Lawyer: Reasonable People Would Have Never Agreed To This Pension Law

The regime has descended to blackmail.

The regime has revised the list of reasons to deprive Belarusians of pensions “for valuable service” to the country. The new regulations provide for the possibility of refusing to pay a pension for valuable service in case of “committing administrative offences against administrative or public order, or public morality.”

The journalists Charter97.org asked a lawyer to comment on these new regulations:

“The range of offences as grounds for deprivation of special pensions is huge. For example, under the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Republic of Belarus, these include drinking alcoholic beverages and smoking in a public place or appearing in a public place or at work while intoxicated, not to mention petty hooliganism.

Following the provisions “On Pensions for Valuable Services to the Republic of Belarus”, the grounds for the emergence of the right to a special pension are age, length of service or disability. The most outstanding citizens of Belarus have the right to apply for such pensions: athletes - prize-winners, laureates of national prizes, honorary citizens, as well as citizens who held the highest government positions of the Republic of Belarus.

We see that, on the one hand, the new regulations create legal grounds for depriving the country’s most prominent citizens of pensions for almost any administrative offence: participation in protests, “distribution of extremist materials”, etc., and on the other hand, the Belarusian authorities receive a tool for blackmailing officials within the system.

The regime continues to systematically pass laws and create the illusion of legality to justify the arbitrariness of power, blowing smoke for the international community and its citizens. There are many examples of this with previous legislative acts and legislative amendments: the law “On seizure of property”, the decree “On the prevention of social dependency” (on parasitism), the Regulation “On the procedure for registering departure for permanent residence outside Belarus” or the amended “Mass Media Act” and many others.

All these kinds of legal acts are adopted only at the orders of the government and in its interests. It is impossible to imagine that representatives of the people of Belarus or the citizens themselves, would agree to tightening pension legislation of their own free will and being of sound mind.

An unprecedented number of arrests of Belarusian citizens who oppose the existing system is forcing the dictatorship to invent more and more tools to keep the wheel of repression running in Belarus.

We should not forget about the citizens of Belarus living abroad. In general, Belarus is experiencing serious problems with social security. According to various sources, about 200,000 – 500,000 citizens could have left Belarus since August 2020. Following the Law “On Pension Provision”, pensions for citizens of the Republic of Belarus living outside its borders are to be paid in accordance with bilateral agreements signed by Belarus and foreign states.

Many of them live in countries which did not sign such agreements with Belarus. That is, they are already deprived of pensions.”

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