Waltzing with hangmen in Vienna
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0:20, Natallia Radzina, editor of charter97.org — Politics
The inconsequent politics of Western countries regarding Belarus are near criminal.
Even a most refined sense of justice can get nagging. And sometimes not only common people complain how tiresome the Belarusian problem is, but even politicians, human rights activists, diplomats and journalists who work with Belarus.
For more than one and a half year, since the so called presidential election 2010, we’ve been shouting about political prisoners in the Belarusian jails. The world was shocked to learn about their tortures in KGB investigative isolation ward, their humiliations in prisons and reformatories. Resolutions, protests, visa and minor economic sanctions of the West haven’t been effective. Lukashenka still keeps hostages, and human trafficking is still happening, as if it is not the 21st century and we don’t live in the civilized Europe.
I have written a lot about political prisoners from my own convict experience, about the fates of other jailers. I appealed to the West, I asked for harder sanctions. Today, before I started to write again, I had asked a person who has been to Lukashenka’s jail, what he wants to yell about, to urge the world, now when he knows that every day Ales Bialatsky, Mikalay Statkievich, Dzmitry Dashkievich, Eduard Lobau, Mikalay Autukhovich, the young anarchists suffer the same tortures.
He said, “I don’t want to shout, I want to howl.”
Is there completely nothing to do to stop the sufferings of the innocent people?
The sufferings can and should stop. Procrastination is criminal. The political prisoners are taunted so hard that today they fight not only for their survival. It is so diffirult not to lose one’s mind, having to endure humiliations and immense pressure to which the powers deliberately expose the political prisoners.
Even waiting for the so called amnesty, that Lukashenka so mercifully announced, is criminal. Everything has been made very clear: political prisoners will not be released. Even the political prisoners themselves wrote in their letters from jails that amnesty is not likely to include them. Then why are they told every day to appeal for pardon? It turns their hard lives to hell.
And the dictator? He is still taunting the people. He hasn’t yet signed the amnesty law, since he can see European politicians waiting gingerly to see if he will release at least one political prisoner.
Yes, it is time to howl. We’ve been playing the same game for 20 years, and the rules for this game are set by a pariah, villain, outcast and monster. And the West, so civilized and democratic, keeps on surrendering in his barbaric chess party.
Today the “western front” is somewhat animated. The European Parliament and PA OSCE have passed harsh resolutions and the UN Human Rights Council has appointed a special reporter on Belarus.
And there it came. The corrupt and hence eternal chairs of the Central Election Committee Lidziya Yarmoshyna and Mikalay Lazavik were granted visa for their trip to Vienna, to take part in the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting.
The Belarusian people, strangled by repressions, don’t know whom to trust. The participants of the last election campaign are still in prisons, under home arrests or simply were forced to flee and cannot return to their motherland, while the hangmen responsible for these crimes receive invitations to Austria.
What does Vienna want? Do they want Yarmoshyna and Lazavik to share their nearly two-decade long experience of stealing the election from the people? Do they want to learn how to convict the candidates who have good chances of becoming the president? Or is there hope that this couple of dictator’s lackeys will get back to Belarus and out of a sudden organize a free election?
There are undoubtedly many honest people in Europe who keep to a rigid policy regarding Lukashenka’s dictatorship. These people have “lobbied” the resolutions of the European Parliament, UNO and PA OSCE. But, unfortunately, there are other people, who give schengen visa to the chairs of Lukashenka’s election committee who cannot enter the European Union. But even if these outcasts get the right to visit the event held by an international organization, connoisseurs of legal norms should think about one simple question: how can people who breach all moral norms take part in the Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting?
I know who should be going with Yarmoshyna and Lazavik to Vienna: Mikalay Statkievich, a candidate of the recent election; Ales Bialatsky who did an independent observation of that election and discovered shameful falsifications all over the country; Dzmitry Dashkievich and Eduard Lobau arrested one day before the “Ploscha” in a well-planed operation by the special services; the anarchists who got long prison terms for just one purpose, to demonize the opposition and label it “extremist”.
Let’s invite a cannibal to dinner, cook nine different dishes for him and then wonder why he ate the maître d´hôtel before he even tasted the appetizer.
Natallia Radzina, editor of charter97.org
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