A simple way for UK to back Belarusian dissidents
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of Belarus’s government in exile, became a dissident unexpectedly. In 2020, her husband was due to be the opposition presidential candidate against Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator who has governed Belarus since the fall of the USSR. But her husband was kidnapped, tortured and interned before the election. Tsikhanouskaya took her husband’s place on the ballot paper, a great act of bravery in itself.
The dictator was shocked by huge protests after he fixed the 2020 election to prevent her from beating him at the ballot box. Tsikhanouskaya was forced to flee the country and has led Belarus’s government in exile from Lithuania ever since.
So she knew of what she spoke when called on to deliver the Westminster Foundation for Democracy’s inaugural lecture in Parliament a few days ago.
Tsikhanouskaya’s most striking point was that dictators, tyrants and totalitarians are persistent and interlinked, working unceasingly over the long term and in concert with one another to hold on to power at all costs.
In a totalitarian state, every function of society and government is subordinated to the service of the party or the leader, and retaining power overrules everything else. That’s something we often forget in the free world, accustomed as we are to the diffuse feeling that we progress generally by the overall net positive product of a lot of selfish, atomised and seemingly chaotic decisions.
This is why we are so prone to get distracted, only to get a nasty surprise when it turns out that those who mean us harm have been doggedly working away unnoticed in the dark. It is also why we are too easily gulled by propaganda that seeks to explain away chains of intentional, hostile acts as innocent mistakes or random coincidences.
Bluntly, while we are lucky that the enemies of freedom are mad, bad and inefficient, we are unfortunate that our very prosperity and liberty makes us easily distracted and excessively naive about the degree of co-ordinated, obsessive menace that some in the world hold in their hearts.
Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, is playing a long game to try to snuff out his opponents. Tsikhanouskaya and the legitimate government are now exiled, separated from their grassroots supporters who suffer ongoing repression. Her husband was last heard of in captivity seven months ago.
Now the regime wishes to extend its reach to intimidate beyond its borders. A new rule requires any Belarusian whose passport expires to return to the country for a replacement, effectively giving dissidents the choice between imprisonment (and worse) by going home, or becoming undocumented and stateless if they remain abroad.
Like any dictator, Lukashenko desires total control over his nation – critics, particularly those who almost toppled him, cannot be tolerated to exist, still less to travel round rallying support. Hence this new policy.
Tsikhanouskaya looks to Cold War history for her response. Back when exiled oppositions and expatriate dissidents from a score of nations took refuge in the West, often in London, such tactics to deny papers and disrupt citizenship were commonplace.
In reply, governments in exile began to issue their own passports, which the West then recognised, denying tyrants a veto over the lives of their critics.
Tsikhanouskaya intends to do the same, and it can be just as effective. But it needs Western governments to agree to recognise the papers.
Given any opportunity to tip the scales in favour of decent people and good causes, and against the enemies of our most precious values, surely we should do so?
All that Tsikhanouskaya asks of the UK is that we recognise the new passports. In a troubled world we often cast about despairingly for things we can do to help good people facing dreadful fates. Here’s one let’s do it.
The regime wishes to extend its reach to intimidate