Opposition threatened with serious prison terms

The Belarusian regime is now seriously worsening the legal environment for organised opposition. The demand that all organisations should be officially registered is old, and the other year a law on the registering of coalitions was also adopted. The larger part of the opposition abides by this legislation, others are not allowed to register and some do not care to try. But in September, the Minister of Justice ordered that any organised activity, including coalitions of separate organisations, must be registered. After that, one could reasonably expect an increase in administrative sanctions against the opposition, including fines, short-term arrests, and closure of organisations entering into non-registered coalitions. This week, however, has hinted that the regime will not be satisfied with administrative sanctions against its opponents.

On Wednesday, Lukashenko submitted a new legislative proposal marked "urgent" to the parliament, and on Friday it was adopted in a first reading. (Legislation is passed in three readings.) The proposal stipulates up to two or three years of imprisonment for, among other things, the following activities:

1. Training of participants for mass disturbances, or financing this.

2. Public calls for seizure of power.

3. Discrediting Belarus.

4. Calls for foreign states or organisations to intervene. (Up to five years of imprisonment if the calls are made through mass media.)

5. Organising or participating in activities of closed organisations.

As for the last point, responsibility can be avoided. All one has to do is to voluntarily abandon the activity and report about this to "the proper state agencies." This apparently aims at making activists defect from whatever organisation the authorities decide to liquidate or temporarily close down. The other parts of the legislation seem to focus more on opposition leaders, and, which is somewhat unusual, on foreign sponsors who dare set foot in Belarus. So far, the latter are only being deported, not imprisoned.

According to KGB chairman Stepan Sukharenko, introducing the package in parliament, "there are plenty of those, in Belarus and elsewhere, who are taking steps to destabilise the political situation in our country… Leaders of opposition politicised formations… are using the tribunes of international forums, the OSCE and the Council of Europe… to spread consciously false information about political processes in Belarus… Emissaries of various foreign non-governmental organisations are arriving, using the money of western intelligence services to organise training seminars on how to carry out a revolution."

The rhetoric is not new, and people have been deprived of their freedom for organising protest actions or defaming the president before. But with this legislation, it seems that the potential for arbitrary imprisonment of regime opponents will grow exponentially. It is my understanding that the opposition is already dragging its feet in preparing for next year's presidential campaign. The prospect of ever more repression is not likely to increase its level of activity.