Picture the scenario: Sir Paul McCartney criticises a British prime minister. And in a couple of days, he’s banned from all concert halls and every other live venue across the country. His songs are barred from all radio stations, and he cannot even arrange a gig in a small club. When journalists call the venues and radio stations that refuse to put on the former Beatle, they get no quotes but are told off-the-record by the venue and station controllers that they’ve had phone calls from local-government bigwigs suggesting a choice: Drop Paul McCartney or the business closes…
Implausible? Yes. But it’s not far off what happens in Belarus, a country that is just outside the European Union and, geographically at least, in the centre of Europe.
The Belarus Free Theatre has a burgeoning international reputation, including in Britain, as one of the bastions of the country’s uncensored culture. It has consistently raised contemporary political and social issues through its creative work: political prisoners, disappearances of opposition leaders, oppression of dissent. Its supporters include Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and Jude Law, and it is has been critically acclaimed for performances in Britain, the US, Australia and elsewhere. But in Belarus it’s almost impossible to see Free Theatre productions unless you’re one of the lucky few who knows and is trusted by one of its organisers and is invited to an almost-clandestine performance in a private home in the outskirts of Minsk (see their play Numbers below).
It is effectively banned, and the main reason is political, says its art director, Nicolai Khalezin.
“We have told the world about the fate of Belarus political prisoners, who have been put in jail after being framed-up. We gave the British news media a way into looking at Belarus and focusing on the links between British business and the Lukashenko regime.”
The Free Theatre is not alone in the Belarus cultural opposition. Rock music has always been a focus for protest. It started in the Soviet era, when the first rock bands of the perestroika period made their stand against communist rule. When independence came to Belarus in the early 90s, musicians turned from protesting to putting forward new ideas to inspire change and the building of a new country. Many emphasised themes of Belarusian national culture and history which had been long suppressed under the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union.
But under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko a new wave of Russification began. The first Belarus president changed the national symbols of the newly independent republic to the old Soviet coat-of-arms and flag, and the Belarusian language declined again, its proponents labelled “oppositional” by the regime.
Under Lukashenko, society and culture became increasingly polarised. In 2001 a rock concert took place in Minsk at which musicians protested against changes to the Belarus constitution to allow the president to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms. That was the last uncensored open-air concert in Minsk; the musicians who played found themselves denied radio airplay and started having difficulties organising concerts.
Aleh Khamenka, a leader of the folk-rock group Palac, says that the spirit of 2001 lives on.
“What we are doing is asserting a Belarusian, non-Soviet identity. We sing in Belarusian. We sing about what is ours, about what we love that is ours — our country, history and people. This approach contradicts the Soviet ideology that is based on total collectivism and neglecting the importance of individuality. We attract modern Belarusian youth and influence them. But the authorities are almost entirely people from the Soviet era. They see us as a threat, because they’re losing their leadership of public opinion to us.”
The authorities have maintained unofficial blacklists of musicians who are effectively banned form broadcasting and whose concerts are discouraged. There have been numerous occasions when a band’s gig in a club has been cancelled five minutes before it is scheduled to start after a phone call from local authorities. Among the acts that have been targeted are NRM, Krambambula, NeuroDubel, Palac and Krama, but at least two dozen bands have faced restrictions of one kind or another in the past ten years.
Liavon Volski, frontman of NRM and Krambambula, says he was really depressed when he first realised he was blacklisted. He stopped writing songs for almost three years.
“I got over it. My concerts are still cancelled in Belarus. It’s annoying, but the state’s interest in our work is a fact of life and part of the work. If you complain all the time and get desperate, you only harm your own health. What keeps me going in Belarus is the power of irony.”
The internet remains a critical free media platform in Belarus, not least because the state authorities have failed to find any means of controlling it — but otherwise Belarusian performing artists have to do their work abroad or in small clubs or private apartments, where small improvised concerts called kvaternik (kvaterameans “a flat” in Belarusian) are held.
The same problem applies to other creative activities. Authors that are at odds with Lukashenko’s policy soon fall out of favour — whether or not they have expressed political disagreements with the regime. One of Belarus’s most prominent national historians, Uladzimir Arlou, no longer gets mentioned in school textbooks after he argued for an independent European orientation for the country’s politics.
Visual artists too find themselves up against the authorities time and again. One group of artists, Pahonia, which takes its name from the traditional national coat-of-arms of Belarus that was dropped by Lukashenko, has faced repeated obstacles to mounting exhibitions that include paintings making allusions to past communist crimes or the authoritarianism of the current regime.
And if you’re blocked by the state, you don’t have a lot of independent outlets available. There are only a couple of private book publishing companies in Belarus, just a couple of private art galleries and no private theatres. Overall, about 80 per cent of the economy is state-run.
The last time blacklisting hit hard was during the 2010 presidential elections, when the rock band Liapis Trubetskoy released a song, “Don’t be a Beast”, that became an anthem for oppositionists whose protests against the authorities’ fixing of the elections was brutally suppressed. The band got no airplay on FM stations, but the video of the song on YouTube was viewed more than a million times.
And the lyrics … well, they’re a poem by Janka Kupala, a classic of the Belarusian literature, written 100 years ago, when Belarus was a part of the Russian empire. But its message is bang up-to-date for everyone in Belarus. The struggle for freedom continues.
Sieviaryn Kviatkouski is a Belarusian journalist, writer and blogger
Andrei Sannikov, a former political prisoner from Belarus, has been granted asylum in the UK. Sannikov told the Charter97 website:
It was not a simple decision for me. But I had no other choice — other options were to be tortured and humiliated in jail or to be quiet as a lamb. I remain a Belarusian politician and will go on telling the truth about my country and press for concrete measures of help to democratic Belarus. I think my decision will help to free my wife and son, who are still kept hostages by Lukashenko’s regime.
Andrei Sannikov after being beaten by police on election night in December 2010
Sannikov and six other opposition candidates were arrested after presidential elections held on 19 December 2010. Five of them were jailed. Sannikov was severely beaten by the police on election night while protesting the result in Minsk. The brutal breakup of a peaceful protest against election fraud marked the start of a mass crackdown on opposition.
He was later sentenced to five years imprisonment after being convicted of organising mass riots, his wife was also arrested.
While Sannikov and his wife Irina Khalip were both being held in KGB jails, the authorities tried to permanently remove their son Danil, then three, from their care and send him to an orphans’ asylum.
Sannikov and his aide Dzmitry Bandarenka were released on 14 April 2012 after months of international campaigning by civil society inside the country and abroad, including Index.
Sannikov’s wife Irina Khalip, a well-known journalist,remains in Minsk under house arrest serving a two-year suspended prison sentence despite a promise to lift her travel restrictions made by president Alexander Lukashenko during a recent interview with Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of the Independent newspaper.
Mike Harris, Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship said:
In the run-up to the 2010 presidential election, I interviewed Andrei in his office in Minsk. He was under huge pressure even before his arrest. Sannikov’s detention and subsequent torture show that President Lukashenko is committed to crushing any political dissent. Sannikov is still barred from standing in any future election, forcing his hand to seek asylum. The EU must call for the unconditional release of all the political prisoners before any engagement or IMF bailout of Belarus’s ailing economy.
Lukashenko came to power in 1994, and has an iron-grip on Belarus prohibiting protest and limiting civil freedoms. Human rights defenders say there are still 12 political prisoners jailed in Belarus.
Andrei Aliaksandrau is Belarus and OSCE Programme Officer at Index. He tweets at @aliaksandrau
Journalist Andrzej Poczobut is getting ready to go to prison — again. He faces criminal charges for libeling Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. Prosecutors claim that more than 20 articles Poczobut wrote for Belarus websites Charter97.org and Belaruspartizan.org are defamatory. He was arrested on 21 June and his flat was searched. His computers were confiscated, and he spent ten days in detention before being bailed.
Poczobut, who was fined and jailed in 2011 for taking part in protests deemed illegal by the Belarus authorities, believes there is almost no chance he will remain free because he was convicted of libeling the president in July 2011 and given a three-year suspended jail sentence.
“A year ago, I saw a huge file of my articles during an interrogation at the prosecutor’s office,” he says.
That showed they collect everything I had written. But even that did not help them much. I burst into laughter when I learnt what they had based their accusations on. They just picked on a word ‘dictator’ in some of my articles.
Before being sentenced last year, Poczobut spent three months behind bars. Poczobut is a correspondent for the Polish national daily Gazeta Wyborcza in Belarus and his case prompted international protests. It was discussed during a meeting of presidents of the United States and Poland, and the European Parliament and the Council of Europe both demanded his release. As a result, the Belarus authorities dropped some of their charges against him and released him under police supervision. But now the story starts all over again.
How defamation laws are used to jail and silence critics
Editor Mikola Markevich logging while serving his sentence for insulting the president
Belarus’ criminal code contains six articles related to defamation. It is a crime to insult a state official – and the most serious offence, punishable with up to five years in prison, is defaming or insulting the president.
Belarus has a long history of using the law on defamation to silence journalists and opposition activists. In 1999, one of Lukashenko’s main allies, Viktor Sheiman, then the regime’s security chief, sued the independent newspaper Naviny for libel after it published an article about his luxury houses. The paper was forced to pay massive damages – the equivalent of $50,000 – which led to its closure. Lukashenko gave Sheiman full support, declaring:
Newspapers like that should be closed down juridically, or else!
In 2001, the independent newspaper Nasha Svaboda, launched by the former publisher of Naviny, met the same fate after it was sued by Anatol Tozik, head of the State Control Committee. It was made to pay the equivalent of $60,000 in damages (Tozik had demanded $120,000) and ceased publication. Lukashenko publicly denounced “people who deliberately disseminate distorted facts and intentionally exacerbate tensions in society.” The judge in both the Sheiman and Tozik cases was Anatol Savich, who authorised the seizure of the defendants’ property and freezing of their bank accounts. Both cases were rushed through: the Sheiman case took six days from writ to judgment, the Tozik case five.
Pavel Mazhejka, journalist at Pahonia newspaper serving his sentence
Over the past decade there has been a series of defamation cases against journalists and activists – the most serious of which have landed defendants in jail. Three journalists, Mikola Markevich, Pavel Mazhejka and Viktar Ivashkevich, were jailed in 2002 for insulting the president after they criticised Lukashenko In 2004, in the run-up to the referendum on Lukashenko’s change to the constitution to allow him to serve a third term as president, opposition activists Valery Levaneuski and Aliaksandr Vasilieu were both sentenced to two years in jail for defaming him. They had published a leaflet inviting citizens to an opposition meeting that drew attention to an all-expenses-paid holiday Lukashenko had taken in Austria in 2002.
In 2007, the writer and opposition activist Andrei Klimau was sentenced to two years in high-security prison for publishing critical articles on the internet. He was released in early 2008. Other journalists and activists have been fined for insulting local officials, among them Aliaksandr Ihnatsiuk, editor of Vecherniy Stolin newspaper, and Anatol Bukas, editor of Borisovskie Novosti. In 2010, four journalists from the Charter 97 website, Maryna Koktysh, Sviatlana Kalinkina, Natalia Radzinaand Iryna Khalip, were interrogated and had their offices and apartments searched and their equipment confiscated after Ivan Korzh, a KGB general, filed a libel suit.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists has campaigned to change the law on defamation, but without success. In 2003 it collected 7,000 signatures on a petition calling for the removal of the articles on defamation of state officials from the criminal code, on the grounds that they contravened the constitution’s statement that all citizens are equal before the law – but the constitutional court ruled that the law on defamation was consistent with the principles of the constitution. Until the law is changed, journalists and activists facing defamation actions in Belarus will be up against the might of the whole state machine.
Andrzej Poczobut knows this, but refuses to give up. He says:
When I go out in the street. I meet people who were involved in my case. I don’t avert my eyes while they try to pretend they don’t know me … I keep walking with my head up and a smile on my face because I know I’m fighting for the right cause
Andrei Bastunets is a media lawyer and a Vice Chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists
Journalist Andrzej Poczobut is getting ready to go to prison — again. He faces criminal charges for libeling Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. Prosecutors claim that more than 20 articles Poczobut wrote for Belarus websites Charter97.org and Belaruspartizan.org are defamatory. He was arrested on 21 June and his flat was searched. His computers were confiscated, and he spent ten days in detention before being bailed.
Poczobut, who was fined and jailed in 2011 for taking part in protests deemed illegal by the Belarus authorities, believes there is almost no chance he will remain free because he was convicted of libeling the president in July 2011 and given a three-year suspended jail sentence.
“A year ago, I saw a huge file of my articles during an interrogation at the prosecutor’s office,” he says.
That showed they collect everything I had written. But even that did not help them much. I burst into laughter when I learnt what they had based their accusations on. They just picked on a word ‘dictator’ in some of my articles.
Before being sentenced last year, Poczobut spent three months behind bars. Poczobut is a correspondent for the Polish national daily Gazeta Wyborcza in Belarus and his case prompted international protests. It was discussed during a meeting of presidents of the United States and Poland, and the European Parliament and the Council of Europe both demanded his release. As a result, the Belarus authorities dropped some of their charges against him and released him under police supervision. But now the story starts all over again.
How defamation laws are used to jail and silence critics
Editor Mikola Markevich logging while serving his sentence for insulting the president
Belarus’ criminal code contains six articles related to defamation. It is a crime to insult a state official – and the most serious offence, punishable with up to five years in prison, is defaming or insulting the president.
Belarus has a long history of using the law on defamation to silence journalists and opposition activists. In 1999, one of Lukashenko’s main allies, Viktor Sheiman, then the regime’s security chief, sued the independent newspaper Naviny for libel after it published an article about his luxury houses. The paper was forced to pay massive damages – the equivalent of $50,000 – which led to its closure. Lukashenko gave Sheiman full support, declaring:
Newspapers like that should be closed down juridically, or else!
In 2001, the independent newspaper Nasha Svaboda, launched by the former publisher of Naviny, met the same fate after it was sued by Anatol Tozik, head of the State Control Committee. It was made to pay the equivalent of $60,000 in damages (Tozik had demanded $120,000) and ceased publication. Lukashenko publicly denounced “people who deliberately disseminate distorted facts and intentionally exacerbate tensions in society.” The judge in both the Sheiman and Tozik cases was Anatol Savich, who authorised the seizure of the defendants’ property and freezing of their bank accounts. Both cases were rushed through: the Sheiman case took six days from writ to judgment, the Tozik case five.
Pavel Mazhejka, journalist at Pahonia newspaper serving his sentence
Over the past decade there has been a series of defamation cases against journalists and activists – the most serious of which have landed defendants in jail. Three journalists, Mikola Markevich, Pavel Mazhejka and Viktar Ivashkevich, were jailed in 2002 for insulting the president after they criticised Lukashenko In 2004, in the run-up to the referendum on Lukashenko’s change to the constitution to allow him to serve a third term as president, opposition activists Valery Levaneuski and Aliaksandr Vasilieu were both sentenced to two years in jail for defaming him. They had published a leaflet inviting citizens to an opposition meeting that drew attention to an all-expenses-paid holiday Lukashenko had taken in Austria in 2002.
In 2007, the writer and opposition activist Andrei Klimau was sentenced to two years in high-security prison for publishing critical articles on the internet. He was released in early 2008. Other journalists and activists have been fined for insulting local officials, among them Aliaksandr Ihnatsiuk, editor of Vecherniy Stolin newspaper, and Anatol Bukas, editor of Borisovskie Novosti. In 2010, four journalists from the Charter 97 website, Maryna Koktysh, Sviatlana Kalinkina, Natalia Radzinaand Iryna Khalip, were interrogated and had their offices and apartments searched and their equipment confiscated after Ivan Korzh, a KGB general, filed a libel suit.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists has campaigned to change the law on defamation, but without success. In 2003 it collected 7,000 signatures on a petition calling for the removal of the articles on defamation of state officials from the criminal code, on the grounds that they contravened the constitution’s statement that all citizens are equal before the law – but the constitutional court ruled that the law on defamation was consistent with the principles of the constitution. Until the law is changed, journalists and activists facing defamation actions in Belarus will be up against the might of the whole state machine.
Andrzej Poczobut knows this, but refuses to give up. He says:
When I go out in the street. I meet people who were involved in my case. I don’t avert my eyes while they try to pretend they don’t know me … I keep walking with my head up and a smile on my face because I know I’m fighting for the right cause
Andrei Bastunets is a media lawyer and a Vice Chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists
