Opposition complains of "iron curtain" in Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

[Presenter] The Belarusian opposition is talking of an iron curtain and political persecution, while President Lukashenka talks of the economy and study. Viktor Kuzmin reports on the Belarusian president`s latest initiatives for officials and students.

[Correspondent] You can go abroad only with the president`s consent, only if you really need to, and for not more than two days. Alyaksandr Lukashenka requires officials to save public money. And he`s telling students to stick to their textbooks and keep out of politics.

The Belarusian leader has instructed officials to cut their travel abroad to a minimum. In his presidential decree it says that there is a list of persons with the power to decide who travels and who stays at home.

[Syarhey Kastsyan, member of Belarusian National Assembly] The purpose of the decree is to make sure that any trip abroad by any official of the state will be productive. If there`s no point, then why travel?

[Correspondent] The Belarusian opposition has likened Lukashenka`s decree to the descent of an iron curtain. The talk of saving public money by cutting official travel abroad is just a pretext for something else, people far removed from power are saying.

[Aleh Manayew, director, Independent Institute for Socioeconomic and Political Studies] Alyaksandr Lukashenka is trying to strengthen his personal control over everything that happens in this country. Secondly, he is trying to isolate not only the country as a whole, which has been taking place recently, an iron curtain as you mentioned, but also a specific group - the nomenklatura, the state bureaucracy.

[Correspondent] The Belarusian education minister sent an instruction to all educational establishments yesterday, about measures to prevent students from being involved in unlawful activity of a political nature. From now on, students engaged in opposition activities will be monitored even more closely.

[Alyaksandr Kazulin, former rector of Belarusian State University] This is about throwing students back into the past. That is, they want to turn them into compliant cogs and wheels.

[Correspondent] The education ministry says the instruction is intended to promote in students a sense of patriotism and respect for the law. Officials at the ministry describe involvement in opposition actions as the foolishness of youth.

[Tatstsyana Kavalyova, deputy minister of education] Our mission, maybe that`s a bit overblown, let`s say our job, and we don`t hide this, is to ensure that profoundly patriotic people graduate from our educational establishments.

[Correspondent] It doesn`t say anything in the instruction about sanctions against students. There is no law against dissent but the method being applied is nothing new - expulsion for poor academic performance.

[Iryna Tolstik] I gave a commentary to [opposition newspaper] Narodnaya Volya about the honesty, in quotation marks of course, of forthcoming elections. And a commentary about the Ukrainian revolution and whether it could happen here. After that, as the teachers said, the clearout began.

[Correspondent] Iryna Tolstik was thrown out of university in her final year, a few months before her finals. She now has more time to travel to opposition seminars abroad. If she were a civil servant she`d have to forget about foreign travel.