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“We Have Met Not A Single Person Supporting Lukashenka”

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“We Have Met Not A Single Person Supporting Lukashenka”

Every Western politician should read Andrei Sannikov’s book.

This was the headline under which the Norwegian newspaper Dag og Tid published Erika Fatland’s article about the book “Belarusian Amerikanka or Elections Under Dictatorship” written by leader of the “European Belarus” civil campaign Andrei Sannikov (translated by charter97.org, published in reduction).

Andrei Sannikov got the second place at the presidential elections in Belarus on December 19, 2010. On the very same day, he was arrested together with six other presidential candidates and several hundred demonstrators during a peaceful protest action in Minsk.

– Usually they disperse demonstrations after several days, when international observers and foreign journalists leave, – Sannikov comments unemotionally.

This time Lukashenka got scared. The opposition won the elections and he knew it. The arrest in the city square was just the beginning. Andrei Sannikov’s wife, a famous journalist Iryna Khalip, also got arrested. The authorities issued an order to take their 3-year-old son Danik to an orphanage. It was only due to Iryna Khalip’s mother’s determination, and the kindness of the doctors, who “forgot” to indicate all the heart diseases she suffered from in the health certificate, the boy was left to live with his grandmother.

In May 2011, Sannikov was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment. His wife was practically put under the house arrest.

– Prison has always been a tough experience, – Sannikov says. – They have enough refined methods to demolish a person. Those who have never been there find it hard to understand the importance to set up own order for every prisoner when serving his term. I am talking about even insignificant things. For example, you lose your temper when they confiscate your mug. Transferring from cell to cell breaks your defense. They constantly put me through the experience of prison transportation to different colonies and penal facilities. The purpose of all this is to deprive one of the slightest control over one’s life.

They treated Sannikov horribly, denied medical assistance and probably tried to poison him more than once. The air temperature in the cell remained no higher than 8 C, and the lights were constantly on. The lawyers had to become detectives to figure out which prison he was in.

After 16 months behind the bars the opposition leader was unexpectedly released.

– This became possible because of the sanctions, – he says. – In March, the international community expanded the sanctions and I was released.

However, freedom had its price. Sannikov remained under close observation, and had been threatened. In 2012 he was forced to leave Belarus. I met Sannikov in Warsaw where he lives and works in the recent years:

– Departure from Belarus, leaving my family was the hardest decision in my life. I would prefer not to reveal the details, as it still hurts to speak about it. Happily, summer is coming soon. Summer vacations is the happiest time for us, when we are all together!

– Do you manage to do something for Belarus from Warsaw?

– In actual fact – I do more than when I could do in Minsk.

Among the nine candidates who challenged Lukashenka in 2010, Sannikov was the most popular. He is a professional diplomat who headed negotiations on nuclear disarmament which resulted in withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Belarus. In 1995, he became Deputy Foreign Minister. In 1996, he resigned and joined the opposition.

– I endured long enough, very long, – he says, – There was hope. Lukashenka won the elections in 1994, but this was the only time he truly won. He began building up the dictatorship since the very first days of his reign. He changed the laws and destroyed the electoral system to secure the plenitude of power for himself.

Sannikov says he had no illusions that the elections would be fair in 2010:

– I wanted to prove the people that we can win and that we have a right to win.

– You got 2,43 of votes, while Lukashenka got 79,65%?

The politician smiles ironically:

– Yes – officially. I think, in reality I got about 30% of votes. At one of the voting stations in Minsk I gained 42% of votes, and Lukashenka got 33%. This is unbelievable. All the people who secured Lukashenka’s power lived in that district. I insisted on holding the second round of the elections even being in prison.

A week before our meeting I travelled all over Belarus. It may seem amazing but I haven’t met a single person who would support Lukashenka. In Russia, it is not a problem to find the people who praise Putin. I hardly manage to ask when they start boasting about the achievements of their alpha-male president, but here, in Europe’s last dictatorship, I have met no people who would say anything good about the ruler of their country. On the contrary, whoever I met – an architect, or a taxi driver, or a businessman, or any other – all of them stated they had never voted for Lukashenka.

– Lukashenka has no support, – Sannikov confirms. – He hasn’t had any for many years. When the war in Ukraine started his rating grew a little, but then the economic crisis came and the support went sharply down again.

– Today, Lukashenka is seeking money in the West as Russia cannot support him in the same scope, – Sannikov says. – Assistance to Lukashenka from the EU is growing, and this includes financial aid. This is a big mistake. The EU is saving Lukashenka today like Putin did before.

They call Belarus the last Soviet republic. Maybe, because there is a Lenin statue towering over the center of every inhabited area, and the streets are still named after the revolutionaries. Sannikov thinks the situation today seems worse than back in the Soviet times.

– In the Soviet Union, there was at least some collective apparatus within which they fought for power. In Belarus, we can see an elaborated system of one-man power, Lukashenka being the center of it. The Soviet Union died and revived in Belarus in the form of some Latin American banana dictatorship, where pipelines play the role of bananas.

– What are the relations between Belarus and Russia?

– The problem is, Russia doesn’t think of Belarus as an independent state. Russia always strived to control Belarus in the military field and in the field of oil-and-gas transition. Putin is satisfied with Lukashenka, moreover, he seems to take lessons from him. After all, Lukashenka has been in power for 22 years by now.

– What lessons did Putin learn from Lukashenka?

– For example, how to dispatch presidential candidates. Or that the West has short period of attention to violation of human rights. Today there is even more aggression at power in Russia, but Lukashenka practices stricter control over the civil society. Putin even started playing hockey after Lukashenka.

The West does not simply forget about Belarus. The West has quite many problems today.

– Norway, for example, had always rendered significant support to the civil society and the independent media of Belarus. However, then Ukraine happened and this support was ceased. This is understandable, but doesn’t make our situation any better. The civil society will not survive without help today.

Despite all the hardships, Sannikov hasn’t hardened in heart.

– I have no anger. Anger prevents one from thinking clearly. I have no hatred to Lukashenka. I have no emotions towards him at all. I am not fighting with him personally, but with all the components of his regime. I am fighting for Belarus to become free.

Erika Fatland – a Norwegian writer, author of the books "The Village of Angels" (about taking hostages in Beslan) and "A Year without Summer" (about the terrorist act in Norway). Her latest book “Sovjetistan” about the former Soviet republics in the Central Asia was honoured by the Norwegian publishers’ prize.

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