Lukashenka’s real enemies

Minsk – On February 17, 2011, within a period of several hours, two important events occurred in the Belarusian capital. In the afternoon Olga Komar, judge of the Frunzenski district of Minsk, found the first “prisoner of the Square” Vasil Parfiankou guilty of the criminal offense of participating in riots. The participant of the meeting in Independence Square following the presidential elections on December 19 received a harsh sentence: four years in a maximum-security prison. At about 8 p.m. the youngest “prisoner of the Square,” twenty-year old Nasta Palazhanka, was released from a KGB prison (commonly known as “Amerikanka”), on her own recognizance. She is prohibited to leave Minsk without the sanction of the investigator. Until after the trial.

As it is known, according to the Belarusian authorities, an “attempted coup d’etat” took place in Minsk on December 19. Official mass media characterized the meeting’s participants as “violent youngsters,” “crazy thugs,” “cranky opposition activists.” They, just as Aliaksandr Lukashenka, spoke about how the “Government House was raided” at great length.

Thus, during the first trial in the case on the “attempted coup d’etat” the prosecutor placed the losses sustained during the “coup” at 14.48 million Belarusian rubles. This sum is supposedly needed to “replace the doors and building drain, in the building at the address 11 Soviet Street, and renew the greenery around it.” Unbelievable, they managed to trample down lawns in December!

Based on the exchange rate of the National Bank of Belarus, 14.48 million is approximately equal to 4,650 dollars. Now let’s remember that according to different estimates there were 30 to 40 thousand people participating in the meeting, and about 700 people were detained that night directly in the Square or shortly after. fourty two indicted and twelve suspects are involved in a criminal case on the “organization of and participation in mass riots.” The “violent youngsters” and “crazy thugs” seem to be way too sluggish. So many people — and they caused damages of only 4,650 bucks! Here they are, law-abiding and careful Belarusians!

But Vasil Parfiankou, who was charged with four years in a maximum security prison, is in no laughing mood. The young man partly acknowledged his guilt, thus reducing his sentence (the crime he was accused of presupposed three to eight years of imprisonment, the prosecutor Anton Zaharouski demanded six years). He was accused only of “participation,” not “organization.” Just imagine what will happen to the “organizers,” who will hardly recognize their guilt?

During the trial (and many times on state television) a video was aired where Parfiankou, as the prosecutor had counted, struck 61 blows [at something]. And here different interpretations of the seemingly obvious video recording begin. What did Parfiankou hit? “The doors of the Go-vernment House,” according to the court. But Parfiankou’s lawyer Igor Popkovsky repeatedly tried to draw attention to the fact that when Parfiankou was in the process of dealing blows, the glass was already broken and he was beating on a wooden paneling (perhaps, overturned furniture), which blocked the entrance from inside. What was damaged in this case? Boards? Furniture? Parfiankou admitted in the court: he was kicking the wooden paneling. But he repeated many times that he didn’t break the glass and the doors! The most humane court in the world, from all appearances, turned out to be as dull as Parfiankou’s jabs on the boards.

Vasil has been taken away by the guards. Independent mass media (in Belarus this is a synonym to “a few websites with an overall audience of about 50,000 a day”) are bursting out with indignation. The state television is joyfully showing the “demon” Parfiankou hitting wooden pa-neling with his feet and saying: four years of strict regime colony.

Yet just a few hours later Palazhanka, the deputy head of the youth organization “Malady Front” (Belarusian for Young Front) registered in the Czech Republic, is released from the internal KGB prison on her own recognizance. Five attempts to register the organization in Belarus failed, while members of the organization were repeatedly tried for (!) “membership in an unregistered organization.” Palazhanka’s case, despite her release, is perhaps even worse than Parfiankou’s. She was incrimi-nated on not only participation, but also “organization of mass riots.” This means five to fifteen years in prison. “Well, when I’m released, I’ll be only 35, life will only begin,” Nasta finds the strength to joke.

One day short of two months in a KGB prison, with no information about events outside; few meetings with her lawyer, and only under the investigators’ control. Nasta was imprisoned the night after the elections. The girl came home from the square and heard the knocking just after going to bed. In a few hours she found herself in a small, (smaller than a kitchen in a tiny khrushchevka apartment), cold cell designed for three persons, though that night it accommodated seven people.

In Nasta’s case, “participation” was re-qualified into “organization.” Because she was purportedly preparing a coup d’etat, she was even looking for tents in order to live in them on the square during the revolt. In fact, on the square she dared address the people present (though only those standing nearby could hear) from the stairs of the cathedral (it is located to the left of the Government House). According to mass media quotes, Nasta didn’t appeal to do anything, she only addressed those present with the words that “the youth is for a democratic Belarus, where laws are observed and there is no place for dictatorship.”

Seriously, it is ridiculous to speak about the “organization” of riots on December 19 in Minsk! A column of 30,000 people passed 1,500 meters from the October Square to the Independence Square with no broken shop window, overturned car or broken nose! What “organization” is there if the loudspeaker with a microphone was brought to the pedestal base of the monument to Lenin (yes, he is still standing in Minsk in “Independence Square”) only half an hour after the column had reached the square? One should rather speak about a “lack of organization” for which not the government, but demonstrators should condemn the leaders of the opposition.

These two cases, Vasil Parfiankou’s and Nasta Palazhanka’s, are both symbo-lic and important. They don’t involve the leaders of the opposition, the people who were Lukashenka’s formal competitors, from time to time scolding him from high European platforms and during meetings with the electorate.

If someone tells you Lukashenka fears the opposition, ask to specify who is meant by the opposition? Leaders of political parties and movements? Are you serious? Some of them explicitly call one another “grant-suckers” and argue whom Europe and the US allotted more money to for the “struggle for democracy.” Let me give you a recent example. After the elections, in the period of “exposures,” the state television threw an irritable fact at the electorate: during the campaign Andrei Dzmitraeu, Uladzi-mir Niakliaeu’s electoral campaign manager, bought an apartment in an elite building for 200,000 dollars, as well as two cars and a land plot in the suburbs. Moreover, this scoundrel only flew business-class during the campaign. So the independent media ask Dzmitraeu for comment, to which he replied: “I am a normal person, I am thirty, why can’t I have a car and an apartment?” However, he specified that the second car shown on television was not his but his relative’s. And as a result, in the forums of independent newspapers’ websites people wrote with surprise:

“Well, if being in the opposition he stole so much in half a year, how much will they steal if they grab the power?” It should be mentioned that Dzmitraeu was placed in the KGB prison together with the others. But in two weeks, on January 3, he was released — he confessed on camera that he considered the “police officers to be innocent.”

So, the real opposition are not people ready to fight for democracy “8 am to 5 pm, with a lunch break.” The real opposition to Lukashenka is Vasil Parfiankou who, embittered and oppressed by the regime, forgot everything else and was beating, beating all the damn wooden panels on the doors of the Government House.

They say that before the presidential elections in 2006 the riot police was trained by hanging portraits of opposition candidates — from Kazulin to Milinkevich — on punching bags. Just like the wooden panels on the doors of the Government House were for Parfiankou a material embodiment of the government and the “guarantor of the Constitution,” who will rule the country for at least 21 years (by the end of this term).

The real opposition to Lukashenka is Nasta Palazhanka, who can hardly be accused of getting grants and using them to buy SUVs and apartments. Nasta is 20 years old. She simply wants to live in a civilized European country. Therefore she is fighting as she can — she comes out with posters into the streets, gathers flash meetings. She organizes actions to help orphanages and libraries. The most horrible discrediting evidence the Belarusian television (known in Belarus as BT for short, and Goebbels TV in private) managed to find is: someone noticed that her friend and companion in Malady Front Zmitser Dashkevich once left her place in the morning. Can you imagine what a horrible crime for a 20-year old girl it is — to have her friend overnight at her place? Especially when her father and brother were sleeping in the next room. All Nasta’s friends unanimously say that she is an exemplary Christian with firm principles (they are declared in the statute of Malady Front), and it sometimes happens that members of the organization stay overnight at each other’s apartments — part of the restless work of the opposition activists.

Therefore the two events at the end of last week — the unexplainable harsh term for Parfiankou and the release on recognizance not to leave — are of a great importance. Vasil and Nasta are Lukashenka’s real foes, they contest him sincerely, not because it’s “their job,” as in the case of many “professional oppositionists.” Lukashenka himself seems to understand it very well. Otherwise the sentence for Parfiankou for dull jabs at a piece of wood would have been quite different, they could have released him right then and there, punishing him only with a fine. Otherwise Nasta would have been released, all the accusations would have been lifted — not with an imminent threat of “five to fifteen.”

Observe the fate of Nasta Palazhanka. And cross your fingers for this pretty 20-year old girl who is courageous enough to have her own vision of a future Belarus.