This week an old acquaintance made some noise. Nikolay Cherginets, chairman of the parliament’s upper house Foreign affairs and national security committee, was refused entry to the United States. Supposedly because his previous trip, during last years presidential elections, turned into a scandal when he announced that the US doesn’t conform to international election standards. Now, Cherginets reacted by calling for stricter control over who is let into Belarus. He says visiting politicians neglect to meet with Belarusian parliamentarians, and instead chose “to be fed with lies” by the opposition.
Incidentally, some Swedish parliamentarians I know recently had lunch with a Belarusian colleague while visiting Minsk. It later turned out he was a high-ranking KGB officer, with a service record in Dresden. I rather doubt that any meaningful dialogue will come of that contact. And regarding Cherginets, I happen to be in a position to judge his openness for dialogue myself, since we have met twice.
His biography implies that he is a man with whom one can talk. Cherginets started out as a professional soccer player in the 1950s, then worked at a factory, then joined the police and became a detective. In time he rose to the rank of lieutenant-general, while at the same time writing over 30 crime novels, making him a rather famous author. He holds a postgraduate degree in law, and is a decorated veteran of the Afghan war in the 1980s. Now one of the Belarusian regime’s top political figures, he has actually been included in the Guinness Book of Records for his multiple achievements in life.
Surely, such a person should have a view of his own on things, and the courage to express it? At least that was my thought when I asked to meet him.
Our last discussion, which filled three hours of a summer day in 2003, covered a wide range of matters. He showed me pictures from the 1980s, some of which included the famous national author Vasil Bykau, an old friend of his. Bykau, who had passed away just a month earlier, had taken a clear stand against Lukashenko in the 1990s and had been forced to work abroad in his last years. “Unfortunately,” said Cherginets, “Bykau was naïve and believed what the opposition told him.”
Other topics included political disappearances. Although there is now much factual evidence, implicating Lukashenko’s people in the disappearances of some of his top opponents, the former police detective didn’t have much but philosophical objections. “We currently have 1100 people missing in this country,” he said. “You demand that we should spend all our efforts on finding just a few of them. But that would not be fair!”
I also showed him article 4 of the Belarusian constitution, which forbids establishing an ideology as obligatory for the country’s citizens, and questioned whether the launch of a new state ideology at that time was legal. He shook the question off, saying he was sure Sweden also has a state ideology. Since then, I have heard he is one of the most active figures promoting this phenomenon, which is now turning Belarus from an authoritarian state into a totalitarian one.
“You and I have just had a dialogue,” I concluded as our meeting was coming to an end. “But you did not change my view on a single issue. And I suppose I didn’t change yours either?” He looked numb.
So, if any Western politician planning a trip to Belarus wants to avoid being barred from entering the country by meeting with Cherginets, or other parliamentarians, don’t expect it to be more than a pit stop on the way to more useful encounters. And try to stay clear from professional KGB officers.
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