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On February 25, Belarus will hold local and legislative elections, the first since the anti-Lukashenko protests of 2020. Minsk clamped down on the opposition in the run up to the elections, and only pro-Lukashenko candidates are competing. Belarus remains firmly in Russia’s orbit.
What is happening to civil society in Belarus right now? (Spoiler alert - it's all really bad!)
To get the full picture of Belarussian politics at present, we need to remember the political crisis that started four years ago. In the summer of 2020, mass protests were staged across Belarus due to rigged presidential election. Riot police violence escalated to huge scales and several protesters were killed in the clashes.
At the end of several months of peaceful resistance, which the Belarusian authorities tried (a shy, yet honest attempt) to turn a blind eye to, the security forces returned to their traditional methods of silencing the opposition: violence and repression thus resumed. According to official data, over August-November 2020 alone some 13 thousand people were arrested all over Belarus. People started being charged with various criminal offenses. Journalists and human rights activists were put on 24-hour pre-trial arrest, only to be later dispatched to penal colonies to serve real and long sentences. Since then, the repression has generated a genuine exodus: from June 2020 and the end of 2021, Poland alone issued almost 180 thousand visas for Belarusians.
Belarus, a country with a population of nine million inhabitants, currently has 1,418 officially recognized political prisoners. The repression apparatus does not take breaks: whereas some people are released from penal colonies, the security forces find new candidates to take their place. It is difficult to specify exactly what the authorities accuse the population of: the list is so long, that it would be easier to charge Belarusians with all crimes, all at once. Likes on Facebook, comments on chat rooms, donations to victims of violence - these are all improbable reasons for imprisoning new victims for years and decades. Many opponents were forced by the authorities to leave the country (or managed to do so before being detained) and are now scattered all over the world. The leader of the democratic forces, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and her team also fled the country, standing accused of a long list of crimes. Independent journalists are designated extremists and “terrorists”. Law enforcement arrests relatives of activists and politicians, as well as of the fighters of the Belarusian regiment Kastuś Kalinoŭski (which fights on the side of Ukraine). What civil society still remains active in Belarus is crushed or expelled, and emerging NGOs simply cannot break through the concrete wall of repression.
This is the overall backdrop against which parliamentary elections will take place on February 25, 2024, a backdrop Aleksandr Lukashenko has specifically created for his opponents.
Firmly anchored in the orbit of Putin's Russia and cut out from the West, Belarus has stopped feigning democratic process
In July, Lukashenko will have been in power for 30 years, during which time his regime has sought to neutralize any political initiative that might rival his power. Elections organized over the years in Belarus have been marked by fraud, which the authorities tried to sweep under the rug, in an attempt to mimic democracy: they invited foreign observers to the country, and Lukashenko's close associates fabricated narratives according to which the electoral processes unfolded in full observance of international democratic procedures.
This time, however, the authorities are not even making an effort to mimic democracy.
The opposition was completely eliminated from the electoral process. Of the sixteen parties that used to exist in Belarus, only four are still legally functioning and all rally behind Lukashenko. Belarusians are barred from taking photos of voting ballots and are no longer told who the members of the electoral commission are. At the same time, citizens who fled the country are no longer allowed to vote in embassies – they must return to Belarus to cast their votes. It’s not hard to guess that such retaliation is targeted precisely against the representatives of civil society, who left the country after the protests. The regime does not bother to find a valid explanation for its actions – there is simply no need to emulate democratic procedures.
The reason is simple. Previously, Aleksandr Lukashenko tried to “play with double standards”. On the one hand, he sought to retain a relationship with Western countries in the hope that would spell economic and political benefits. Hence Belarus’s mimicry of a certain degree of political tolerance. At the same time, he managed to win, if not Putin's love, at least his patience. The two have fallen out and argued, but at the end of the day they both wanted to show their friendship was genuine.
Everything changed in 2020. Vladimir Putin helped Lukashenko stay in power, and in return, the Belarusian dictator had to pay a heavy price for his “friendly” support. Now that Belarus is targeted by Western sanctions, Lukashenko is completely at the mercy of the Kremlin, both politically and economically, and his complicity in the war in Ukraine makes the alliance between Belarus and Russia almost indestructible.
Moreover, even if Lukashenko wants to further distance himself from his boss at the Kremlin, it’s now impossible for him to return to his old balancing act. The endless repression, the imprisonment of political opponents such as Viktar Babaryka and Maria Kalesnikava, the war and the incident with the Ryanair plane being forced to land in Minsk make Lukashenko still too toxic for Western chancelleries. Under these circumstances, all that’s left for the Minsk leader is to lean towards Russia in every possible way, economically and ideologically.
What, then, can we expect from the election? A grim and, for the time being, bleak reality
Recently, a new wave of repression is sweeping across Belarus: in January, Belarussian law enforcement conducted mass raids among former political prisoners and their relatives. Human rights activists reported that the law enforcement forces raided the homes of a total of 229 people, 24 of whom were charged with criminal offenses. It’s worth pointing out that even those who simply wrote letters and sent parcels to acquaintances in the Detention Center were brought in for inquiries. Some of the detainees had their identification documents retained.
In the context where civil society is stifled in Belarus, such attempts by the authorities to intimidate former political prisoners seem rash. The fact that their relatives, who are waiting for their release and have no intention of starting a new revolution, are also targeted by repression, shows that Aleksandr Lukashenko is still feeling the traumatic effects of 2020. And although his grip on power now seems solid, the fear of losing control of the situation still haunts him, to the extent that he punishes everyone who had anything to do with what happened four years ago.
The authorities do not shy away from threatening anyone who wants to voice their opposition: Internal Affairs Minister Nikolay Karpenkov said that Wagner Group instructors and advisers, who arrived in Belarus after the group's former leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, renounced his revolt (also as a result of Lukashenko's intervention) remain vigilant and ready to assist the Belarusian security forces during the election period.
To conclude, the upcoming elections are very likely to be as calm and uneventful as possible. Belarus has decided to “refrain” from inviting OSCE observers in the upcoming election. Candidates openly toe the line dictated by Lukashenko, while the opposition is either in prison or in exile.
Belarus continues to exist in this grim and, for the time being, bleak reality.
