British Aid to Belarus Dictatorship

 
British aid money has been given by the European Union to help the security forces
of the last dictatorship in Europe.

Funds intended to help the world’s neediest have been spent on providing training and equipment to the police force and border guards of Belarus, an autocracy run along Soviet lines. The aid, supplied by the European Union’s EuropeAid programme, to which Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) is a major donor, came despite violent action against the pro-democracy opposition.

The Foreign Office has expressed grave concern at the imprisonment and abuse of dissidents and also at the use of the death penalty, while an EU arms embargo has been put in place. However, the EU increased aid payments to Belarus to more than £32 million last year, including millions of pounds on projects to reinforce the country’s western borders.

The European Commission said the aid would curb people trafficking and drug smuggling, but dissidents claimed the equipment has been used to prevent the regime’s opponents fleeing.

Labour said the aid to Belarus was unjustifiable and urged ministers to raise it with the commission.
David Cameron is committed to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid, but Britain has direct control over only part of the budget, with more than 40 per cent distributed through third parties.

The EuropeAid programme receives £1 billion from DfID. The Brussels scheme has in turn spent £68 million since 2007 in Belarus, under the “neighbourhoods policy” designed to promote democracy in countries bordering or near the EU, and prevent illegal migration to the EU.

Procurement documents show Belarus has been bought equipment including motorcycles, patrol boats, swamp vehicles and thermal imaging cameras for border guards.

The list included £279,000 to buy and house guard dogs, £8.4 million on mobile X-ray machines and cameras to inspect cars crossing the borders, and £6.7  million on a computerized criminal records database and portable equipment to check biometric data.

The aid agency trained border guards in “document integrity, detection of forgeries and impostor recognition” and spent millions to clear the border strip and install new checkpoints, telephones and CCTV networks.

Human rights monitors are severely critical of Belarus, which has been ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, the so called president, since 1994. He has retained the KGB and other Soviet-era ministries, is accused of running death squads for political opponents and has named his son Kolya, nine, who carries a golden handgun, as his “heir”. He said last year: 
“I am the last and only dictator in Europe.”

Presidential elections in December 2010 were declared “fraudulent” by the American Senate, while the US and Europe have placed a travel ban and asset freeze on some regime officials.

Natalia Kaliada, director of the underground Belarus Free Theatre, accused Brussels of propping up the regime, which does not want its critics free to campaign.“With such equipment they would block all possibilities of escape completely. It would be a completely isolated country,” she said.

Jim Murphy, the Labour shadow development secretary, said there was no justification for aid to go to Belarus and called on ministers to take it up with the European Commission. “Aid is vital to help alleviate poverty and to support UK national security and economic interests. It should not support regimes in countries of concern with alarming human rights records,” he said. “Ministers must now urgently raise this matter with the European Commission to ensure no UK taxpayers’ money is being spent in ways which undermine our national interests or values.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader who sits on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: “Before financing equipment of this kind you have to assess the balance of risks of illegal breaches of the border against the reality of an unpleasant regime which cares very little for the human rights of its citizens. “If there is a suggestion that this equipment is being exploited we should think very carefully about continuing to provide it.”

DfID said its ministers were aware of the aid to Belarus and supported Europe’s policy of “critical engagement” with the regime. A spokesman for the European Commission said: “EU support for Belarus is all about promoting democracy and human rights and where necessary pushing the Belarusian authorities hard, whilst supporting civil society that seeks to hold them to account.”

Matthew Holehouse, The Telegraph.

Brussels Forum: Sanctions Against Lukashenko's Regime Must be Strengthened!

Brussels

March 26, 2012

The Belarusian issue became one of the key themes at the Brussels Forum.

Andrei Sannikov, the coordinator of European Belarus civil campaign, has been representing Belarus for previous years at the prestigious Brussels Forum, the event uniting the world's political and economic elite. But at present time former presidential candidate has been in prison for over a year accused of organizing protests against the rigged election.

Due to the arrest of Andrei Sannikov, Belarus was represented for two years in succession by his sister Iryna Bahdanava, an initiator of a legal prosecution of Lukashenka; head of the Belarus Free Theatre - Natallia Kaliada and head of "We Remember" Foundation - Irina Krasouskaya.

This year's forum was attended by EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton; NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen; US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who initiated hearing on Belarus in the US Senate; Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt; Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski; Belgian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Didier Reynders; Ukrainian and Bulgarian Foreign Ministers Kostyantyn Gryshchenko and Nickolai Mladenov; Chair of the Board at the Centre for Liberal Strategies Ivan Krastev; Former Prime Minister of Libya Mahmoud Gebril; former President of Lebanon Amine Gemayel and others.

"We initiated a discussion on Belarus at the panel to discuss the situation in Syria in connection with Belarusian weapon supplies to the country," Natallia Kaliada said at the forum. "Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov spoke at the panel discussion. We asked the minister why the negotiations to involve dictatorial Belarus into European processes were initiated in spite of tortures of political prisoners in the country and weapon supplies to rogue states, including Syria. Mladenov replied he was ready to deal with such people like Lukashenko to save the lives of political prisoners. Andrei Sannikov's sister Iryna Bahdanava said political prisoners had faced even more severe tortures after Mladenov's visit to Belarus, but EU economic sanctions were not imposed due to Lukashenko's empty promise to release all prisoners of conscience."

The Belarusian issues was raised as a separate theme at the panel discussion The Eastern European Partners "Going East, West, or Nowhere?"

A moderator of the discussion was Bruce Jackson, the President of Project on Transitional Democracies. Kostantyn Gryshchenko, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, member of the US Congress Michael Turner and Natallia Kaliada took part in the discussion.

"As sanctions against the Lukashenko's regime were introduced on the day of arrival of the Belarusian delegation, we thanked Baroness Ashton for that step, but explained the EU should be even more strong and apply tough measures to release political prisoners. Asked by Bruce Jackson what sanctions should be imposed, Natallia Kaliada said That Europe should understand the dictatorship in Belarus will be strengthening anyway and that's why adequate measures should be applied. Natallia Kaliada presented an action plan for the world community in relation to Belarus:

1. Everything what is already done in relation to the Belarusian regime did not produce the desired result (to release political prisoners). Boundaries and rules need to be broken. As Vaclav Havel once said: "Politics is the art of the impossible."

2. Actions should be taken in time. In January 2011, Catherine Ashton said it was an issue of some days to impose EU sanctions on the Belarusian regime, as the United States did. We welcome the sanctions introduced, but they were imposed to the full extent only 13 months later. Had they been introduced in time, probably, all political prisoners would have been released, a metro bombing would not have happened and two young men Dmitriy Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalev (who possibly were not guilty) would not have been executed.

3. No dialogue or involving the authorities into cooperation with the EU can be discussed until all political prisoners are released and rehabilitated!

4. Old and stable democracies (such as Germany, the UK, France) should explain to new European democracies (such as Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Slovenia) that a construction of a hotel in Belarus is not worth the lives of political prisoners.

5. Think globally. If Belarus supplies weapons to Syria and Iran, it cannot be viewed outside of the global process.

6. A decision on issuing free EU visas to Belarusians should be taken in consideration to give them a possibility to compare what can be better: moving to the East or to the West, and at least, feeling the support from Europe at this minimum level.

7. If you think you did everything possible for Belarus, ask yourselves: "Were bodies of the kidnapped opposition members found? Was the death penalty abolished? Were political prisoners released?"

8. If Europe wants to position itself as a Union being rather ambitious to solve the problems of Syria and Iran, it should solve the Belarusian issue first. Belarus is in the heart of Europe.

Talking about sanctions we paid attention to imposing an embargo on oil products and expelling Belarusian ambassadors from European capitals as one of the variant of applying further pressure on the Belarusian authorities," Natallia Kaliada said.

Who Needs Lukashenko's Regime to be Rescued & Why?

[ Belarus 2009 ]

Recently among the people mentioned in the oppositional discourse, the ideas like "we should talk with the regime, help them receive loans form the West" are propagandized more and more insistently, Lyavon Barshcheuski writes at the website of the Belarusian Popular Front Party. (the website is closed in 2010)

Why such things should be done? They say that otherwise:

- "the regime would surrender Belarus' independence",

- "our citizens would suffer from the economical crisis",

- "our people won't understand the opposition," and so on and so forth.

It means that such politicians offer to RESCUE - no, not the country's sovereignty, not the interests of our citizens, but the REGIME.

Do not worry, dear sirs; the regime knows how to rescue itself better than we do. It in the same regime that once rescued itself when banned publishing anti-corruption report by Syarhei Antonchyk in most popular newspapers; when the legally elected parliament was deprived of "Narodnaya gazeta" by force.

It was rescuing itself when on April 12, 1995 overnight an order was made to brutally beat up deputies of the Belarusian Popular Front in the Supreme Soviet.

The regime was rescuing itself when wheeling-dealing referendums were held in 1995, 1996 and in 2004.

Hangmen in the government agencies were rescuing themselves, leaving the families of Yury Zakharanka, Henadz Karpenka, Viktar Hanchar, Zmitser Zavadski without breadwinners, and seizing freedom of Mikola Markevich, Viktar Ivashkevich, Paval Mazhejka, Paval Sevyarynets, Mikola Statkevich, Andrei Klimau, Mikola Astrejka, Alyaksandr Kazulin, Andrei Kim, Zmitser Dashkevich, Anton Kishkurna, for a long time.

The regime was rescuing itself adopting unconstitutional repressive acts against freedom of meetings, demonstrations, pickets, against freedom of expression.

The regime counted upon its immortality and indestructibility, when they forcibly changed school and university programs on history, literature, social science, expelled children and teachers of the Belarusian Humanities Lyceum, squeezed the European Humanities University into emigration.

It was rescuing itself, signing commitments to mass media in Minsk and Istanbul declaration with commitments to the world community.

It was rescuing itself selling oil, gas and raw materials to our enterprises at speculative prices, and gagged our intellectuals by millions of rubles from them not to take part in protest rallies in such a deceitful way.

The regime was looking for a way to rescue itself by expelling from educational institutions, firing and blacklisting hundreds and thousands of people only for daring to say aloud what they think.

It was rescuing itself by public sneering at the independent Union of Belarusian Writers, having reduced many of its members to indigence; by illegal imprisonment of Yury Khadyka, Alyaksei Marachkin, Valyantsin Holubeu, Yazep Yanushkevich, Ales Zhlutka; by malicious beating up of Radzim Haretski, Valery Mazynski, Adam Maldzis, Uladzimir Markhel.

Lickspittles who can exist only near the trough were rescuing this regime, hitting on the face of Svyatlana Zavadskaya by a "brave man's hand", compelling young people to join the army though they are not able to serve because of their state of health.

And now it means that we should lend our shoulders to the regime and rescue THEM?!.. Now inept politicians in short trousers are asking: give these people money for them not to perish. Help them, they are poor things, as Belarus won't be able to exist without them: they are leaders of the state, and they allow us to sleep in our house - under the bench.

And maybe someday some of us would be kindly given a position with high salary in their "chamber" or at least invited for a soulful conversation and a cup of coffee with the editor-in-chief of the "correct" newspaper.

There is an old proverb: "While a fatty loses weight, a thin one starves to death". A conclusion could be made: let us not allow the "fatty" (that is, the current regime) become attenuated by hunger, otherwise we all will kick the bucket. It is improper conclusion. "The fat boy" won't lose weight anyway. And what about us? And we can accidentally kick the bucket, if we would listen to such advisers, certainly.

Lyavon Barshcheuski,
the Belarusian Popular Front Party Leader