`Little Stalin' tightens grip on Belarus

Europe's nastiest regime is asking voters to hand the hard-line president the right to rule for life. By Julius Strauss in Minsk.

16 October 2004

AT the headquarters of the United Civic Party in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the black-and-white photographs of five men hang on the wall. Prominent critics of the ruling regime, they have all disappeared or died mysteriously.

Sitting beneath them, Anatoly Lebedko, the chairman of the party, has been arrested three times, badly beaten by masked men outside his home and is currently facing two criminal charges of slandering the president.

In recent years thousands of opposition supporters have been beaten and had their flats raided and several independent journalists have been heavily fined or jailed for criticising the president.

Welcome to politics, Belarus-style.

The man who has fashioned this modern-day dictatorship is Alexander Lukashenko, a balding, moustachioed former collective farm chairman who has made rabble-rousing and xenophobic rhetoric his political stock-in-trade.

During his decade in rule he has turned the country into an international pariah that not only oppresses its own people, but has become a centre for opaque financial tradings and shady arms deals.

In the recent CIA report detailing companies and individuals who received kickbacks from Iraq through the UN oil-for-food programme, Belarus figured strongly.

This weekend Mr Lukashenko is to hold a referendum that, if successful, will abolish the two-term limit on his presidency, due to end in 2006, and effectively allow him to rule for life. Political opponents say that he is using the full force of the state to back his campaign and, despite widespread disillusion with his rule among Belarusians, is almost certain to win.

Fourteen years ago when Communism fell, the prospects for Belarus seemed good. Located at a historic trade crossroads and home to substantial numbers of Poles, Lithuanians, Jews and Russians, the country has a cosmopolitan tradition.

Since then Belarus's neighbours have all made significant, if sometimes shaky, steps towards pluralism. But in Belarus it is as if time has stood still.

The country of 10 million is reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s before Mikhail Gorbachev ushered in perestroika and glasnost. Mr Lukashenko has opposed privatisation and most Belarusians, up to 80 per cent by some counts, still work in state-run enterprises. Those who set up private businesses are hit with punishing taxes that are rigidly imposed.

The result is a country that is surviving economically only because of Russia, which extends economic and political support.

The signs of stagnation are everywhere, despite the carefully manicured verges and almost litter-free streets of the capital. The road to the international airport is deserted and there is barely an advertising hoarding on the half-empty streets.

In Moscow, international restaurants and boutiques are shoe-horned into the city centre, but in Minsk a lonely McDonalds on the main street appears to be the only concession to the outside world. The state, meanwhile, is growing in strength.

The KGB, still known by its Soviet name, is widely feared. In schools and universities classes have been introduced in state ideology. "Lukashenko is still mired in the Soviet Union," said Alies Bialiatski, of Belarus's Helsinki Group. "He wants to reinvent that era based on an aggressive foreign policy and a strong state ideology."

The Helsinki Group is one of few surviving independent organisations and operates out of a tiny unmarked office. To speak, we squashed into the kitchen in the hope of avoiding eavesdropping.

"Lukashenko doesn't have to imprison all his political opponents," Mr Bialiatski said. "It's just a question of picking the right ones, the active ones. Then the rest are scared and stay quiet."

When Mr Lukashenko was first elected in 1994, many Belarusians were pleased. The previous leadership was corrupt and the strongman promised order and a return to the certainties of the past.

He raised pensions, cleaned up the streets and spoke of defiance and a return to Soviet greatness. In 1995 when a hot air balloon involved in a competition was blown over Belarusian airspace, he had it shot down. The two American pilots aboard died.

He also set about rehabilitating the Soviet-era symbols. Independence Square became Lenin Square and the Soviet-era flag was reinstated.

As time passed discontent grew. The opposition organised a series of huge rallies in the late 1990s but they were brutally crushed by baton-wielding riot police.

Despite all this the president remains popular among the old and the uneducated, aided in large part by his vice-like grip over the media.

In Dzerzhinsk, a small town halfway between Minsk and Dzerzhinovo, many older voters remain supportive. Liliya, a 68-year-old pensioner, said: "I think his politics are good. Pensions are paid on time. The streets are tidy. This is the motherland that I love and he is my president."

But among younger generations, Mr Lukashenko's support is sparse.

Tens of thousands have already left for the West faced with poor job prospects and the growing sense of stagnation. Mr Lebedko of the United Civic Party said: "Lukashenko is not a Stalin, but he's certainly Stalin's ideological grandson.

"In his attempt to build a mini Soviet Union, he has made a regime built on fear." "Millions will be outraged if he wins this referendum. But unfortunately they will only dare express that outrage in their flats and their kitchens."