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Theatrical Show Called “Liberalization”

5
Theatrical Show Called “Liberalization”
Ihar Alinevich

Back in August 2015, an alarming occurrence happened in the country. 5 people were arrested for a political graffiti.

At the background of the Belarusian reality, this fact doesn’t look brand new: people were charged of “hooliganism” for graffiti before, not to mention numerous administrative charges for pasting posters and leaflets. One little detail has made a difference: the investigation seemed to try out the accusatory wording “distribution of extremist materials”. Later on, there was the “presidential election”, more flirtation with the West and the same old theatrical show called “liberalization”. The KGB and the Interior Ministry were ordered to slow down their flywill for a while.

However, a dictatorship cannot do without repressions for long. Demonstrative violence remains the most important tool of control over the society. It was obvious from the very start that as soon as “liberalization” was over, force structures would get back to work again.

Also, drawing the analogy with the history, it became clear that the circle of people and the spectrum of civil activity which would become targets of the upcoming repressions would greatly widen.

In Spring 2016 the flywill started again, with the new enthusiasm and energy. In the framework of fulfillment of the directive “on reinforced attention to the southern direction”, having studied the experience of the Ukraine’s Maidan, the chasteners decided to aim their sword at representatives of politicized youth subcultures.

Chronology of events in March-August 2016

March 22, Minsk. Three football fans of Partisan FC (Illia Valavik, Vadzim Boyka, Dzmitry Tsekhanovich) were arrested under the accusation of a two-year-old fight. The very fact that it was the Department for Organized Crime Control that handled the investigation, as well as the minor significance of the violation shows that the official reason for the arrest remains openly formal.

April 29, Minsk. Participants of the ecological bicycle rally “Critical mass” were detained. According to the aggrieved cyclists, the police beat them for no motive. A criminal case was started against Dzmitry Paliyenka, who passively resisted, he was charged of attacking the police.

June 13, Minsk. Two anarchists were arrested under suspicion in participation in the action of throwing bulbs with paint into the building of the State TV and Radio Company. A criminal case was started in this regard. The apartments of the participants of the movement were searched in 8 cities.

July 2, Biaroza. SWAT police attacked spectators at a punk concert. Four of the latter were charged with attacking the police.

July 14. The court trial started against Anti-Fascist Maksim Yahneshka. He was beaten by a group of neo-Nazi. When the officers of the criminal investigation department learned Maksim was an Anti-Fa, they forced the attackers to file a complaint against him. Herein, 6 raids in total were held in the apartments of the defense witnesses and activists of the Anti-Fa movement on July 26-27. On September 7, Maksim was sentenced to 3 years of limitation of liberty.

Late July, Minsk. Philip Ivanou, the fan of the Partisan FC, arrested in the case of Minsk Anti-Fascists.

August 2, Brest. 17-year-old Anarchist Andrei Dzhamburyyeu was arrested under the suspicion in organization of illegal manifestation and throwing a smoke barrel to the territory of the Department for Organized Crime Control. When they found no grounds for charges, they accused him of a fight, for which he had already been convicted in the administrative order.

Previously, the authorities used forgery for the massacre of the undesirables, like planted cartridges in Mikalai Autukhovich’s case, or obviously inadequate qualification of actions as crimes by the court. However, many people were outraged by the methods, and solidarity with the repressed had unfortunate consequences for the authorities.

Unlike prior repression, a new tactic is practiced today. The chasteners are trying to charge a person of petty criminal episodes (for example, fights) to lend credibility and conceal the political background of the case. However, no matter how precise the repressions mechanisms are, there is one characteristic that makes them evident – the selectivity of use.

The football fans, firstly those of the Partisan FC, who publicly stick to the Anti-Fascist positions, got into the main aim of the chasteners. I remember the time when the Anti-Fascists, alarmed by the domination of the neo-Nazi in sport, came out to the football stands en masse. Eventually, the Anti-Fa managed to undermine the fashion for neo-Nazism among the football fans. When there are no open ways to express one’s opinion left, the football tribune becomes a political one.

After the events in Ukraine in 2014, the groups of Partisan FC fans actively participated in the counteraction to the pro-Kremlin imperial movements in Belarus. Other unions of football fans got under the pressure of the chasteners as well: they were either dispersed or taken under control.

As it became known, KGB officers started visiting penal colonies (the so-called “correctional facilities”) and demand from convicted neo-Nazi to write claims against the Anti-Fa and vice versa. When they refuse, they send them to the penalty cell. One of such ultra-right fans of Tarpeda FC, imprisoned for drugs, gave testimony against Minsk Anti-Fa as a victim. Most likely, he was promised early release or reconsideration of the criminal case in the direction of reducing the term. How many people are there in such colonies, ready to say anything about anyone to make their prison terms shorter?

Finding such a “witness”, the investigation tries to widen the circle of the accused as much as possible. Thus, Dzmitry Yanushka and Raman Tsiaslenka, who were witnesses in the case before and had emigrated abroad long ago, got into the law-enforcement agencies’ aim. At present moment, the chasteners feel no repugnance towards putting pressure on the guys’ relatives so that they convince them to come back to Belarus.

So much so, they started pressing the sister of one of them, which made her file a complaint to the Interior Ministry’s own security administration. Of course, the checking did not reveal any violations. The other guy’s mother was ambushed in the residence area on the way to work. They seated her in a car on the pretext of "conversation". The apartments are being raided.

Since May 2016, the new prophylactic supervision has been introduced in the penal colonies (it does not even exist in the Criminal and Procedural Code): “inclined to extremism”. Those who have been put on such record are obliged to wear a yellow mark which brings along sad associations with the Hitler times methods. The “extremism” prophylactic supervision is applied against those convicts who have any political background, even against political prisoner, human rights defender Mikhail Zhamchuzhny. The supervision provides for many legal limitations, including reinforced censorship of correspondence. According to Zhamchuzhny, the censorship department destroys no less than ¾ of all letters.

It is worth noting that many of the repressed may well not be just political activists in the classic sense. However, the 99% of the repressed under the anti-Soviet 58th Article in the Stalin years were not political activists either. The chasteners’ totalitarian habits fit into the formula "One may kill a crane aiming for a sparrow”.

It looks obvious that the mechanism of current repressions has been designed with an aim to neutralize human rights defenders.

It looks obvious that the mechanism of current repressions has been designed with an aim to neutralize human rights defenders. Thuswise, according to the international standards, a victim of repression who committed a violent act cannot be officially recognized as political prisoner. Sadly, but with such approach of the human rights defenders we will soon find ourselves in a situation when dozens hundreds people will be sent to jail with a criminal veil, and they will not be considered political prisoners. With hand on heart, the “criterion or politicization” which is really practiced now is narrowed to one single point in such cases – whether the person admits guilt or not, and we all know how such confessions can be obtained.

Let the authorities manipulate the laws like a thief plays with masterkeys, claiming black is white. This is what tyranny is about. Let the European politicians continue noticing nothing; their assessments remain not very objective anyway. We all saw real priorities in autumn 2015. The most important is that we should not let anyone lead us into misconception. No tricks performed by the KGB men should darken our minds; our ancestors had already suffered this through in the USSR.

More and more victims of political repressions keep emerging in Belarus today. Alongside with that, a massive mop-up operation is taking place at the level of youth social-cultural communities, under the principle of collective responsibility. There is no doubt that somewhere in the depth of the punitive organs they are fabricating the first case under the Article “On Countering Extremism”, adopted in April 2016.

What is happening today is historically natural. A dictatorship, like any system, is not standing still. It can only be absolutized that we see every year for 20 years. Stalin's post-war repressions were tougher and more large-scale than in the 30's. The late Soviet regime also tightened the nuts, until the perestroika. And while the dictatorship does not overstrain, the Belarusian regime can only get tougher, more cynical, and unprincipled. Nobody and nothing will help, except for our own solidarity.

Ihar Alinevich, ex-political prisoner, specially for charter97.org

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