Belarus To Need Complete De-Lukashenization

On April 21 a presentation of the book Lustration For Belarus took place in the Belarusian House in Warsaw.

During the presentation authors of the concept of lustration for Belarus Valiantsina Sviatskaya and Vatslau Areshka, as well as Deputy Director of the Vetting Office of the Institute of National Remembrance Radoslaw Peterman made speeches, a correspondent of charter97.org reports.

Lustration is a type of punishment for government officials after a change of power in a country. New leaders of a country, who want to remove from power all those who had been actively working for the ousted regime, can bar them from holding government posts. Lustration is a kind of retaliation for those who had tarnished one’s honour by dirty business or ill practices under the old regime. And according to the authors of the civil initiative Lustration For Belarus, this procedure is of utmost importance for our country, as the previous regime had tarnished itself by corruption, theft, assassinations, rigging election results and many other sins.

The first to speak at the presentation was the leader of the civil campaign European Belarus Andrei Sannikov, who had taken part in the creation of the book.

“The issue of lustration is very complex, but it is absolutely clear that after changes in Belarus it would be impossible to move on without that. Lustration should become a topic for public discussion under this power already, for people to understand what large-scale crimes the regime allows itself. And after the change of power lustration is to become one of the key processes in the country, which would allow preventing crimes. For restoration of an independent democratic state we should have a proper government, we should be sure that the crimes of Lukashenka’s regime would never repeat,” – Andrei Sannikov said.

As said by Valiantsina Sviatskaya, the momentum for creation of the book Lustration For Belarus had become the results of “the presidential elections” in 2010 – mass arrests, beating, prison terms, crackdown. That is why human rights organisations Viasna and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, as well as non-governmental organisations have come up with a proposal to create a working group which would build up a concept of lustration for Belarus.

“It is worth mentioning that no country among those, the experience of which we studied, managed to conduct lustration without mistakes. It is absolutely clear to us that our concept probably is not perfect, but we believe there can’t be any democratic transformations in Belarus without it. I am convinced that this book must become a warning to the current officials: the results of their work will inevitably be recorded, they will have to pay for all their crimes. Before committing another evil, any official should realize he might be subjected to lustration,” Valiantsina Sviatskaya says.

Scientific supervisor of the working group for elaborating the concept Vatslau Areshka has underlined the moral aspect of the lustration. According to him, lustration is the work that should be done not just by lawyers, but by all Belarusians.

“In order to bid the final farewell to the Communist past, every person should work on themselves, on their conscience. The moment of the society’s repentance, the moment when the people condemn the regime remains a very important element of our concept. Unfortunately, many people still recall the Communist regime with a nostalgic note. Moreover, such moods get approved by the current authorities – you will not find any descriptions of the horrid cruelty that closely accompanied the Communist times, in the History textbooks. Quite on the reverse, this regime is depicted almost with admiration. The same concerns Lukashenka’s regime. Lustration needs to begin with condemnation of these two criminal patterns.

We will need to do a great job. One of the basic violations that happen in our country remains falsification of the elections, therefore, practically all participants of electoral commissions are under jeopardy of lustration. The people from the court system also totally subordinate to Lukashenka today. The state media should also be subjected to lustration, as they break the laws and the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus when they get to open propaganda of the regime.

The experts who participated in the creation of the concept underlined that the process of lustration could be actualized straightaway. Henadz Fiadynich, for instance, suggested setting up public lustration committees, which would collect information about the regime’s allies and make part of it public. It is very important that those who commit crimes should know that everything is recorded and they will not escape from punishment,” Vatslau Areshka thinks.

Deputy Director of the Vetting Office of the Institute of National Rememberance of Poland Radosław Peterman has stated that “every developing democracy should pay all the debts to its past first”.

“The classical mistake of the newly born democracies is that they do not fully deny and clear off their past. Ukraine remains a vivid example of this – it did not conduct lustration after 1991. The consequences were such – Yanukovich grabbed the power again, and there emerged corruption in the government and in the country in general. Still, I would like to underline that lustration is not just revenge or persecution of the regime, but moving those who committed crimes in the past or cooperated with criminals, away from power. In Poland, we publish the lists of those who used to lie, rat out, actively supported the regime. This is the way we protect the state power from the officials who might cause harm to the state by their actions,” Radosław Peterman has explained.

Coordinator of the “European Belarus” campaign Zmitser Bandarenka has asked the opinion of the Polish expert about the optimal recipe of the successful lustration for Belarus.

“We know several examples of lustration – in North America, for instance, they made final countdowns with the security services of their dictatorships after 10 and even 20 years. In the Czech Republic, they did it right after the collapse of the regime. So which path Belarus should follow, taking into consideration the fact that the current authorities refuse to have any dialogue with the opposition?” Zmitser Bandarenka has asked.

“There is no country which managed to conduct lustration peacefully and without any problems. It is a complicated process which could take a long time. If you want the current authorities to pay for what they did – give them in to the hands of courts, which can be trusted. However, you should make these courts clean, free them from the people who made unfair decisions, – Radosław Peterman thinks. – “Conduct total de-Lukashenization – there should be no person, who has anything to do with the crimes committed by the authorities, in the state apparatus. If you fail to do this, you will get stuck at one place. Nothing will work if there is a single person in the state apparatus, who does not want changes.

Never let anyone convince you that nothing will work. I know you come across the people who say if you get all the authorities fired the state will fall apart. No! You will do better that those who kept the power with the help of crimes. Many countries got rid of their dictators by now, and you will, trust me.”