David Kramer: No loans to Lukashenka’s dictatorship

Key IMF donors should clearly state that loans should not be given to the dictatorship.

Recently a well-known human rights organization “Freedom House” started to follow the situation in Belarus with special attention. “Rossijskaya gazeta” was told by David Kramer, executive director of this NGO how this organization evaluates the events in Belarus. David Kramer is a former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

- Many experts and political analysts in the West state that the Belarusian economy is on eh verge of collapse. However, Minks states that in a month or two the situation in the country is to come back to normal completely.

- Today there are two possibilities for Alyaksandr Lukashenka to avoid the main threat to his 17-year-long rule. One of them is related to a possible loan by the IMF, but to my mind, this variant has no chances, and I think that key IMF donors must state clearly that under present conditions it is impossible. And the second one could be only large-scale privatization of Belarusian enterprises, and it can help Lukashenka to stay afloat for some time.

- Do the sanctions imposed against Belarus by the EU and the US work?

- The economic sanctions against state enterprises in Belarus have effect, and it could be illustrated by the example of the year 2007, when the US imposed sanctions against Belneftekhim. Then, 2 months after sanctions were imposed, a representative of the leadership of Belarus arrived to the US Embassy in Minsk and offered to release political prisoners in exchange for lifting the sanctions. It proves that sanctions had effect in the past.

I would say that the steps recently taken by the EU related to sanctions against Belarusian state-owned enterprises will have effect as well, especially considering the fact that Minsk is in a much worse situation now than in 2007.

- But how realistic is boycott of the World Hockey Championship -2014 in Belarus offered by some people in the West? And what is its aim?

- It will have great symbolic meaning.

- Do the dispersal and arrests of protesters show weakness of the Belarusian leadership or on the contrary power of law-enforcing agencies of the country?

- What is happening in Minsk and other cities of Belarus shows that the bottom falls out of the government. Despite harsh methods of the Belarusian KGB, people continue to gather in the streets and stage peaceful protests, and however, the leadership of the country cannot tolerate that. They cannot block communications through the internet completely. People are losing fear and take a risk to be arrested or injured only because they are tired to grin and bear it. Besides, it is obvious Lukashenka is losing support quickly: according to surveys held by Belarusian opposition, his rating has fallen under 30% and now is about 25%. Undoubtedly, the methods used against peaceful demonstrators are just to speed up this decline.