Different Stans

The Opportunistic New Friends of Belarus, Cory Doctorow and Rebecca MacKinnon

 

By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick

All of a sudden, we have some new opportunistic Friends of Belarus -- Cory Doctorow and Rebecca MacKinnon. They had virtually nothing to say all this time since December 2010 -- 18 months -- while hundreds of people have been tortured and put in jail, including the main independent journalists and those operating independent web sites like charter97.org   That's because Belarus just doesn't "fit" in their worldview, dominated by the US and its allies and the US and its sins. Russia's sins and the sins of all its allies are outside the ambit of their "progressive" worldview; they virtually never talk about it (both of them piped up about Russia only when they could bang on Microsoft, when corrupt Russians using Microsoft's name harassed human rights activists and environmentalists).

Now that Swedish investigative journalists and NGOs have produced a film exposing the awful role played by Teliasonera in helping the regimes of Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and other post-Soviet states, finally Cory Doctorow can pay attention: evil telecom! Must stop! Boo, hiss!

Here's my post at BoingBoing.net:

We missed you and EFF back back in December 2010 when the Belarusian regime cracked down on thousands of peaceful demonstrators who were protesting election fraud, arresting some 700 people, and sentencing hundreds of them to lengthy sentences of years. Andrei Sannikov, Uladzimer Nyaklyaeu and the other opposition presidential candidates and their staffs. We missed you throughout 2011 and 2012 as all these people were mistreated and tortured, new arrests took place, and few but the US and EU governments and a few NGOs said anything about it. Throughout this period the regime closed down websites or hijacked them to show viewers only state sites; the main news site charter97.org has constantly been under DDOS attacks. This was never of interest to you Internet freedom fighters.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and various Swedish non-governmental organizations protested repeatedly to try to get them released, and finally the combination of US and EU sanctions on this regime led to the release of some leaders, although some still remain. EFF and all the cool kids could have cared less about Internet freedom issues in Belarus and these other countries as they didn't fit your paradigm of "Blame America First".

You only tuned in when you could see the words "telecom" and begin to salivate in glee -- because you don't care about human rights in countries like Belarus or Uzbekistan for their own sakes until you can find some angle that fits your own "progressive" ideology of hating on telecoms as evil obstacles to your Google-centric world.

Teliasonera has enabled bad regimes, to be sure. But telecoms or Western businesses aren't the central issue, and if you take away their support, these autocrats just turn to China and their telecom companies. In fact evil telcos, whether Western, Russian, Chinese, or whatever, are making millions of people able to have their own cell phones and use the Internet, which some of them use to gather information independently and protest the regimes.

And then, confronted with this complex story in which a Swedish telecom has not done the right thing, but the real problem is the nature of these authoritarian regimes, all you can do is turn an infantile gaze at your pet issue of surveillance in the United States, where you have more freedom of expression than any country in the world

As for Rebecca MacKinnon, I welcome her to the Newly-Acquired Conscience Society for Belarus on Twitter, and she bristled. "Do your homework before accusing me," in an angry tweet. I had commented that she had not seemed to notice what Teliasonera or other companies did, although she's always banging on telecoms. She retorted that in fact she had tweeted about it a few days ago. Oh, but that doesn't count, as the time to care about telecoms and Belarus was 18 months ago, not a few days ago, if you really cared -- and in fact, it was never really the primary issue. She also said she had mentioned the issue in her speech at Oslo Freedom Forum (I don't exactly see it there, but whatever*).

Yet that speech epitomizes what is so awful about MacKinnon, Doctorow, Jillian York and the rest of the EFF and Berkman Center gang -- the insidious moral equivalency of democratic countries under the rule of law with authoritarian countries without the rule of law. "Even in democratic nations," MacKinnon piously intones, "governments are using excuses to increase this control, such as the need for the protection of children." Excuses? Why can't governments block child pornography, which in fact involves often the exploitation of Russian children?!

"We’re finding a growing global movement against companies who we feel are infringing our rights," she gushes. Of course, you don't have rights regarding companies -- something I've been protesting about for seven years long before EFF cared about the typical Silicon Valley corporate TOS.

Companies are non-state actors and are not obliged to enable your piracy, child pornography, or terrorism, let alone even absolutist free speech. They are private entities with their own rights of freedom of association and freedom of expression. Sure, we would like them to be bound at least by their own TOS (they seldom are) or principles of justice and rights, but negotiating such "rights" through the ITU or UN would bring about the very horrible controls from authoritarian regimes that MacKinnon also references in her protest that "we don't have a seat at the table" at ITU. (And that's why I say the answer is not to impose new "guidelines" or negotiate international rights in hostile international territory, but simply to enable a free market of ISPs and social media platforms with a range of approximation to these rights and values. MacKinnon doesn't like Apple's "censorship" of the intifada app? Then let her go over to CREDO or some other "progressive" telecom that can provider her with such violent entertainment.)

Let me point out that none of us have a seat at the table at ITU even if MacKinnon's organizations get seats -- and that's not the way to get Internet freedom. Companies  get to decide their course. The last place we should look for promotion of real freedom of expression and the fundamental liberty of Internet connection is the Global Network Initiative of Internet-related companies and NGOs over which MacKinnon presides -- they could care less about Egypt or Syria or Belarus or Azerbaijan in the GNI context, whatever they do on their own, but devote most of their ire against US congress people drafting bills against piracy or promoting cybersecurity -- Google's business imperatives matter far more to them than basic human rights for all.

MacKinnon uses her highly-visible pulpit at the Oslo Freedom Forum to talk about a piece of legislation that she doesn't like that hinders violation of intellectual property rights. "EU politicians are increasingly saying that policies like ACTA are dead," she gloats. What about the journalists who are dead in places like Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Uzbeksitan, Rebecca? That's not the fault of telecoms or evil Western governments who want to prosecute pirates: it's the fault of those very authoritarian regimes.

MacKinnon is thrilled that Wikipedia thugglishly went dark to whine about anti-piracy legislation that offended their "copyleftist" goals; that charter97.org was dark for many days due to the KGB never bothered her. For MacKinnon, protesting against firewalls put into place by the authoritarian and brutal state of Pakistan, where journalists are murdered with impunity, is all on a smooth and glib moral plane with the US, maybe passing some laws that in fact were narrowly defined against specific kinds of commercial piracy -- bills that were defeated by a flash mob organized by Google, and Mitch Kapor's anti-copyright organizations EFF, PCF and Fight for the Fututre.

It's really freaky -- the only way that MacKinnon and these other self-absorbed and self-referential North Americans can see their way clear to taking up issues of human rights abroad is if they can find an evil Western corporation in the mix, or a Western government opposing piracy. The roots of piracy in authoritarian countries like Russia that metasticize their corruption to the rest of the world are uninteresting to them.

I remember back in December 2010 and January 2011 there were various protest groups on Facebook where some of us repeatedly raised the issues of the European telecoms. There is an Austrian company doing business in Belarus that was involved as well as the Swedish company. An influential "progressive" Austrian activist actually didn't want to take up boycotts of companies or an EU boycott of Belarus, because "this would harm people". Nobody did.

At that time, the Skype conversations of all the opposition leaders were being published in the state newspaper, sometimes in tendentious and false excerpts. It seems some mobile phone conversations were also used, and the location data -- people were placed in the square at the time of the demonstration using this information, and that was enough to jail them.

Of course, Lukashenka has been in business since 1996, long before the Internet and mobile phones were so present even in his own repressive country, and would find ways to jail people even without any evil foreign telecoms, as he always had, using the prodigious capacity of the still-named KGB, which follows people everywhere the old fashioned way. I recall once going to meet an opposition candidate along with some Belarusian journalists, and there were so many cars following us there was a traffic jam.

There were different theories about how the Skype calls got in the state press -- the KGB didn't necessarily hack into Skype; they may have simply hacked into computers and read logs, or they may have simply opened up computers with Firefox, which handily open up all applications for you with their embedded pass words -- awfully convenient for the secret police unless you thought to use various devices to erase or download your hard drive quickly on to a flash drive.

But people didn't think they were going to be arrested. They had been allowed to campaign independently during the election and have meetings with independent candidates. They thought a peaceful election-night rally on a square wouldn't lead to such a severe crackdown.

Regardless of how the secret police got the conversations, location data, etc., by their own sleuthing or with the mechanical affordances of the telecoms they had access to, or which colluded them, the centrality of evil is in their corner, not foreign companies. I've said this about China and Cisco as well.

I was just reading about Sergey Brin's anguish in staying in China after the Chinese government censored; he justified remaining under his usual theory that more knowledge was better than less, and that the Chinese people would get more from even a censored Google than if it were completely removed. It took the Chinese government's direct assault on Google's own servers for him to see it more personally -- and then he could see his way clear to exiting Google -- when a company has skin in the game, it's not until their own skin burns that the game becomes less fun for them, as they keep rationalizing it as still fun for other people.

___________

*When I debated MacKinnon about this and she mentioned the Oslo Freedom Forum, a pretentious little social media flak from OFF began following me. I asked him if he stalked people when they disagreed with OFF speakers. "Don't flatter yourself," he told me rudely -- as I often noticed, "strategic communications" is a profession where above all, you are entitled to be an arrogant ass and amplify it across all platforms. I then asked if he had an automatic script that followed anyone who mentioned OFF.

This *Can't* Be a Good Idea

Turkmenistan's tyrant Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has visited Belarus to meet with his worthy counterpart, the "last dictator in Europe" Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Naturally, they found each other in the post-Soviet space, and if you dig through all the news articles, you'll find something about a fertilizer plant (Belarus spends money it doesn't have to get into a world market that Turkmenistan might own...or something) and other purchases and pledges of eternal cooperation of our two brotherly peoples.

Telegraf.by has the news about how the two authoritarians are now going to cooperate on human rights.

What, Berdymukhamedov is going to give tips on how to turn off the foreign (Russian) cell phone service for 2.4 million in a day, and Lukashenka is going to have pointers on how to efficiently jail hundreds if they protest and then stage a fake terrorist bombing?

I've always suspected these leaders go to the same weekend seminars, just like their hapless subjects go to various conferences on democracy and Internet freedom -- only in reverse. "How to use Chinese technology to filter and block the Internet". Or "Bluffing the ICRC in 10 Easy Steps."

But what they're saying publicly is that they will help each other at international meetings:

April 27, Presidents of Turkmenistan and Belarus Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow and Alexander Lukashenko agreed to continue the practice of mutual support of the two countries’ initiatives in international organizations. In addition, as it is stated in the official report on the results of the talks, Belarus and Turkmenistan will also interact with each other at international forums on human rights.

Since Turkmenistan doesn't even bother to show up at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting at OSCE every year in Warsaw, does that mean we can expect now Belarus won't come at all? They're often missing from their seat anyway.

But watch out -- now Minsk has Ashgabat's back -- and visa versa.

Russian Human Rights Activists Raise Belarus, Turkmenistan with President Medvedev

Medvedev convenes meeting of Presidential Human Rights Council on April 28, 2012; Ludmila Alexeyeva is in the foreground. The group raised the case of Belarusian human rights leader Ales Bialiatski. Is that Vladislav Surkov to the left of Medvedev? Photo by Viasna.

Russian human rights advocates have done an important deed this week by meeting with outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his last days in office and raising the problematic role of Russia in propping up the dictatorships of Belarus and Turkmenistan.

The independent Belarusian news site Charter97.org reported yesterday that Russian members of the Presidential Council on Human Rights said that the Russian Foreign Ministry only seems to notice human rights violations in countries that criticize Moscow, and never comments on their allies.

Yuri Dzhibladze, a member of the Council, an advisor to the ombudsmen's office, and a member of various other NGOs said:

"Our country, striving to have a leading situation in the world, cannot and should not ignore the problem of human rights, not only at home, but in neighbouring countries. To whom is given much and who aspires to much, much is demanded, and the accountability needs to be more serious," said the human rights advocate.

He mentioned the plight of Russian citizens who are languishing in Turkmenistan who are being forced to give up their Russian citizenship to be eligible for a Turkmen passport, so that they can travel -- but then risk never being able to travel to Russia or anywhere, as Turkmen citizens. Russia doesn't seem to be going to bat for these people, and the usual bilateral commissions and meetings aren't solving the problem because of lack of good will on the part of Ashgabat.

The Russian activists also handed Medvedev a petition on behalf of  Belarusian human rights leader Ales Bialiatski. Interestingly -- probably because it was nearly his last day in office and he really had nothing to lose -- Medvedev seemed to concede the problem (my translation of his quotes in Russian on charter97.org)

"Our Foreign Ministry is what it is, it has its stronger sides of the Chicherin and Molotov school, and its not very strong sides. And I myself, as head of state, repeatedly appealed on this topic, but even so, I can't agree with this. Of course, the Foreign Ministry must take the appropriate position but to believe that the Foreign Ministry only bites those who bite us, that isn't entirely fair," said Medvedev.

Dmitry Medvedev emphasized that, for example, during a certain period, both he and the Foreign Ministery had to "make entirely harsh statements concerning the observance of rights in Belarus and Ukraine." He noted that these are "really very close countries,"  and on an entire range of issues which are being reviewed at the present time, "they have become severely offended" at Russia.

"Even so, this was in fact my position, and I gave instructions to the Foreign Ministry, including the issue of persecution of political opponents -- that is absolutely unacceptable, this casts a shadow on the whole state, for example, if we speak about Ukraine, and those who are making decisions. You can hate one another, you can say all you want in a polemical quarrel, in the heat of the political fray, but when participants in a presidential race are sitting on the defendants' bench and wind up in prison, your direct rival sin the political process, that, as a minimum, provokes enormous incomprehension, even taking into account our rich totalitarian traditions," said Medvedev.

Well, hmm, notably he left out any mention of Turkmenistan, and he means primarily Yulia Timoshenko here, the jailed Ukrainian politician. I do have to wonder what instructions he really ever gave about, say, raising the issue of Andrei Sannikov, the presidential candidate in Belarus just released two weeks ago from prison through the efforts primarily of the European Union, not Russia, although there is some reason to believe Moscow raised the issues quietly at times.

So this was all good, getting Medvedev on the record (after all, he will go on to switch places now with Putin and be Prime Minister to Putin's President) and getting the Russian domestic human rights movement which has been preoccupied with its own problems and absorbed in demonstrating against election fraud for months, to realize that their country helps cause human rights abuses elsewhere in the "near abroad".

There was a bit less than met the eye here, however, as it was rather late for Russian activists to be doing this.  In fact, they should always be trying to raise the near abroad, and international groups like Human Rights Watch should do a lot more of this as well. To be sure, through a new Helsinki-branded movement announced at the OSCE ministerial in December 2011, and even at UN and OSCE meetings before that, Yuri and his colleagues have raised the issue of political prisoners in Belarus, Turkmenistan and elsewhere in Russia's orbit. There's something a bit managed and docile about all this, and not everyone is happy with Russians leading this movement with US grants, but there it is... As I always say, "politics is the art of the possible; human rights is the art of the impossible."

Yuri has a lot of accomplishments behind him, working on the issues of the NGO law, conscientious objection and conscription, anti-racism, and so on. Yuri was the one who stood up and named Russia at the UN during the World Conference Against Racism's preparatory conferences in Geneva in 2001, when Russia and other states tried to force a "no naming of countries" rule that has sometimes prevailed at UN meetings -- and broke that barrier. He also led the effort to launch an alternative document to the deplorable NGO document at the Durban WCAR, which contained hateful passages about Israel. So it's all good.

But I've criticized him in the past for playing the game of moral equivalency in politics -- when he got some face time with Obama, he used it not to raise issues like jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky's case, nor to explain to Obama that his claim that Khodorkovsky's case was "an internal affair" set back Helsink progress 35 years. Instead, he raised...Guantanamo. This was coals to Newcastle, or, as they say in Russia, samovars to Tulevo...or something. That is, US activists already raise Guantanamo at every turn, and what Obama needed to hear from a Russian was an issue that in fact US groups rarely raise (because some have become quiet or even soft on the Kremlin in recent years, hypnotized by the "reset") -- Russia's internal human rights issues. This is especially true as Dzhibladze met the president in a group of defenders and there were plenty of others who could have raised Guantanamo. In part, I blame his American colleagues who thought it would be chic to posture as international citizens above and beyond Russia or America and mix and match. We all draw from the universality and internationalization of human rights; we would do well to understand what kind of vast differences there are between the two countries, like this.

No, the activists didn't raise Pussy Riot with Medvedev, as far as I can tell. Well, everybody's a critic. I na tom spasibo that they raised at least Belarus and the case of Ales, founder of the human rights group Viasna (Spring), a remaining political prisoner, falsely charged with "tax evasion" and sentenced to 4.5 years merely for handling his nonprofit group's legitimate grants. Actually, Poland and Lithuania helped the authorities nab him because their banks with his accounts abroad for his human rights groups reported back to Minsk about them. Both countries later apologized, but it's symptomatic of the lack of, well, tradecraft these days.

You know, this Russian Presidential Council isn't the greatest thing. I mean, with now Putin, the president of Russia going to run it, and all. I think it's important to note that a highly respected human rights defender, Svetlana Gannushkina, who has worked on the rights of migrant workers, refugees and internally-displaced persons for years -- a real saint -- recently announced she was stepping down from the council because of Putin becoming president. She had found it useful to work with Medvedev in the past, because it highlighted her issues, got more press for them, and he'd promise to do things and sometimes do them.

But then, well, it stopped, and she got off the train. As did Elena Panfilova, who has led the NGO effort on anti-corruption as the Transparency International representative in Russia. She just stepped down, too.

That leaves some stalwarts like Ludmila Alexeyeva, who has always believed that you keep trying to dialogue with the authorities even when they are rude and non-compliant, while of course continuing to speak out in condemnation of human rights violations. She's always pulled it off. Not everyone does. She's wondering if Putin will keep her, given that she has denounced the elections as unfair.

We'll see...

"I'm from the Country" -- But What Kind of Country Am I From? Belarus Pioneer Kitsch as Subtle Protest

 

This video of a 13-year-old Pioneer girl in Belarus named Ksyusha Degelko singing a song "I'm From the Country" to a hip-hop beat has gone viral on By-net and had already 600,000 views on April 25 -- but  seems more than a little tongue-in-cheek and a bit meta, even from one so young. (And yes, she's already been mashed up with Rebecca Black's "Friday" -- and worse.)

You get the impression she realizes -- as Sannikov explained everyone is realizing now -- that she lives in a dictatorship, and is poking a bit of fun at it by being absolutely straight-faced, singing about long skirts instead of mini-skirts, and her town, Soviet-like, named "October," and herself as a leader of the Pioneers (well, the official Belarusian Youth Organization as it is called now.)

The KGB has evidently sensed something is "up", naviny.by and the Belarusian radio station Evroradio report, and has come to her town and poked around to determine if the song is really patriotic. The song was written by a teacher, Andrei Pauk, who led a contest in a local children's cultural center.

The KGB was said to be particularly interested in these lines:

"Долой мини-юбки! Короткое, узкое! Теперь покупать будем всё белорусское!", "Достанем из недр наших фосфор и калий, чтобы в достатке работал аграрий!"

"Down with the mini-skirt! Short and narrow! Now we'll only buy everything Belarusian!

We'll reach to the depths for our phosphorus and potash so our agriculture will work to the fullest!"

(Well, it rhymes in Russian, and sounds a lot funnier, believe me.)

But Ksyusha says she didn't upload the video, some one in her circle of friends must have put it on Vkontakte, the Russian social network.

She's worked her way up to win the provincial finals, and I guess they are waiting to see if she will be the victor in the national contest. So far, the authorities have refused to show the entire video on TV, but a news program ran excerpts.

 BTW, the skittish Belarusian Service of Radio Liberty will likely give this story a pass because *gasp* the little girl sings in Russian. That isn't supposed to happen in Belarus, where people are supposed to speak Belarusian. Even Evroradio had to ding her and ask her if she knew any Belarusian songs; she said she knew Belarusian but couldn't think of any off the top of her head. Poor Ksyusha has also had to put up with all those hate-comments any young girl has to put up with on social media sites.

 

 

Andrei Sannikov: "A Tank Ran Over My Life...But Solidarity Saved Me"

 

Andrei Sannikov, the alternative presidential candidate in Belarus, and Zmitser Bandarenka, his campaign manager, were arrested in December 2010 merely for gathering on a public square in Minsk to protest the fraudulent elections, and were sentenced to long terms in jail -- and finally released two weeks ago the day before Orthodox Easter Sunday.

As the Estonian President Toomas Hendrik said, the release demonstrated that a united EU policy of sanctions against Belarus worked.

I remember a certain European campaigner who dreamed that we would all be walking around the streets of a free Minsk by Easter Sunday, April 2011. We weren't. Instead, our friends were in jail, being tortured. It was just awful. I urged sanctions, including on business, and he claimed they would "only hurt the people" and "not be effective" -- a very old story. Well, for Easter 2012, we weren't walking on any free streets yet, but at least Andrei and Dima were released, that's something. And it was due to the sanctions, which were in fact increased, and there is no way you can demonstrate them as "harming the people" -- who first and foremost are harmed by Lukashenka and his oprichina, and the Kremlin.  The US instituited sanctions on some businesses; the EU sanctions were mainly visa blacklists. They need to hold strong on this until the rest of the prisoners are released.

I was happy they were released, but I realized how bad I had felt every day they were in jail, and how I still didn't feel they were free -- they are essentially under a kind of house arrest. No sooner did he arrive home than Sannikov was summoned to the police and he will have to report regularly -- he is on a kind of parole, as is Bandarenka. They are both in poor health, especially Dima who had a terrible spinal operation while incarcerated.

Lukashenka got on television immediately to warn them that they better not act up, or he'd throw them right back in jail -- ugh. The tyrant also warned that if the European Union ratcheted up the pressure, they'd go back again, as well. So they are hostages. Sannikov's wife and small son are hostages as well, he said; in fact, his wife, Irina Khalip, a respected journalist who was herself jailed and sentenced, is still under house arrest and has had KGB guards even present in her house -- and couldn't come to meet Sannikov in prison as a result, as it was evidently the kind of public event (with lots of news cameras, etc.) from which she is barred. Sannikov still has a foreign passport, but it's not clear to him whether he can travel, and it's not clear whether his family could come with him in any event.

Sannikov and Bandarenka wrote an appeal for pardoning last fall, and have waited all this time for release from prison -- Lukashenka toyed with them, but fortunately the EU and US and other Western nations kept up the pressure (I don't know whether Russia did anything, but I did bring appeals to the Russian ambassador here in NY and raised Sannikov's case with him and other ambassadors including non-Western in the hope something might turn the key.)

It's Sannikov's conviction -- and I share it -- that the EU sanctions are what did the trick to get him out. And now it's important to keep them up, as he notes, to get all the other prisoners released -- notably Nikolai Statkevich, one of the other alternative presidential candidates, and others who took part in elections or dissent about the tyranny of the Belarusian state.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with asking for a pardon; indeed, any political prisoner must do this in order to save himself for further activism and of course save his family from further oppression. I recall Gorbachev was finally prepared to release the hundreds of political prisoners, after doling out only a few in 1986-1987 -- he finally accepted Sakharov's plea that the entire list had to come out. But he insisted that they ask for pardons or clemency. This was a nasty process, as it meant to some that they had to "promise to sin no more". Some of them crossed their fingers behind their backs as they did this, or they quite reasonably pointed out that they indeed would not violate *just* law, but silly laws like Art. 190-1, anti-Soviet defamation, they wouldn't abide by.

Lots and lots of prisoners of conscience in the Soviet era signed these requests or pledges as mere formalities and thought nothing of it, and indeed they shouldn't have. But some minority of "plantados," as they are called in Cuba, resisters who refused to cooperate in any way, refused to sign anything. And then of course pressure was put on them that things would go worse for their families. They held out anyway. Their fellows in the dissident movement urged them to sign and stop being thrown in punishment cells and risking death. Finally the last few came out. They should never have been put through this treatment. There is no shame in signing anything you have to sign to get out of wrongful political imprisonment.

The EU needs to keep harping, however, on the fact that people pardoned are people not rehabilitated or free (the very notion of "rehabilitation" is of course Soviet and wrongful -- there should be a blanket amnesty and be done with it, and they should be free to resume their activities.

Sannikov gave an interview to Novaya Gazeta's Elena Kostyuchenko which I thought contained a very important message: solidarity is what saved him, it's what chips away at the dictatorship. Principled sanctions by outsiders like the EU; then solidarity by those outside and inside the country to the extent possible. That's what does it.

My translation of the interview:

Andrei Sannikov:  I was anticipating release every day, every minute. But it happened, like everything in Belarus happens, in an atmosphere of secrecy; they ordered me to gather my things and didn't tell me where I was going. Since I had already gone through many prisons and colonies, it could have been the usual transport or the usual provocation. Then I was shaken down totally...searched, and all my things checked. Then they said "an order has come to release you." I was not shown the pardon decree. That was it. They drove me from the prison colony to the railroad station...

My status is completely unclear. I don't know what happened there and what it was about. They did return my passport -- I can be grateful for that much.

I don't know what will happen with my life now. I haven't seem my family and son for so long, it's like a tank ran over my whole life...

I can hardly tell you anything coherent about what I am expecting. I have to restore my life now. That's the first and main task. And that's all I lived for there -- for the time I would return to my family, and finally that has happened. After awhile, I can say something.

But I realize that I have come out...I have returned to a completely different country. This concerns not only the prices and the new value of the ruble, and what is happening in Belarus. It seems to me all the masks have been torn away. This is a dictatorship, and that's clear to everyone. And the head of the state even admits this. This absolutely changes the situation, it seems to me. But politics are very far from my feelings and senses now.

I'm finding it hard to believe. It's hard for me to hold myself back. It's good that people, friends, Irina's parents have come to visit us. Otherwise, my eyes would be moist. And I would just give way to my feelings. But it's good that I am held back, that people are nearby.

My son...Danka said that he was feeling shy. And I said that I was shy, too. We haven't seen each other in a long time. And believe me, that's the most important thing now.

...Ira wrote and told me, and I hadn't expected it, that there were so many people who suffered for me, worried about me, fought for me. Only solidarity, most likely, saved me. And my family. An enormous thanks to all of you.

There are lots of articles on charter97.org about the release of Sannikov and Bandarenka. Also Sannikov did an interview on an NTV talk show (see above), the transcript in English is here.

Mainly he calls for the release of all the remaining political prisoners, and thanks people for working on his case.

Bandarenka gave an interview to the newspaper Korrespondent saying that as long as Russia backed the Belarus regime, little change would happen, quoting Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet political prisoner now in Israel: "A little dictatorship exists as long as there is support from a big dictatorship."

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorski has said no modernization of Belarus is possible until political prisoners are released:

”Every person is born with certain rights: right to live, to choose leaders. When these rights are taken away, people fight for them. We, the Poles, have experienced the bitterness of captivity, and we carefully perceive the voice of the Belarusian civil society. The reflections over an incentive resulted in preparation of this dialogue. The program the European Dialogue with the Belarusian society for modernization was launched three weeks ago in Brussels. The Warsaw seminar is the first in the cycle. Its purpose is to elaborate ways of modernization of Belarus. The implementation of the reforms should begin only when the people of Belarus want it, and only if they implement them themselves. We don’t want to force you, but Poland wants to help.

Belarus is in urgent need of modernization. In the economic freedom ratings by Freedom House, Belarus is on the 42nd place. Reform deadlock, high prices, no perspectives for the young, a very weak flow of investments. The state capitalism leads to corruption, people’s purses are getting thinner. This controlled, “tamed” economy will sooner or later lead to a grave crisis. Market economy, in its turn, helps establish a free state. Poland wants to become Belarus’ companion, and that is why we launch this initiative."

This is a variation of the ideas expressed by Nobel Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights campaigner, who always linked peace and progress with intellectual freedom and human rights, and told the detentniks back in the day that there wouldn't be nuclear disarmament and arms control until there was intellectual freedom and release of political prisoners.  Sakharov was probably more of a socialist than Sikorski, but Sakharov didn't think the economy would be fixed by Soviet-style solutions, either. Belarus is in a shambles; people depend on the state for their low-paying jobs and some sort of food rations available even at high prices and that's how the regime persists. Lukashenka can keep pointing to the economic wrenchings of Russia or Ukraine and get people to cling to him.

As Index on Censorship has said, Sannikov and Bandarenka are released, but Belarus is still not free...

 

 

 

Now Here's a Plan! Let's Have the Rubber-Stampers Monitor the Turkmenbashi Coronation!

2007 elections in Turkmenistan. Photo by Bohan Shen.

The rubber-stamp parliament of Belarus is going to send representatives as part of the CIS monitoring team to observe the presidential elections in Turkmenistan on February 12.

I'm stocking up on chips and diet Coke to stay up all night on the 12th as I'm sure it's going to be a squeaker...NOT!

The state news agency Belta reports today:

Deputy Chairperson of the Permanent Commission for Education, Culture, Science and Sci-Tech Progress of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus Galina Yurgelevich will take part in the observation of the presidential election in Turkmenistan.

She might as well write her report right now -- we all know what it will say.

Belastan, of course, is the place where the rival presidential candidates Andrei Sannikov and Nikolai Statkevich are still in prison a year after fraudulent elections as are many others associated with the opposition campaigns.

It's where a docile coopted opposition is now announcing they'll take part in parliamentary elections, even though they're entirely controlled and their fellow opposition leaders are in prison. Yuck. Where is that human solidarity we used to see in Poland?

The CIS gang will naturally go with their "special understanding" of local conditions (i.e. gas deposits) and call it in favour of the current "Turkmenbashi" or head of all Turkmens -- the Protector (Arkadag) as they call him -- Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

Running against him are the Russian fairy-tale equivalent of the 7 dwarfs, as human rights defender Natalya Shabants has called them ("the wolf and the seven goats" is even more evocative in Russian, fergananews.com reports.

Annasoltan has also called out the GONGO nature of it all, although usually "GONGO" means NGOs that are fake-created by the state, not parties -- but the concept is the same.

To help the Turkmens fake up their election, Nikolai Lozovik of Belarus' Central Election Commission will also travel to Ashgabat and another CEC member from Vitebs, Ivan Shchurok, says Belapan. They're going to meet up with the CIS "long-term" (which hasn't been that long) mission -- OSCE isn't monitoring the election formally and didn't send any long-term observers as a result. That's going to be a point of confusion for the media as it already has been -- OSCE itself doesn't help make this crystal-clear, because they send a "Limited Assessment Mission" which then sounds like "monitors" anyway. They'd be more helpful just not sending anyone. It really isn't necessary. We get it.

Like the old joke, "Vote early and often!" the CIS monitors are already watching the early presidential election votes.

Neweurasia is putting out a call to everyone to help monitor the elections and send them pictures (and they will even help you get a licensing fee! Whee! Don't spend your $27.32 all in one place!)

I do hope some brave citizen-journalists do come forward and what's more, do get licensing fees which they more than deserve (and that's why I wish we had a nice "PAYME" website to use microcurrency to instantly pay photographers and authors for pictures and stories and tip those we like -- if anybody is interested in working with me to code such a thing, write me. Creative Communism just doesn't pay the bills.)

Realistically, the Turkmen secret police will have everything pretty bottled up, and we are likely to see photos like those of the last elections with Turkmenbashi beaming in the corner encouraging people to vote for the one party's candidates.

 

 

 

 

At Least They Still Have a Song in Their Hearts

Belarus Freedom by Lyapis Trubetskoi The only thing that makes it bearable to follow Belarus every day, as I think about my friend Andrei Sannikov stuck in prison and even being tortured by Lukashenka's henchmen, is that he has so much support from his fellow countrymen and some dedicated campaigners in the West.

A reminder what makes this all possible, besides insufficient attention and spine from Europe and the world -- Russia. Here's a $2 billion gift to Belarus from Moscow, when it reduced its gas prices for example -- there's plenty more of that sort of aid and trade.

But there's more -- this kind of co-optation coming from Milinkevich -- agreeing to take part in the regime's staged "parliamentary elections" with his movement "For Freedom".  Or this kind of contorted dithering without principle from Kuznetsov (the "For Freedom" coordinator in Gomel...)

So it's all of it -- spinelessness and indifference in the West; cooptation and insufficient standing on principles at home; and of course Russia, endorsing and paying for it all. An unbeatable combo, and why it's just so damn hard to break. Still, one must try. It starts with solidarity and "living not by the lie."

Everyday I read on the different Belarusian news sites and the European Belarus emailing about people holding pickets, demonstrations, making graffiti, doing all kinds of things to remember Sannikov, Zmitser Banderenka and other languishing in prison in poor health -- and that is redeeming, of course.

Because nothing seems to make Belastan better, and only the survival of Belarus underneath is gives us hope. Here's a new blog with a song and the spirit lives on.

Thank God Oleg Volchek, who has helped so many people, got by with just four days arrest.  And the beat goes on...

But Foreign Sites Are Being Censored in Belastan

A new Internet law has come into effect in Belastan that has essentially banned one of the main news and commentary sites in Belarus, Charter97.org and other sites. That's how to understand it.

RFE/RL reports it that way.

And the Washington Post reports it that way.

For some reason, Deutsche Welle, the German radio station that broadcasts alternative information to the former Soviet Union, doesn't.

"Businesses selling goods online to consumers in Belarus will face a number of new regulations effective January 6, but contrary to media reports, Belarus has no plans to ban access to foreign websites," says DW.

For some odd reason TechPresident gets in on the act, although I don't think they ever reported on Belarus in their lives: "this is not equivalent to a shutdown of the "foreign Internet", as some commenters have said, the strong restrictions can clearly ending up in giving great control to the government of Belarus in managing access to it."

Why is the KGB's propaganda travelling along certain well-worn routes?

Charter 97, which has suffered many DDOS attacks and hacks and troubles is still up, but it could be a mirror site or the law hasn't been enforced yet.

Law or no law, Belastan interferes with the Internet all the time; and more importantly, it jails people. Founder and coordinator of Charter 97, Andrei Sannikov, who opposed Lukashenka in the elections in December 2010, has spent the last year in jail, tortured and continually denied visits with lawyers and family and shunted around to different prisons.

I'm troubled by the conclusion that Cyrus Favivar is coming to, with the help of experts he has chosen, saying that this isn't really about censorship, but revenue-collection. Just a tax issue folks, move along, nothing to see here.

Of course, any news site with ads, even if it doesn't sell products, could be viewed as "commercial" in Belarus, even if it only covered costs.

But...I'm not getting why there is this huge effort to impugn the original post of Library of Congress writer Peter Roudik.

There already essentially existed a firewall of Belastan precisely because of the enormous number of attacks on websites and arrests of web reporters.

More to the point, it's very odd that the critics of Roudik aren't addressing his central point:

The Law requires that all companies and individuals who are registered as entrepreneurs in Belarus use only domestic Internet domains for providing online services, conducting sales, or exchanging email messages. It appears that business requests from Belarus cannot be served over the Internet if the service provider is using online services located outside of the country.

How anyone could read that and conclude that there isn't censorship of foreign Internet sites is beyond me.

Many of the opposition sites are registered with domain registration companies abroad.

They don't register within Belarus because they'd likely be denied -- domain registration is controlled by the state. Duh!

I await more information on this debate because there's something wrong with this picture.