Plot of the damned

The scandal around the Brussels-based Office for a Democratic Belarus has reached its culmination.

The names of representatives of Belarusian NGOs actively involved in the initiative of lifting visa bans from officials guilty of electoral fraud, repression and torture have been revealed.

Volha Stuzhynskaya, the head of the Office for a Democratic Belarus, who announced the cynical initiative, did not probably supposed he would have to face such a massive attack from the independent press, political activists and relatives of political prisoners. She was careful enough to leave the initiators of the project behind the scene.

The main ideologists of the initiative include a range of Belarusian “political experts and analysts”, if they can be called so. They are grouped around BISS, the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. The subjective of the “analytical centre” is to become the only mediator in negotiations between official Minsk and EU institutions.

Stuzhynskaya said in comments the statement had been signed by representatives of various organizations, but refused to tell their names. In reality, the initiators of the letter are “young pragmatists” from BISS – Yury Chavusau, Dzyanis Melyantsou, Alyaksei Pikulik and their older comrade Pyotr Martsau.

Two of the mentioned persons, Martsau and Pikulik as well as Nyaklyaeu’s campaign manager Andrei Dzmitryeu have recently been noticed as founders of the “New Political Force”, an organization also focused on close cooperation with the Belarusian authorities. The initiative was given up or, to be more precise, transformed from the political sector to the civil society sector. Today it is not the “New Political Force”, but “Nation’s Progressive Brains”, which should take a position not between the government and opposition, as it was planned before, but between the government and Europe leaving the opposition outside the field of political games.

There is a curious list of people, who refused to sign this doubtful document. They are economists Leanid Zaika and Leanid Zlotnikau, analysts Alyaksandr Klaskouski and Pavel Usau, sociologists Andrei Vardamatski and Aleh Manayeu, a number of human rights and public activists. They are the people who value their reputation and understand they and secret services should stay at least in different entrenchments if not on different sides of the frontline.

Just after the plot was disclosed, the signatories began to bomb websites with articles creating the ideological smokescreen with the aim of convincing us this is not cynicism mixed with treachery, but a thought-out strategy to save the nation. The first was Chavusau’s article “Sanctions as Demonstration of Helplessness”, followed the article by Melyantsou “Where Do EU Sanctions Lead?” and the article by Melyantsou and Pikulik “Elections or Boycott as Zugzwang for the Opposition” and finally by an interview of Stuzhynskaya to Regnum information agency, a dubious structure used by the secret services to throw in dirt to the information field.

The articles by Melyantsou, Chavusau, Stuzhynskaya and Pikulik contain theses, empty like a drum, saying the EU sanctions are senseless and harmful, while the best strategy is friendship between the dictator and Europe and gradual education of Belarusian in European traditions. According to them, in this case political prisoners will be released, boss will become softer, well-being will increase and the visa regime with the EU will be cancelled.

A large group of representatives of the “young pragmatists” is expected to visit Brussels in March to promote the idea of lifting sanctions, participating in the election by the opposition and building “the bridge of friendship” between the Belarusian dictatorship and the EU leadership. Let’s see if European officials will have enough political sense to understand what for the dear guests visit them.

Mikalai Khalezin