the courts has been established in a way that does not let people charged on political foundations to get rid of responsibility. So in some cases, these were the fines that people got if it was their first time they were convict. Convicts. However, if people were, let's say, detained for the second time or the third time, they would end up in jail for 10 to 15 days usually. But in some cases, when people are being charged for numerous protest rallies, they are being

kept in jail for up to three months. So now there's certain cases of people like former IT professional who worked for the KGB, who was hired by the KGB. So he was captured at the time he participated in a few political rallies against Lukashenko And so his arrest was extended so far that it violates the national legislation. However, it did not stop the law enforcement and the judicial system workers to keep him in jail. So it sounds a little bit like Russia. And I want you to tell me in what ways that's not true.

But Lukashenko has been tied to Vladimir Putin in some ways in the Western media. And again, you can correct me. But is there a connection at all between the opponents of Russia, what's happening with the opposition in Russia and what's happening in Belarus? Firstly, I would say that the practices of repressions that are being used in Belarus are often the rehustle for what would happen in Russia a few years later. So now Russia is becoming a more totalitarian state compared to how it was before. but all of the practices that are now being used in Russia in terms of pressure on civil society, in terms of control of the political opponents, are the things that were used by Belarus before. So in that terms, Belarus is a polygon for repressive tactics that can be used in other Eastern European countries.

So I would say that at this particular time, Belarus is definitely a country that matches the definition of Iraq state, especially after last week the recordings published by the Belarusian Public Tribunal, an initiative that exposes the violations of human rights by Belarusian law enforcement, published a record of a former head of the KGB who ran this organization back in 2012. So the audio recording exposes the plan, the order given by Lukashenko to the head of KGB in 2000. to arrange a series of terrorist attacks with the use of chemical weapons on explosives in Germany and Russia. And the targets of these activity were the people who were former members of Lukashenko's team, but they escaped the country at a certain point.

One of them was a journalist, Pagal Sherrymet, who was subsequently killed after an explosion in Ukraine, which questionably is an operation that was planned back in 2020. 2012, so now the investigation is still ongoing, but we can openly say that the regime of Alexander Lukashenko has become the regime that supports and that planned terrorist acts in the territory of the European Union in 2012. And I'm pretty sure that more of these records will appear as soon as the regime will continue repressions inside the country. So I would say that at this certain point, the main thing that should be done about Belarus is support of the civil society, cooperation with the Office of President-elected Lank, Lan Tjanovska,

and having no fear for Kremlin, because Kremlin has their own problems at the moment. And if only there was a right moment to let the regime of Alexander Lukashenko down, to tear him down is now. So I believe that for the United States, it's a very right time to say, goodbye to totalitarian rule in Europe, mainly because Russia now, although there's a very close connection between Russian and Belarusian political elites and by these Alexander Lukashenko, there is not enough resources for Russia to support the regime of Alexander Lukashenko if it falls under the sanctions led by the United States and the European Union.

Do you have any expectation that things are going to change with Joe Biden. Has Trump done anything about what happened in Belarus? And yeah, again, do you think it's going to change? I would say that President Trump was more focused, at least it seems to me that he was more focused on internal issues in America. However, for as long as he was a president, there was a law passed firstly by the parliament in the United States, but he in the end signed this document, this Belarus, Democracy Act 2020, that provides a wide range of tools to impose. pressure on Alexander Lukashenko's regime. Although there were fears that Trump will not support these legislation as it was assigned as a package with the COVID support and stuff of that kind,

he signed this bill. And I believe that the administration of Joe Biden has the most powerful tool since 1990s to make Lukashenko get out of his presidential seat. With what I know, from the representatives of his office so far. Joe Biden has deep expertise in Eastern Europe, which is undeniable. And I'm pretty sure that he will be very focused on the situation in Eastern Europe. And the case of Belarus might be a great success story for him and his administration, mainly because Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko became a trouble for the United States in early 1990s. And since then, there were numerous efforts by the American presidential administrations to impose pressure on the regime to support the action against Lukashenko. However, there was one

thing that served as an obstacle. For a long time, Lukashenko was illegal president of Belarus, but he kept some of the internal legitimacy, mainly because he was supported by a large proportion of the population. There were no fair elections. So the results of the elections were nothing to do with the reality, but he still had sudden support. In 2020, today, in early January 2021, Lukashenko has lost his internal legitimacy completely. So the only forces that support him are the representatives of his administration, the representatives of the vertical of power, which is the system of civil administration that he built. And these people are, personally involved in crimes against humanity, they're personally involved in repressions,

and it's in their direct interest to keep Alexander Lukashenko at power. The other powerful source that keeps supporting him is the Ministry of Interior. However, with, let's say, the armed forces, there's a lot less clarity about what the army would do, although army was already used against the civilians in August 2020 and later after that. It's still not clear what the majority of the army thinks because the army is mainly built of young conscripts, the young soldiers who have their own political views and who do not necessarily share what the propagandists tell them in the barracks. So for now, I would say if only there was a better moment to tear to look shank down, it's now. There were no better opportunity than tonight.

Could you tell us about the election itself? And then actually a little bit of your personal story because you're not in Belarus anymore. Tell us a little bit about what's happened for you. I worked as a journalist in the last five years. And I was very disappointed about how the political life was in this country. People were really afraid of talking to press. It was political achievement and a political move to talk to a journalist in the street, to talk on political topics or something related to the society, and God forbid, to talk about the president of the republic. With the spread of COVID and negligent reaction of Lukashenko and his administration to COVID pandemic, there has been a few volunteer initiatives that were helping the medics, that were helping the individual organizations to organize,

the response to coronavirus infection. And it was the time when the life of people became, well, went into direct correlation with the political activity. So the more volunteers joined these forces, the more political requests they had, the more political demands appeared. And it became very important part of the mobilization. Another thing that happened, Belarus was having serious problems with this. economy. And since the government was telling that things are growing well, the average wage

in the country remained under $500 a month, which is not something that a prosperous country can give to its citizens. At a certain point, the wages in Belarus became comparable to Ukraine, which was this thrilling story of propagandists who said that Ukraine is a failed state and nothing good could happen there. So since it was an ideal storm, the political mobilization began, and nobody expected that the elections will somehow change the situation in the country until new people said that they will participate in the elections. So there were no new faces in political life for, let's say, 10 years after the latest crackdown

in December 2010. So one of the people who said that he will participate in the elections was the banker who led numerous cultural initiatives and numerous initiatives in support of history. His name is Victor Barberica and he's now a political prisoner, captain, jail. So after he said that he wants to run for presidency, there was a huge mobilization in the country. I can't remember anything like that in my whole life. And many young people believed that the change is possible. Although the government has established very short terms for collecting the signatures in order to become a candidate who need to collect certain number of signatures, this guy created the move that inspired people so much that politics became fashionable.

And it was when the revolution in mind's began. One of the core reasons Lukashenko was able to remain in power is that the politics were something that people said, I'm not thinking about it. I'm not involved in politics. I don't talk on that topic. Firstly, because of the fear. Secondly, because the politics were so boring. There was nothing happening, and it was more of a Soviet Politburo when the political system exists completely separated from the general public. So since the politics became popular, there were a few opposition leaders who gave new perspective. One of them was Sergei Tjofsky, a popular YouTube blogger. Another guy was Fkala, Valery Tsepkalo, who was the founder of high-tech park in Belarus,

and pretty popular candidate too. So after two candidates, Viktor Babarika and Sergei Tchonovsky were arrested, and Valeri Tsipkalo was moved out of country, there was a trio of three ladies who were the members of offices of those opposition candidates. And one of them, Sutanovska, who is the wife of the blogger, who remains in jail. that she will run for presidency. And nobody thought that it would become a success story. Again, she was a complete underdog. A former English teacher who became a housewife later says she wants to kick out the greatest

tyrant in modern European history. So it starts very slow, but then the campaign gains momentum, and there's crowds of people who say they are ready to sign for her. And I can remember how I felt when I saw the first line of people that was hundreds of meters long of people standing and waiting to leave their signature for an opposition candidate. So, long story short, on the elections day, I go to the fallen station and I never participated in the elections since I turned 18 years old. So half of my life. And I go to the Poland station and the line is so long that I had to wait for maybe three hours just to enter the pollen station and to leave my vote. And again, it's raining, it's hailing, it's burning sun within this short period of time.

And people remain there. They are really excited to do this. They are really excited to vote for the first time. And many of the people who stood in these lines were of my age. Imagine a person 30 years old who goes to the elections for the first time. when on the main day of elections, these long crowds were formed. It became obvious that all these people are voting in support of the changes. They are voting against the president.

They were not even voting for quite often. They were voting against Alexander Lukashenko, which also causes some parallels with what we witnessed in America. Many people were not voting for Biden. They were voting against Trump. At least this is what I heard from the people when I asked them in a police station here in Meetown, New York. When the elections day was over, people stayed outside the polling station waiting for the results. And there's 200 of people waiting for the results.

And the commission says that there were 10 votes casted for Tixas. Something is not right with the calculations. So in many cases, people were beating outside the polling stations. In many cases, there were no results. The ballot papers were destroyed by the government in the next few days after the elections. And when the Electoral Commission announced the preliminary results that Lukshenko won, people thought that this cannot last anymore. And huge crowds of people gathered in centers of different cities. Along with this, the internet connection across the country was completely blocked since early morning of August 9.

Imagine a country where you have no internet whatsoever. I don't know if this ever happened to you, Americans, but for us, it was. was a pretty unusual experience. So it was another mistake that the government conducted, because although the internet was not available for the first 72 hours since the elections day started, within this time, the violent response to peaceful protests was so terrible. When the people saw the pictures of what was happening, the beatings, the shootings, the first lethal victims, the people who were shot, the peaceful protests, who were shot at from short range with the use of shotguns, it spilled over and the manifestations

became even bigger. The manifestations after the elections were peaceful and they were deliberately peaceful to say more. Even when the police was responding violently and people were thrown into the police cars and beaten in detention centers, some of them disappeared, some of them were killed in streets, people did not respond with violence. And it became a great moral victory of the protesters. And the protests still remain nonviolent, even now, half a year after the elections took place. So I would say that this is a great example of protest campaign, which I barely recall from early 90s when people in a totalitarian state were acting against it in a peaceful way.

So we've seen the example of Ukraine, we've seen the examples of Georgia, Armenia, other places. Belarus is a very special case in this instance. And I believe that this is the example of the country which shows its aspiration for democracy and shows its aspiration for peaceful transit. So the only power that still uses violence and does not wish to accept the rule of law is Lukshenko's regime. So that's pretty much what was happening after the elections. I don't know if it asks you questions or I was too long with these. It was a pretty long time.

And the last half a year was so packed with daily news and unexpected things that it's just hard to explain all that in 10 minutes. No, I think it was such a good answer. You preemptively answered a bunch of our other questions, actually, because it was so comprehensive. What do you see as the end game in Belarus? And do you think things are moving towards it? Or not an end game is maybe the wrong way to phrase it, but like the coming change. The situation is such is that Lukashenko does not have basic legitimacy in Belarus. So whatever he does, whatever violence he imposes on the protesters, and it's not just

protesters anymore, is the civil population. So what we are witnessing are intimidation campaigns by the state security against peaceful population, against the civilians. In some cases, these are enforced kidnappings. In some cases, it's torture. In some cases, these are politically motivated killings. As we found out last week, there were plans to organize terrorist attacks in the European Union and Russia, although it was planned eight years ago, but still, these are just the first facts that, now being exposed about the nature of this regime. Lukashenko can fight his own people,

but he cannot remain in power and run the country in administrative terms successfully for a long time. I would say that we're currently witnessing a stalemate between the general population, between the majority of the population, and on one side, and Lukashenko and his security forces on the other side. I would say that the only correct or the youngest sustainable way out of current stalemate is peaceful transit. Whichever other scenario will be executed by the authorities, it will be neither sustainable, not safe for the national sovereignty. Russia still has the plans to unify Belarus with the rest of the Russian Federation or with Russian Federation as another country. So whenever Lukashenko is attacking his own population,

he makes his own country weaker and he is destroying the very basics of the state sovereignty. So in order to keep his state security, he has to sustain certain funding, which is taxes on one side and the money that he gets from his supporters in the Kremlin on the other side, usually in the form of credits. In order to get further support from Russia, he will have to accept certain conditions. that the Kremlin will impose on him. Their unification within the Union State or the creation of certain tools that will keep Belarus sovereign on documents but will deprive it of its independency. In the real life, let's say the introduction of Russian rubble or the unification of financial systems, there's a whole bunch of instruments that Kremlin can impose on Lukashenko

in exchange their support. The good news is that the Kremlin is not in the very best condition. at the moment. And both COVID and sanctions and the reaction of the West to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny are, they serve as additional tools of pressure on the Russian Federation. At this particular moment, there's still a chance to resolve this situation by imposing more pressure on Lukashenko, by imposing more pressure on his supporters in the Kremlin, and also by imposing the pressure on the agents of Belarusian regime. And by this, the prosecution of those, involved in crimes against humanity, primarily in torture. So each and every person and official who were involved in crimes against humanity have to be prosecuted. I would say that these are

the main steps that should be taken by the West and by the United States in particular to get rid of Lukashenko. It will be a great victory for the administration of Joe Biden, whom I believe will continue to get engaged into the Belarusian case, mainly because if Only Lukshanki is not gone. Belarus will turn into the greatest gray zone of the whole Europe. So if you know what's happening in Donbass now by the pro-Russian separatists, try to imagine a whole European country being under the control of dogs like those guys over there. This is what Belarus is transforming into.

But those two tiny bits of Ukrainian territory are dozens of times less than the territory of Belarus. where the rule of law is now non-existent. So in terms of European security, in terms of North Atlantic security, stable, peaceful transit is the main thing that has to be achieved and the United States have to take the leading role in this. I very much expect that the current crisis in the United States will be over and the administration of Joe Biden will take care of the Belarusian case as one of the priorities in its foreign policy. Sergey, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for inviting.

I think it's really important for us to remember what these fights actually look like when we're dealing with that kind of stuff. We're dealing with things that are like tangentially related to that in our own country right now. So I think Americans have a tendency to overblow the political fights it's having and make comparisons that aren't apt and aren't true. So I'm really thankful for you to come on, especially after what we what happened at the Capitol. yesterday.