Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw: Wave of Repression in Belarus Is Rising :: Charter'97 :: News

“More and more often waves of repressions confirm strengthening of authoritarian tendencies in Belarus, and Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s determination to stay in power,” the report of the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw reads. As Radio Svaboda informs, the experts of the state Center for Eastern Studies believe that despite of the fact that a year is left for the next presidential elections in which A. Lukashenka is to run again, the authorities are getting ready for them more and more intensively.

“President Lukashenka aims to close Belarus off from any external influence whatsoever, and to eliminate all potential centres of resistance. Repression is employed not only against political parties, but also against civic organisations and national and religious minorities,” the report by an analyst of the Center, Agata Wierzbowska-Miazga reads (www.osw.waw.pl/en).

The author highlights that Alaxandr Lukashenka amended his decree No 460 on the regulations for accepting foreign aid. Belarusian organisations and individuals already had very limited opportunities to accept foreign aid under the original law, but the new amendments will make it even more difficult. The provisions of the amended decree are very general, and open to extremely wide interpretation. They are designed to limit the ability of civic organisations to operate legally to a minimum.

Recent weeks have also seen a new wave of repression against the remnants of pluralism in Belarus and demonstrations for social independence.
On 9 August Mikola Statkevich, the long-time social democratic party leader who is serving a three-year jail sentence for organising a demonstration, was accused of organising an illegal assembly when a dozen or so people gathered in front of the penal colony where he is being held to express their support for him. On 17 August, two authors of a website containing short satirical movies about Alaxandr Lukashenka were arrested. The website was blocked, the apartments of its authors searched, and their PCs confiscated.

Agata Wierzbowska-Miazga also writes about the Reformed Evangelical Church, which had been present in Belarus for more than 400 years, and was banned by authorities in August, and about persecution of the Union of Poles in Belarus.