Europe`s Last Dictator Feels the Heat: Opposition Unites in Belarus As U.S., Russia Hang Back :: Charter'97 :: News

MINSK, Belarus -- The location of the protest was kept secret, so the lone guard at the downtown plaza known as Victory Square seemed flummoxed when hundreds of teenagers suddenly began streaming from an underground walkway wearing T-shirts emblazoned "Time to Choose."

But the guard grabbed his radio, and within minutes reinforcements arrived to break up the pro-democracy rally. "Shame on you," Alesa Dolina, an 18-year-old in a red Coca-Cola baseball cap, lectured a burly security officer as other teenagers shouted, "Death to fascism!"

Trained in nonviolent resistance, the demonstrators retreated across the street and sat down on the sidewalk, brandishing photographs of missing opposition leaders. The security men began kicking and beating the teenagers, finally loading 20 of them into a police bus. "You are arresting boys!" screamed a young woman. Turning to the crowd, she yelled, "How can they take the children?"

This is the Belarus of President Alexander Lukashenko, Europe`s lone dictator since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia 10 months ago. With an election approaching, Lukashenko is facing new allegations of government-sponsored death squads, a defiant youth protest movement, an unusually united opposition and the biggest threat to his seven-year leadership.

The Sept. 9 balloting not only will determine the political future of 10 million people living in this Soviet-style state, but also presents a diplomatic test for both the United States and Russia. Washington criticizes Lukashenko`s hold on power as illegitimate and privately wants him ousted, but it has not invested the sort of resources it provided Milosevic`s rivals last year. As the former imperial capital, Moscow could probably swing the election because it controls the television signals beamed into Belarus, but so far it has kept its distance from both Lukashenko and his opposition.

"We want Belarus to be a democratic, independent state. Belarus must come out of this international isolation," Vladimir Goncharik, the former Soviet labor leader who has consolidated the opposition behind his presidential candidacy, said in an interview. "We have succeeded in uniting all the political forces, from left to right. We have clearly distressed Lukashenko."

A towering figure fond of playing ice hockey, Lukashenko has grown more bellicose by the day. He has accused the West of sending spies to topple him and in a recent speech claimed his enemies planned to send 10,000 people to storm his residence the day after the election -- an assertion some saw as intended to justify a state of emergency if he loses.

"There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," Lukashenko declared, referring to Vojislav Kostunica, the challenger who defeated Milosevic. "They know perfectly well I will be defending myself. I will not be sitting in a bunker like Milosevic. I am not afraid of anybody. I have not stolen anything from my people."

Special troops, he added, "will be defending the president and will never give him up."

A land of flat fields, birch groves and green marshes, Belarus has been the stamping ground of invaders for centuries, from Lithuanians and Poles to Germans and Russians. During World War II, its capital was leveled by the Nazis and a quarter of its population was killed. Today it serves as the buffer between Russia and NATO.

Belarus -- the name means "White Russia" -- is culturally, ethnically and linguistically about as close as can be found to Mother Russia. The two countries have a loosely defined "union" allowing visa-free travel across the border. On New Year`s Eve, many Belarusans set off fireworks at 11 p.m. because that is when Russian television, based one time zone to the east, marks the turning of the calendar.

Minsk today feels like a visit to the Soviet past. The roads are wide and clean but bereft of traffic, as few residents can afford cars. Other than the occasional McDonald`s, Western businesses that flocked to Russia after the fall of communism are absent here. Soviet symbols remain everywhere, including Goncharik`s union headquarters with its hammer and sickle out front.

Lukashenko, a former collective farm director, won the presidency in 1994 in an election that the West concedes was fair. He quickly set about renationalizing key industries, establishing an authoritarian state and trying to drive away Western ambassadors and nongovernmental organizations. He pushed through a referendum in 1996 allowing him to abolish parliament and extend his own term by two years, a move widely condemned as unconstitutional by everyone from the Belarus supreme court to the United States.

According to his opponents, human rights groups and Western diplomats, Lukashenko has also rebuilt a repressive police apparatus, not bothering even to rename the KGB, as Russia did. Opposition leaders have been imprisoned, beaten and kidnapped. Critical newspapers find themselves raided by tax police or burgled by unknown thugs.

Stories of harassment and terror are commonplace. Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister under Lukashenko who now runs the Charter 97 human rights group, was set upon by 30 men in central Minsk one night and left with a broken nose and ribs. Tatsyana Pratsko, head of the Helsinki Watch chapter here, said her office was broken into weeks ago for the fourth time. Alexander Tomkovich, editor of the independent Den newspaper, twice had his computers destroyed and has been barred from using the state printing house.

"We understand that something could happen to any of us," Tomkovich said in the cramped and cluttered office where he works with three other journalists. "But if we don`t write what we think, in five years it`ll happen to everyone."

The disappearance of four Lukashenko adversaries since 1999 has become a major issue in the presidential campaign. Their faces adorn fliers held up by protesters, and their stories are splashed across newspapers such as Den.

"There`s a war going on," said Svetlana Zavadskaya, whose husband was the most recent to disappear. "Nobody`s safe."

Zavadskaya, 28, recently traveled to Washington and Moscow with several other wives of people who are missing, imprisoned or have been killed to make their case. Now they have begun speaking out at home. "We`ll be telling people what happened, and I think it will open up eyes," said Lyudmilla Karpenko, who believes her husband, popular opposition leader Gennady Karpenko, was the victim of foul play and not the stroke authorities cited when he died suddenly on April 6, 1999.

The following month, on May 7, Yuri Zakharenko, Lukashenko`s former interior minister, vanished.

Viktor Gonchar, a legislative leader, and his business associate, Anatoly Krasovsky, were last seen coming out of a bathhouse on Sept. 16, 1999. All that was found was broken glass from their jeep and blood on the asphalt.

Zavadskaya`s husband, Dmitri Zavadsky, was once Lukashenko`s favorite cameraman at Belarusan state television but, disgusted with the president, he left for the Russian channel ORT. Lukashenko told Zavadsky that he would never forgive him, according to the cameraman`s wife, and on July 7, 2000, Zavadsky disappeared at the Minsk airport.

The cases have drawn new attention with the defection of two investigators who had been looking into the matter. They fled to the United States this summer with allegations of death squads run by Lukashenko`s government, claims deemed credible by the State Department. According to the investigators, some of those linked to Zavadsky`s disappearance had served in a special anti-terrorism unit called Almaz -- the same one Lukashenko said would defend him.

The new accusations have galvanized the opposition and the media. "We cannot be indifferent to the fact that here in our Belarus our best people are being destroyed, are being killed and destroyed by death squads," said Maria Apeka, a librarian who showed up for a silent protest the other day.

Hundreds of Belarusans like Apeka lined the main street across from McDonald`s in Minsk, holding up the pictures of those who have disappeared. "I`m tired of being afraid," said Apeka`s mother, Antonia Gasperovich, 86. "All my life I was afraid -- of the Communists, of the war, of the repressions. Now I don`t want to be afraid; I`m sick and tired of Lukashenko."

But Lukashenko remains popular among many older Belarusans, who appreciate that he has kept their pensions coming. "Our generation feels that he suits us," Valentina Fyodorova, 70, who receives $45 a month, said in the nearby city market. "He`s honest. He`s not selling out Belarus. He tries to make sure everything belongs to the people. We have free medicine. Education is free. Utilities are cheap. You can feel that he cares."

In the face of this support, the opposition has decided to unite behind a compromise candidate, Goncharik. U.S. Ambassador Michael Kozak and Ambassador Hans-Georg Wieck from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have advised the opposition and are pushing to ensure that Lukashenko allows monitors at polling places.

But the biggest foreign player has kept silent. Lukashenko courted President Vladimir Putin of Russia for an endorsement, only to get a cold shoulder. The most important factor, however, will be whether Putin allows the opposition access to Russian television, which dominates the market here. NTV, owned by a state-controlled energy monopoly, has been showing protests on the air, although state-owned ORT often ignores such events.

In the meantime, opposition leaders, who sought guidance from their Serbian counterparts, are encouraged by opinion polls suggesting that even government officials want Lukashenko out. They assume the election will be rigged, but as in Yugoslavia, they hope for a big enough margin to offset fraud.

"All the elements are coming together," said Sannikov, of Charter`97. "Over the last three years the dominant factor here was fear -- fear about jobs, about their parents . . . and now we see that people are overcoming this fear. There seems to be growing momentum."

What Lukashenko will do if Sannikov is right remains an open question. "He may do something like Hitler did," said prominent journalist Roman Yakovlevsky. "The fact is, he won`t let go of power without blood."