EUROPE’S LAST DICTATOR?

In Belarus, Europe last old style Soviet style dictatorship, a prominent human rights organization in Minsk is being evicted from its office. The Deputy Chairman of the Vyasna (Spring) Human Rights Center Valyantsin Stefanovich reported on November 19th that the unregistered organization had received papers from Belarusian authorities saying that it should vacate its office by November 26th.

Back in the USSR?

Belarus has a bad Human rights record, something which lead to the imposition of sanctions (including a travel ban for government officials) by Western governments. An Amnesty International report on Belarus noted that restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly had increased during 2012. They noted that the Belarus government continued to carry out executions and that prisoners of conscience remained in detention and were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. Amnesty also noted the right to a fair trial was also restricted.

The Human Rights centre’s office is situated in the apartment of Vyasna chairman Ales Byalyatskim, who  is currently in prison for tax evasion, a charge he has denied since his arrest last year. Back in November 2011, a court in Minsk sentenced him to 4 and 1/2 years in prison and ordered the confiscation of all his property. The human rights centre has been working in Byalyatski's apartment for 12 years. Viasna’s activist have been subject to systematic harassment for years, the Human Rights Organisation was de-registered by the state authorities in 2003, yet has continued to operate.

The opposition boycotted elections in September of 2012 which the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) described as unfree with the electoral authorities clearly showing a lack of “neutrality” or “impartiality”, not to mention serious concerns about electoral procedures. Oddly enough the observer mission from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) led by Belarus's ally, Russia described the election as being "transparent and open".

Back in June (2011) 1,000 people defied a ban in Belarus to hold a silent protest at the economic crisis in the capital Minsk, with police holding back. The protestors gathered peacefully in streets close to President Alexander Lukashenko's main administration building. The rally  was organised through social networking sites despite threats from the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko (who has been in power since 1994) that he would "strike hard" against protesters.

Protest rallies in Belarus are becoming increasingly rare as the authorities have been engaged in a crackdown against dissent since December 2010.  After the Presidential election in December 2010 five former candidates and 37 opposition activists to be accused of incitement after tens of thousands of people took part in protests after the 19th December vote which was described by international monitors as "lacking transparency".

TIME FOR A FREE CUBA

The other weekend (2nd May), largely unnoticed especially by the usually vocal yet sycophantic apologists for the repressive Cuban Communist dictatorship, who were somewhat understandably preoccupied with the final days of the Westminster general election, the wives and mothers of various political prisoners held in Cuba were finally allowed to hold their weekly protest for the first time in three weeks without being harassed.

Previously Communist Government supporters had blocked the women, known as Ladies in White, from marching on the previous two Sundays. It takes real courage to confront a dictatorship that imprisons without trial (well save for show trials) and detains people who dissent. Perhaps this is a beginning the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina and Charter 77 in old Czechoslovakia were small in number but managed to see out their respective dictatorships. 

The BBC notes that the archbishop of Havana had intervened on behalf of the women, stating that Cardinal Jaime Ortega said the Communist authorities had agreed to allow the marches during the month of May, after which they would review their decision. On Sunday 25th, the women were blocked from marching by government supporters who corralled them into a park, where they shouted insults at them for hours.

For some years the 'ladies in white', a group of wives of political prisoners in Cuba, have been courageously staging weekly marches in the capital Havana. On the 26th April they were blocked and taunted by government supporters, and finally led away to a police bus. The Cuban government has routinely described the dissidents as common criminals who were paid by the US to destabilise the country. 

Cuba (just in case our home grown niavatistas have forgotten) is a repressive Communist dictatorship, earlier this year on 18th March which happens to be the anniversary of the mass arrests in 2003, the majority of whom remain detained remain behind bars, there were protests. This year the anniversary would probably have passed unnoticed save for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years.

Even the European Parliament was moved to vote to condemn his death. In response the state controlled Cuban media, ran with a series of highly critical articles which appeared on the front page of the official newspaper Granma almost every day since then the EU vote. The EU has ineffectually called for a policy of engagement and dialogue with the communist-run island, a policy that sits in stark opposite to the continuing US trade embargo.

The US trade embargo has only hurt the long suffering ordinary people most rather than the members and dependants of the Communist Government and its elite, needs to come to an end. There is a pressing need for free and fully democratic elections in Cuba - perhaps this last Communist dictatorship may yet be finally consigned into the dustbin of historywhere it belongs - either way the decision needs to be made neither by the US Government or the Communist Dictatorship, but, by the Cuban people themselves.