A tyrant the world ignores

MINSK, BELARUS–This may be Europe's most orderly city. Along clean, wide, tree-lined avenues, cars move at moderate speeds, watched over by traffic policemen in pressed uniforms. There are no traffic jams, no trash piles, no pedestrian crowds, and no beggars. If anything, the capital of Belarus, a city of 1.7 million, retains the look that large Soviet cities had before political and economic reforms blew apart the old order.

But this place is not so much frozen in time as frozen in fear. Belarus is Europe's forgotten dictatorship, whose post-Communist leader, Alexander Lukashenko, oppresses, intimidates, and, by some accounts, is even responsible for the murder of his own people to retain his grip on a nation of 10 million. The Bush administration last month said it regards as
"credible" reports that a government-organized death squad is responsible for the murders of up to 30 opposition figures. Lukashenko's response? The U.S. State Department should "mind its own business and not meddle in things it doesn't understand."

Western nations have mostly done just that, ignoring Lukashenko since he isn't threatening his neighbors or causing regional turmoil. Still, Belarus–located in the center of Europe between NATO member Poland and Russia–is a sad case these days. It took the same shaky start toward economic and political reform as other post-Soviet countries in the early 1990s, followed quickly by a Communist and Russophile backlash. In 1994, a new sort of leader beat back both the nationalist reformers and former Communists: Lukashenko, the charismatic young head of a collective farm, rode to the presidency on rhetoric that mixed Soviet nostalgia with disdain for anyone who had had power before him.

Soon, he abolished the parliament and began to rule by decree, whim, and tantrum. He restored the outward calm of Soviet stagnation–even advocating restoration of the Soviet Union–while creating a sort of selective terror resembling Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. When early supporters abandoned him, he pursued personal vendettas. He cracked down on the media and intimidated political opponents, some of whom were arrested while others "disappeared." He turned back reform and effectively jettisoned the concept of private property–unless it was his private property. He arbitrarily extended his own term in office, until last spring, when he finally decided to schedule a new presidential election for September 9.

A rigged system. But as that date draws near, there seems to be less and less hope that Belarus's dark age may come to an end. Before calling an election, Lukashenko constructed an electoral system that he effectively controls. Local electoral commissions are composed entirely of executive-branch appointees. "Half the members of the Central Electoral Commission are named by the president, and the other half are appointed by the upper house of parliament, which is appointed by local executives, who are appointed by the president," explains political analyst and onetime Lukashenko insider Alexsander Feduta. "It's the house that Lukashenko built."

One of Belarus's tragedies is that Lukashenko may not have to rig the vote. His most able opponent dropped out of the race suddenly earlier in the summer, apparently after threats against her and her family. Subsequently, five tiny opposition parties in July decided to back a single candidate, a reformed Communist and longtime trade-union leader named Vladimir Goncharik. But the 60-year-old, short, bespectacled, buttoned-up Goncharik seems no match for the robust and flamboyant 46-year-old president.

Election rules designed by Lukashenko give candidates just three weeks to campaign–if you can call it that. Opposition candidates' access to state-run media is severely restricted; nonstate media reach few people. The only privately owned television channel was shut down over a year ago. The last news-oriented private radio station, closed by the state nearly five years ago, broadcasts just six hours a day on a crackly shortwave frequency from neighboring Poland. Most Belarussians get their news from Russian TV, which remains supportive of Lukashenko. As for privately owned newspapers, they are numerous but their press runs are tiny. The state distribution monopoly sets sky-high prices for servicing nonstate newspapers. The only private printing plant, funded by American financier George Soros, was shut down last winter by presidential decree.

All in all, Lukashenko can easily ignore the private newspapers–as he has done despite their recent reports on presidential death squads. The only reaction: The Minsk newspaper Den (Day) had its offices looted twice in a week. Both times, the intruders broke in just as a special issue devoted to the death squads was supposed to go to print, and both times they made off with computer hard disks, ignoring more valuable items.

Hit team. In a rare show of defiance, some 500 people lined the city's main street Thursday, holding portraits of opposition figures who have disappeared and demanding answers from the government. Officials deny there is a death squad targeting political opponents. But Pyotr Martsev, editor in chief of the privately owned Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta (Belarussian Business Newspaper) claims personal knowledge about one member of such a hit team. "It so happens we have known each other since we were children," Martsev told U.S. News. "In 1999, after we'd printed an investigation into the smuggling of gold out of Russia through Belarus, he came to me and told me that Lukashenko had ordered me killed. From what I understand, in other instances when he got similar orders, he just carried them out. I went underground, pretending to leave the country but actually staying in a secret apartment in Minsk. In a month and a half, the same officer communicated to me that the order to kill had been lifted."

People are talking about the "disappearances." Surveys show that over 80 percent of Belarussians are aware of them, a very high number in a generally underinformed country. But will that change Lukashenko's political future? Probably not. Minsk sociologist Andrei Vardomatski, who has studied voter opinion, says people do not believe there is an alternative to Lukashenko: "They say, 'Yes, he is terrible, he's got his head on crooked, he is a hysteric, and he knows squat about  economics–but there is no one else.' "

So if Belarus is doomed to Lukashenko, what is going to happen now? The opposition, such as it is, is bracing for the worst. "In this election campaign, he will see everyone who speaks against him," says Zhanna Litvina, an opposition journalist. "And then he is going to take his revenge on each of us. He never forgets a thing. Ever."