Commercial Travelers

The European officials’ visits to Belarus puzzle me.

Vice Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Moravetsky, who has recently arrived in Minsk, surprised me. The son of the famous Kornel Morawiecki, who was the Solidarnośsi Walczącej (Fighting Solidarity) leader, met with the Belarusian dictator, stated that Belarus and Poland “have many spheres for mutually beneficial cooperation” and said nothing about the human rights situation in the country. Neither Polish nor Belarusian media has passed a single word of solidarity of the Polish Deputy Prime Minister with the Belarusians struggling for freedom and democracy.

I was surprised by the Bundestag deputies Ute Fink-Kremer and Oliver Kaczmarek, who came to Minsk immediately after another blatant falsification of the results of the “parliamentary elections” and, turning a blind eye to the fact, that the OSCE had not recognized the “elections” as free and fair and that Belarusians had actually boycotted that farce, stated that the ban on contacts with the self-proclaimed “House of Representatives” could be lifted.

I am grieved to think about Ukraine and I am surprised by its president Petro Poroshenko, who is now looking for allies in the war against Russia among the Russia-fed neighboring dictators. Mr. Poroshenko, we had a conversation with you three months before you became the president. You asked me to tell you what had happened to me and other Belarusian opposition activists in the KGB detention center after the elections-2010, you called Lukashenka “insane,” recalling your previous experience with him while being a foreign minister and the head of the National Security and Defense Council. So why do you believe today that this “insane” man, being pressed by Putin, would not let the Russian tanks go to Kiev? Or has business become more important than politics now?

I am very surprised by the World Bank, which suddenly found a dramatic “improvement” in the business climate in Belarus, and raised the country in the Doing Business rating at that very moment, when the Belarusian authorities were tossing hundreds of businessmen into jail after high-profile cases. Maybe, dear Bank experts visited prison colonies to see those unlucky businessmen, whose firms had been seized by the authorities and who had been thrown to rot in jail in inhuman conditions? Or, maybe, they talked to the sole traders, who had lost everything and had become poverty-stricken due to the predatory dictator’s decrees?

I am certainly surprised by the European countries’ diplomats in Minsk, who are dummying up, being afraid to force themselves to say a word in defense of the repressed oppositionists, because they hate to upset the delicate balance of “trade and economic cooperation” between their states and Belarus. Then again, for the World Bank’s information: we are talking about semi-criminal smuggling of goods to Russia through Belarus, sidestepping the sanctions.

I am not surprised by the European Olympic Committee, which has decided to hold the European Games in Belarus, because last year they held them in Azerbaijan, where hundreds of human rights defenders and independent journalists were kept in prison at that time. After that, one cannot take seriously this organization and its public merrymaking.

I tried to sort out my emotions while looking at all this. I feel no anger, I feel no indignation, I feel shame. I remember the Solidarity of people in Europe, politicians, diplomats, actors, journalists with Belarusian people after the crackdown of Ploshcha (Square) of 2010, when Lukashenka once again deceived the US and Europe. That solidarity saved thousands of people, helped us to heal the wounds and gave us hope.

Now I live in the European Union. Poland and Lithuania have become my home countries because they invited me and helped the website charter97.org to go on with its work for Belarus.

However, today I am ashamed of the Europeans coming to Belarus, because from the people, representing the Union of democratic values, they have turned into ordinary commercial travelers.

Natallia Radzina, Chief Editor of charter97.org