October 17, Belarusians will answer a simple question: “Do you allow the Republic’s first president Aleksandr Lukashenko to take part in presidential elections as a presidential contender and do you accept part 1 clause 1 of the constitution in a new version envisaging a 5-five year presidential term.
Photo: Sergey Kostin
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No Light at the End of the Tunnel
On Sunday, October 17, Parliament elections and a referendum await Belarus in which Aleksandr Lukashenko would like to receive permission to run for a third term, in essence receiving a mandate of life-long trust. Kommersant special reporter Valery Panyushkin went to Belarus to talk with people, but instead of finding a variety of opinions, he found night searches, tailing and fear.
Getting away from the spies
“There is talks that I have a video camera built into the street lamp across my house,” says the Olympic champion Vladimir Parfenovich, “so, wave hello to the lamp.”
I wave. We had tea with cranberry jam at Parfenovich’s and watched analytical programs on Byelorussian state channels (there are no private channels), then went out for a smoke. Parfenovich is one of the four opposing deputies of the Belarusian parliament. He was taken out of the elections when the signatures gathered in support of his candidacy were found to be invalid. Because of his opposition activities, Parfenovich has ceased to be the owner of construction company in Minsk, and is not receiving the life-long stipend paid to all Olympic champions. He says he won’t be allowed to have a business in Belarus. In July, he even went on a hunger strike, demanding that Minsk mayor Mikhail Marinich, charged with stealing computers from himself, be released from prison. Also, Parfenovich demanded that the referendum on Lukashenko’s third term not be called. Then, when the school in Beslan was seized, Parfenovich said that that was a sure time for the Belarusian president to announce the referendum. And he did. President Lukashenko likes to attribute the absence of terrorism in Belarus to his efforts.
We go outside. There is a black car parked by the park across from the house. Two cigarettes can be seen through the windshield. The spies have relaxed and decided to have a smoke.
“That’s your tail,” says Parfenovich. We get into a car, start the engine and cross the park, getting really close to the agents’ car, like ships get close to each other before the pirates storm. Their car takes off and we follow. It goes out onto the avenue and rides between lanes so we wouldn’t know till the last second whether they will turn to the right or to the left. Finally, our tail turns left and we continue driving straight, quite happy with ourselves.
Here in Belarus, when opposition members call each other by phone, they do not use any names, nor meeting places. Rather, they say “same place as yesterday” or “same place as the day before yesterday.” They also have code words they for book, newspaper, and leaflet, but I promised not to say what they are.
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| Photo: Sergey Kostin |
| Vladimir Parfenovich, one of the four opposition deputies of Belorusian parliament. His candidature was withdrawn from presidential elections after signatures for his candidacy were declared invalid. |
Narodnaya volya, the opposition newspaper, pays the post office twice as much postage as official newspapers. Another opposition paper, Nedelya, is forbidden for subscription or for sale in kiosks, and is sold only on the streets, or thrown into mailboxes. It changes its name from time to time, to win time while agencies figure out what newspaper to be ban next.
There are no other papers in opposition.
There are no independent radio stations.
There are no independent TV channels.
Sunday night, analytic programs, identical like twins, are broadcasted by the only two Belarusian channels received by regular antenna.
The first program, called The shield of the Homeland, is on military training. Lukashenko speaks into the camera for fifteen minutes straight on how he was asked so many times to bring in a peacemaking contingent to some hot spot of the world. Later I asked the US ambassador George Krol whether that was true. He said: “The US didn’t ask, that's for for sure, and I’d be surprised to find out that the UN did.”
Then comes the angry rebuke show. Lukashenko rebukes in absentia the European Council and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which accused his ministers Viktor Sheiman, Yury Sivakov, Vladimir Naumov, and Dmitry Pavlichenko, head of Quick Reaction Force, of kidnapping. The president says that he will not give up his best and most loyal friends.
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| Photo: Archive photo |
| Search in the flat belonging to ex-head of Working Women Party Maria Alieva. Alieva is now an authorized representative of Valentina Polevikova and Aleksandr Dobrovolsky, presidential contenders from the opposition.Police searched Maria Alieva’s flat without a search warrant and seized the leaflets and report of the seizure. |
Then follows a show on gasification of Polesye. The president lights a gas torch, which looks like a little zink bucket, at the central square of the little town. And the happy old ladies rejoice in anticipation of life returning to their town, although they have no money to draw a gas line to their houses, and the town is in the zone of effect of Chernobyl catastrophe and life is forced to return to it, strictly by the president’s directive. But everybody is happy, especially the young family, which got gas drawn to their house especially for the president’s coming. They don’t know yet that the pay for gas is twice their monthly salary.
Then appeared a show about the teachers. The president awards the country’s best teacher with a crystal stork and an automobile, saying, there is no more valuable vocation than that of a doctor and teacher. He fails to mention, though that each month in Belarus more and more criminal cases are started against doctors on charges of corruption and exceeding jurisdiction. Among the common people, this practice is called “the doctors case” and is explained by the fact that the new Health Minister is a lady who has become a particularly close to the president recently.
He did not mention the fact that the Belarus school of Jacob Kolas has been closed and passed to the underground functioning, nor the fact that the European Humanitarian Institute has been closed and moved to Lithuania, nor the fact that the teachers have been passed new teaching plans, which accentuate the president’s role in history. He did not mention the fact that September 1 the first graders begin their school by listening to his compositions for four hours.
Then follows the show on cucumbers. The president gently probes cucumbers at a tinned food factory.
It would be wrong to assume all shows were about the president. There is also a show on how German embassy official bought cocaine for himself and his homosexual partner, a worker of the US embassy corrupted minors, and an American citizen found a religious cult in her private apartment in Byelorussia. Later I asked the US ambassador if he would defend his citizens, and he said that the mentioned people had not been deported from the country or received any charges against themselves.
Finally, the broadcast on how the Russian politicians Valentina Ivanova (United Russia), Viktor Ilyukhin (KPRF), Aleksey Mitrofanov (LDPR) and Dmitry Rogozin (Rodina) support the referendum.
I arrived to Belarus, to talk with the people who see all this every day and have no excess to anything else. So I did.
A poorly dressed woman on the street asked me if I was paid for asking questions. I honestly answered that I was and was cussed at.
A well dressed middle aged woman told me that Lukashenko, of course, was a dictator, but in those countries where dictators are overthrown, a war usually starts, like in Iraq, for instance, so it’s better he remained.
A young lady in the bar asked me:
“What kind of passport have you got?”
“Russian,” I said.
“Easy for you to speak with a Russian passport.”
A Plumber Always Rings at Night
Friday, October 1, around nine p.m. somebody rang the door of Maria Alieva.
Alieva used to head up the Party of Working Women, but the party is under a ban and Alieva became a trusted person of the opposed deputy candidates Valentina Polevikova and Aleksadr Dobrovolsky. She says that she looked into the peephole and asked who it was. Behind the door were stood two men in working clothes saying they were from the maintenance department saying that the neighbors living below had complaints on water leaking into their apartment, so they needed to check the pipes in Alieva’s apartment. So Alieva opened the door and the men walked in. Turned out they had police uniforms under the work coats. Following them a whole police department rushed into the room.
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| Photo: Sergey Kostin |
| The whole time I was in Minsk, I only saw one opposition member who did not say he was afraid. That was Dmitry Bandarenko. |
They operation was commanded by the Capitan of Leninsky Department of internal Affairs Pavel Semashko and another man dressed in civilian clothes, called Maryanovich by everybody. The policemen did not show the search order. They seized a pack of Nedelya newspapers, to which Alieva was rather used. They also wanted to seize a freshly published issue of leaflets of Polevikova and Dobrovolsky. Alieva said she would not give up the leaflets of free will.
The thing is that a candidate for deputy of the parliament is allowed $450 for the whole election campaign from the budget. According to law a candidate may not receive material aid from anybody, and must carry out the whole campaign using only this amount. If leaflets are confiscated, it is not possible to print new ones, because the budget would be exceeded. The leaflets are to be based on current information and the candidate should have the printer’s invoice in his possession.
Alieva displays the invoice, but the policemen say that it lacks a description of the contents of the leaflets. “What? Do you think the invoice for the print run of the newspaper has a description of its contents on it?” she asks. The policemen do not argue. They go from apartment to apartment looking for witnesses for the confiscation. They looked for a long time. Every resident of the large apartment building refused to act as witness and sign the warrant. All those people, who, according to the television and official surveys, support Lukashenko practically in full unanimity, refused to collaborate with the regime.
While the police were searching, Alieva telephoned. They had not forbidden her to do so. She called parliamentary candidates Dobrovolsky and Polevikova, she called human rights activists, journalists, OSCE observers and friends.
I got to her apartment at about 11:00. There were already a lot of people there, in addition to the police. There were three representatives of the OSCE, who were trying to call members of the election commission. The latter hung up on them. Memebers of the banned human rights group Vesna were there. Journalists Pavel Sheremet, just released from a three-month jail term, and Svetlana Kalikina, who was recently fired from her job, were there.
“Don’t touch my uniform,” a policeman ordered, when any of the 20 people jammed into the tiny two-room apartment brushed him accidentally.
“Don’t let them go into the kitchen alone!” Alieva cried out any time the police approached the kitchen or bathroom. “Send somebody with them.”
Those worries were not unfounded. Many opposition leaders and their children are in Belarusian prisons on narcotics charges and they found a revolver in the apartment of former mayor of Minsk Marinich, although without his fingerprints.
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| Photo: Sergey Kostin |
| Leader of Belorusian Communists Sergey Kalyakin |
At around midnight, the police called for reinforcements, and ten soldiers with machineguns came bursting into his apartment.
“Careful! They have machineguns!” the OSCE observers shouted. The women shouted as the police took their leaflets away, because that is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recommended doing in The Gulag Archipelago when they break into your apartment or arrest you on the street.
“Stop wailing!” snapped a policeman. “Your pamphlets will be examined and returned to you tomorrow.”
They still have still not been returned. But they probably will return them after the elections. I asked American ambassador Krol whether night searches and tailings were a Belarusian internal affair. “No, they are not,” he answered. Belarus is a member of the OSCE and obliged to abide by the fundamental norms of international law.”
When the police left, one of the women wrung her hands and said, “They didn’t leave a warrant of confiscation!”
Maybe the police did not leave a warrant because they did not have the mandatory witnesses. I wanted to ask sociologist Andrey Vardomatsky if a populace that is liable to late-night police raids and confiscation of information will support a third term for Lukashenko. But I could not ask him. Two weeks before the elections, tax inspectors made an unscheduled audit of his books and he was unable to continue his surveys.
Surveys done by the Yury Levada Center are promising for Lukashenko, although they indicate that he alcks the support to become president-for-life.
“But don’t worry, Valera,” Vladimir Parfenovich comforts me. “Lukashenko will win the referendum. And the warrant has already been made out in two copies.”
The Spiral of Silence
Belarusian communist leader Sergey Kalyakin tells me, “You understand, sociologists call it the spiral of silence. Every person inclined to opposition thinks he is the only one, because he will never see any others.”
Kalyakin complains that Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov does not support his Belarusian comrades, but Lukashenko. He told me about Valery Rybchenko, a member of his party, who was threatened by Leonid Glukhovsky, an Interior Ministry investigator, that he would lose his job if he did not withdrawal his candidacy in the parliamentary elections, but would be made deputy director of the factory where he works if he did. Every opposition politician, without exception, told me that he was threatened for his disobedience and promised monetary rewards for being obedient.
Demonstrations are prohibited in Minsk. Expressions of discontent are possible only on Bangalore Square, squirreled away in a city park on the outskirts of town. On July 21, the opposition held a meeting concert on Bangalore Square. All the bands scheduled to appear were banned. But they did not give in. They recorded an album together called “Rock for Freedom” and put on an illegal concert in the Reactor nightclub.
I was at that concert. A policeman was searching a girl to make sure she did not have leaflets in her bra. The concert was not revolutionary. They just sang songs in Belarusian. Oleg Khomenko, leader of the banned group Palats, told me, “I don’t want to look like a revolutionary. We just want the Constitution to be enforced. At least the main points of it.” Filipp Chmyr, leader of the banned Drum Ecstasy said, “We shouldn’t break the law. The government breaks the law, not us.”
The whole time I was in Minsk, I only saw one opposition member who did not say he was afraid. That was Dmitry Bandarenko. He has been imprisoned six times for his political views. He was the director of an independent radio station, and now that the station is closed down, he is allied with the radical youth organization Zubr (Buffalo), although he will not say in what capacity. But he told me, “We have chosen the methods of nonviolent struggle. You know how hard it is even to get the cops to bash me over the head? I served in the special forces. But we have chosen nonviolent methods.”
Bondarenko said that there will be an unauthorized demonstration the day after the referendum. He said that blood would flow. He said he would be arrested and 70,000 more people.
I go home. In the village of Bobr, along the way, lives artist Ales Pushkin. The banned white, red and white Belarusian flag flies over his house. Pushkin’s claim to fame is that he hauled a cartful of manure to Minsk and dumped it in front of Lukashenko’s residence. He decorated the local church and portrayed Lukashenko in hell in the Day of Judgment. They painted over the scene.
Pushkin is not home. His wife Yanina gives me tea and takes care of a baby. She says that I can’t go see the painted-over fresco because the priest will brought in for questioning by the police if a journalists visits the church. Yanina is a schoolteacher. I ask her, “Do they bother you at work?”
“I’m on maternity leave,” she answers. “Otherwise they would.”
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The Batka’s Margin of Error
Among the sociological surveys that deserve the most attention is the one that is the most favorable to Lukashenko. The Levada Center estimates that 61 percent of the populace will turn out at the polls (46 percent will “surely” and another 15 percent “most likely”). If we assume that supporters and opponents of a third term for Lukashenko turn out in equal force, 48 percent of that 61 percent will be in favor of changing the Constitution, that is, 29 percent of the populace. To amend the Constitution, more than 50 percent of registered voters must approve. Lukashenko will come up 21 percent short, that is, by 34 percent of those who come to the polls. That is the margin of error that will sink the referendum.
Would you take part in the referendum, if it were held next Sunday? (%)
Will vote for sure – 46
Will most likely vote – 30
Don’t know – 11
Will not vote for sure – 6
Doubt that will vote – 5
Unable to say – 2
How will you most likely vote in the referendum? (%)
Yes – 48
No – 37
Can’t say – 15
Levada Center, 1086 people, September 15-21, 2004
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 11, 2004
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