Status: 23.07.2021 6:20 p.m.
Ruler Lukashenko continues to crack down on critics in Belarus. Now he has banned dozens of organizations in which he apparently sees a threat to his power. Even charities are affected.
The Belarusian authorities are continuing crackdown on the opposition and have banned dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and associations. The Ministry of Justice has “initiated the liquidation process” against at least 47 NGOs, declared the human rights organization Wjasna, which is itself targeted by the authorities. There is a “total cleansing” including political persecution across the country, so Vyasna.
Raids on many organizations
Many of the organizations had already been raided in the past few weeks. These include the Belarusian office of the writers ‘organization PEN, the Belarusian journalists’ association, which recently denounced arrests and raids against the press, and a well-known Minsk business school.
Human rights, language teaching, disabled and youth unemployment organizations and even charities are also being wound up, as indicated on the government’s legal portal, where the status of these organizations can be checked.
Lukashenko: “Bandits and Foreign Agents”
The autocratic ruling President Alexander Lukashenko announced on Thursday that he would continue to crack down on critics and journalists. He called civil society activists “bandits and foreign agents” and reprimanded members of his government for the fact that non-governmental organizations were still active to harm the state.
“A clean-up is in progress,” said Lukashenko. “Do you think it’s easy? Thousands of our people work for them and their brains are distorted and brainwashed with foreign money.”
Tichanovskaya is campaigning for tougher sanctions
The authorities have been imprisoning Lukashenko’s opponents, journalists and activists for months in order to finally crush the initial mass protests against the controversial re-election of Lukashenko in August 2020. The EU does not recognize Lukashenko’s re-election either.
In the United States, opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya campaigned during political talks to further increase the sanctions pressure on Lukashenko. Even now, sanctions by the EU and the USA are massively affecting the apparatus in Belarus economically. Tichanovskaya had left her country under pressure from the authorities. She carries out her work from the EU neighboring country Lithuania.