Such sanctions won’t get you pregnant

So, it happened. Lidziya Yarmoshyna was finally let inside a duty free store to buy a perfume.

Now she smells like a rose, but there is no one to appreciate it - she only has Lozovik to talk to, who hardly knows something about perfumery. Who won from this trip? Nobody. Who lost? Everyone.

Yarmoshyna’s trip is very similar to the sanctions that the European Union is so damn proud of and uses as an objective proof of how intolerant it is towards the Belarusian regime. Only Yarmoshyna’s shopping at a duty free makes her case much more absurd and ridiculous. Just imagine the chairwoman of the Election committee among those pretty shelves! But let’s forget the ridiculous picture and think how annoying the situation is for many people, including, by the way, Yarmoshyna herself.

Do you think she enjoyed her trip to Vienna? She knew she could expect anything there – a rally, demonstration, boycott, mockery in the media and even insults. She’d feel the same sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. An outcast cannot enjoy a cup of coffee on the streets of Vienna, because outcasts, whose stay in a country is an exception from the rule, are always reminded they are not welcome. Some time ago Natallia Piatkievich shared with journalists her impressions after her UN trips to the USA, when the visa was granted – again – as an exception. She said it felt awful to be locked up for identification when her name appeared in the lists of personas non-grata. Of course it felt awful. Even the fact tha the visa is given “as an exception”, is humiliating, especially when you realize that it can be your last visa, and that in future Hurgada can be your only destination.

Yarmoshyna is displeased. So are the supporters of the counter-regime sanctions. And now let’s recall other sanctions, that don’t include visas. Who benefited from them? Lukashenka is furious because his “money bags” cannot work in the European markets. Even more, he is constantly reminded of the political prisoners and dictator regime he’s created. The supporters of the sanctions are furious; saying “to hell with Chyzh, but we’re keeping two projects that involve European companies in order to protect Europeans” is the same as saying “sorry guys, actually we don’t care at all about your political prisoners and human rights, our business cannot suffer because of your rights, so it’s better if you keep on suffering and going to jail; but we will probably include a couple of judges and prosecutors to our black list.” The opponents of the sanctions and supporters of the cooperation with the regime, that they like to call a neutral euphemism “dialogue”, are furious, too. Even these palliative half-sanctions still annoy Lukashenka, and it hinders the “dialogue”, pardon my French. Even Makey’s embarrassing gang, where political losers could feel important for at least a couple of hours, fell apart like a house of cards. On the total, it all sucks, nobody won, and only Europe is convinced that it does its utmost to fight with the Belarusian dictatorship.

I recall a joke from Soviet times. At a rush hour, in an overcrowded bus, a woman screams:

- What do you think you’re doing?!

- Nothing, a frustrated man replies.

- Do something then!

I’d like to repeat, specially for Europe: do something then! This way or another, but you should finally make up your mind. You can just cancel all the sanctions, involving visa and “money-bags” alike, and proclaim them ineffective and leading nowhere. Open the whole world for the Belarusian regime. Maybe they will release someone then? And let Yarmoshyna go to Cannes, stroll along Croisette Boulevard and educate young girls looking for millionaires on how to cook borsch. Let Lukashenka go to London to see a first night of the Free Theater and have a beer in a pub, side by side with Mikalay Khalezin. It would be a clear position, something to deal with, however disgusting. Or vice versa, you can introduce hard sanctions, even embargo, like in Yugoslavia in the 90s; again, a clearly articulated position. The fluctuations and discussions around Chyzh’s projects and the “we ban here but allow there”-policy are just repulsive for all the parties of this confrontation.

But Europe still tries to be “a little bit pregnant”, just like five, ten years ago. And it’s us who gets to vomit.

Iryna Khalip for charter97.org