National Review Online
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
An extraordinary drama is unfolding in Belarus, the
country of 9.5 million on the eastern edge of Europe. People are losing their
fear, rising up against the dictatorship that has ruled them for 26 years. The
United States should be unequivocally on the side of this democratic uprising.
The dictator is Alexander Lukashenko, who “won” his
latest “election” on August 9 by “80 percent.” This is the way it has typically
gone in Belarus, since Lukashenko took power.
He took power legitimately in 1994. That is, he won an election
fair and square (same as Hugo Chávez won fair and square in Venezuela
initially, same as dictators often begin). Lukashenko was bad news from the
start: an open admirer of Hitler.
After he won election, he quickly turned Belarus — which
had enjoyed democracy for a scant three years — into a personal fief. He took
control of the courts, the banks, the universities, and so on. The Belarusian
intelligence agency works for him, strictly. Charmingly, it is the only such
agency in the post–Soviet Union to retain the old name: “KGB.”
For years, people have referred to Lukashenko as “the
last dictator in Europe.” He held his sham elections from time to time, maiming
or otherwise sidelining the opposition candidates. (They were incredibly brave
to attempt to run in the first place.) One of the sham elections took place in
2010. Afterward, there were widespread democratic protests, which the dictator
cracked down on, hard. We published a piece by our Jay Nordlinger called “The
Assault on Belarus.”
An exasperated dictator told his subjects, “That’s it. I
warned you that if some commotion started, we’d have enough forces. Folks, you
tangled with the wrong guy. I’m not going to hide in the basement. So let’s be
done with it. There will be no more hare-brained democracy. We won’t allow the
country to be torn to pieces.”
What he meant by that last sentence was, “I won’t allow
democracy to dislodge me.”
As in the past, there were protests after the election
this month, and, as in the past, Lukashenko has cracked down very, very hard.
It is hard to read the testimonies of the tortured. It is hard to see videos of
Belarusian security forces, making the blood flow in the streets. It is hard to
listen to recordings made outside the detention center in Minsk: The screams of
the tortured will send chills down your spine.
So far, about 6,700 protesters have been detained.
Instead of cowing the nation, the arrests and the torture
have had an interesting and opposite effect: People are turning out in greater
numbers than ever before, shedding their fear, figuring they have little to
lose. On Sunday, Belarus saw its biggest demonstration ever: some 200,000
people.
Some people are singing, as in the Estonian revolution —
the “Singing Revolution” — of the late 1980s and early ’90s. Police officers
are turning in their badges, saying they cannot participate in the abuse of
their fellow citizens. State workers are going on strike.
Lukashenko showed up at a tractor factory, once a bastion
of support. Instead of greeting him warmly, the workers shouted, “Go away! Go
away!” Some people speak of a “Ceausescu moment” — a moment like that in
December 1989, when Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, was taken aback
by catcalls and boos in the crowd.
For his part, Lukashenko is calling democratic protesters
“rats,” “trash,” “bandits,” and the like. They are “controlled by puppeteers,
by outsiders,” he says. All this is straight out of the longstanding
Soviet/Russian playbook.
Lukashenko blames such figures as Mikhail Khodorkovsky
and Alexei Navalny for the unrest in Belarus. Khodorkovsky and Navalny are both
Russians. The former is the onetime oligarch who for years has been a leading
democracy advocate; the latter is the main opposition leader to Vladimir Putin.
Adhering to the playbook, Lukashenko claims that the West
and NATO are “encircling” Belarus: “escalating” and “building up.” In an
interesting twist, he has played the race card, saying, “Europe wants to turn
Belarus into a toilet! They want to send NATO soldiers here, black and yellow,
to whip us! You want this?”
Clearly, Lukashenko knows that he and his rule are
hanging on for dear life. “We had elections,” he told the people. “Until you
kill me, there will not be any more elections.” Like all dictators, everywhere,
he has linked his own fate to that of the nation: “If you destroy Lukashenko,
it will be the beginning of the end for you.”
He has appealed to Putin for help, and the Russian
strongman is playing his hand cagily, as usual. It remains to be seen whether
he will intervene for Lukashenko.
What will the United States do? What is it doing now? A
touching moment, for us Americans, occurred when Belarusians gathered in front
of state-television offices in Minsk and chanted, “Radio Svaboda! Radio
Svaboda!” That is the way they say “Radio Liberty,” this service being an
outlet of the United States, on which many in unfree countries rely.
In 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Belarus
Democracy Act. (He and his administration took a keen interest in Belarus and
its travails.) That act was most recently updated in 2011. It authorizes
assistance to those working for democracy in Belarus. The United States should
be using the powers of that act to the full, right now.
And the president of the United States should speak up
for the people of Belarus and their rights. He should place this country on the
side of their cause. We urged that he do the same for Hong Kong. The United
States should stand for freedom, democracy, and human rights against the
tyrants and torturers. In this way, we will be true to ourselves. It is hard to
be genuinely American otherwise.
Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who became a democracy
champion, made an interesting observation last week: “As we’ve said in the
Russian opposition for years, resisting a dictatorship is a marathon, but you
have to be ready for a 100-meter dash at any moment.” That moment seems to have
arrived in Belarus.
Following the 2010 election and its aftermath, Jay
Nordlinger wrote, “On one thing, all observers agree: The dictatorship is
scared.” Lukashenko was spooked by the election — which he had to steal — and
was therefore lashing out, and cracking down. “Observers also agree on
something else: that he is doomed. That this dictatorship will fall.”
The problem was, “Lukashenko can break a lot of bones,
and wreck a lot of lives, before he’s through.”
Yes. He is doing that right now. But let it be, if at all
possible, for the last time.
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