Belarus: Lukashenko’s attack on media and culture


Status: 07/31/2021 8:27 a.m.

The pressure on regime critics in Belarus is growing: one critical medium after another is banned and the employees are put on trial. Authorities are now also taking action against civil society organizations.

By Jasper Steinlein, ARD Studio Moscow

Being harassed and arrested by the police for doing your job: the Belarusian journalist Oleg Grusdilowitsch is already familiar with this. When he reported live on the protests in Minsk for “Radio Svoboda” in August 2020, masked special forces took him away – “to check his papers,” as it was said. He was allowed to go – and yet his accreditation was lost two days later.

In November the police arrested him at home and showed him pictures they had taken at a demonstration two weeks earlier: He had reported there for a newspaper critical of the government and was wearing a press vest. As a result, he served 15 days in prison for “participating in an unauthorized mass event”.

On July 16 of this year, the “Radio Svobodas” editorial office was searched and Grusdilovich was arrested again. Only after a week was his wife Marianna allowed to bring the 62-year-old some groceries in prison. When he was released ten days later, he still did not know why he would be held under bad conditions: “But it is clear that this is how we deal with people who are accused under political paragraphs such as 342. Many people are also because of it Suspicion of terrorism. ”

“Tidying Up” Before the Election Anniversary?

Paragraph 342 is about breach of the peace. A suspicion that includes hundreds in Belarus: journalists, writers, human rights groups or celebrities who showed up at demonstrations. Around 50 civil society organizations were persecuted and then banned.

“One gets the impression that on the anniversary the government set the task of being able to announce the complete cleansing of all dissenters,” says Boris Gorezkij, deputy head of the Belarusian journalists’ association, the Ukrainian broadcaster UNIAN TV. He means the anniversary of the presidential election on August 9, 2020, after which protests broke out across the country.

Alexander Lukashenko, who had been in power for 26 years, declared himself the winner at the time – full of conviction that all of Belarus love and adore him, explains political scientist Valery Karbalevich: “And in a short time there was such a radical change in the social mood – that contributed led him to a severe psychological trauma. To compensate for that, he must take revenge on all the people who have inflicted this trauma on him. ”

Unfulfillable requirements

Lukashenko’s act of revenge began with opposition politicians and is now directed against all civil society institutions – so that resistance can no longer be organized there. According to Lukashenko’s own statement, this is the result of foreign forces who have manipulated his people: “Now the purge is underway. Do you think that it is easy? Thousands of our people are already working there, whose brains have been washed for someone else’s money.”

Information portals such as tut.by were blocked and lost their license, and even accounting employees went to jail. The Belarusian branch of the writers’ association PEN Club had documented human rights violations on its website – it is now facing dissolution.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists was fatally unfulfilled, reports Deputy Chief Goretzkij: “In June the Ministry of Justice demanded more than 1000 documents from us of various kinds. So you put what you could before the Justice Department. “The ministry said that was not enough for them.” The Ministry of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to close the Union of Journalists.

Not safe abroad either

If you don’t believe in the blooming landscapes on state television, you can almost only get information in Belarus via social networks and messengers such as Telegram. But even that is what the state has in its sights: Recently, the channels of the station “Belsat” were classified as extremist. That means: Those who post or share their contributions face fines and imprisonment in Belarus.

More and more reporters and organizations are only able to flee abroad, says Gorezkij. “They put their efforts into their projects for years. If you stay in Belarus, the probability is very high that your project will be blocked in one day and you will go to custody.”

But the case of Roman Protassewitsch shows that regime critics are not safe abroad either: The blogger was on his way from Athens to Vilnius by plane and was taken away after a forced landing in Minsk. After a short radio silence, he now appears at the side of the state authorities. His family and watchers are safe: under duress.

Attack on media and culture in Belarus

Jasper Steinlein, currently ARD Moscow, July 30, 2021 6:47 p.m.



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