On last Tueseday 31 March 2009 the Conference “Road map for Belarus” offered splendid opportunity for JEF Europe to share similar vision of future of Belarus with several other important NGOs and Political Parties from Belarus and E.U. JEF Europe expressed it’s public position against dictatorship in Belarus and received a warm welcome and many respects.

Among many non-government activists from well known and large organization like International Federation of Journalists, Amnesty International, Association for Democracy Assistance and Human Rights (DEMAS), and a coalition of political parties under the umbrella of United Democratic Forces in Belarus – present – Belarus Christian Democracy Party express welcome to JEF Europe.

The Republic of Belarus has still a long way to minimize the democratic deficit and establish right conditions for a true freedom and democracy for the people in Belarus.
In the case of Belarus we can talk about some changes, but the real question is if there is any kind of progress to more free Belarus? Many different monitoring reports analyzing Belarus today still sadly show that fundamental freedoms like freedom of media, freedom of political persecutions and arbitrary detention, repression of civil activists and freedom of association and freedom of assembly are still repressed.

There are only two registrated independent newspaper agencies, many others simply did not get their accreditations from the Court of Justice of Belarus, as they were seen as a threat to the State of Belarus. Many reporters and other activists got official warning from the Belarus government to stop their controversial behaviour, some were and still are imprisoned or even killed. Moreover, conditions for political activities are still very bad, for example, for political activities you first physically, not just literally, have to have and register headquarters of your organization, barring in mind the prices are very astronomically high, impossible for many NGOs and Political Parties to afford it. Concerning this, they officially do not have, according to the universally accepted human rights expressed in the article 19th of the Universal declaration of Human Rights and recognised by international human law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) their equal opportunity to exercise their right of freedom of speech without limitations or censorship of the government.

Without being registrated at NGO or similar, you are not able to fully participate at expressing your freedom of public speech, and the government will not allow you to be politically active. Furthermore, you can end up in a prison.

The only signals of positive changes comes from implementing Electoral Code, as for Mr. Janez Lenarcic, director of Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights  (ODIHR) says, the Belarus government has shown some progress and is now officially willing to cooperate with foreign Offices. There were no official signals for cooperation from Belarus authority of any kind in the past few years.

At the conference JEF Europe shared these same common ideas with many other NGOs and Political Party, which all showed approval and were grateful to introduce several positive comments to JEF:

Mr. Alexander Milinkevich, Movement of Freedom:
”We need this solidarity and not only in Belarus, but in whole Europe. We need this kind of actions – like JEF-Belarus Action – and I hope this kind of actions will happen in the future as well.”

Yury Ambrazevich, Deputy Head of Mission of Belarus to E.U.:
”It’s very important to continue this kind of actions, and to have them in more and more contries. We heard about your action in Belarus media.
Thank you. My respect to you!”

Many suggest E.U. is powerless at engaging the fight against Belarus dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko or that E.U. not doing or willing to do more to establish the solid democratic foundation of Belarus. Moreover, many suggest the E.U. should enforce strong economic sanctions against the Belarus. Main reason to believe so is the fact that more than 50 percent of Belarus trade in general consist of trade between Belarus and member states of the E.U. But despite of this, do we honestly believe, this move could really solve problems in a way economic sanction would be a signal strong enough to force Belarus government to turn into a decent democracy over night? Ideally may be, but not in the reality. In the past ten years Belarus regime has shown, it is able to find resources and trade opportunity elsewhere – particularly in Russian Federation, which is also the main ally of Belarus. By using economic sanctions against Belarus will make the country even more connected to Russia, but will not solve the problem of democratic deficit.

The problematic situation in Belarus is still far from smooth democratic development and a shining democracy, modeled by the E.U, however, new hopes shines already at the horizon. Main goal of the E.U., concerning Belarus, is to help the people of Belarus, without helping the Belarus Regime. E.U. must continue to cooperate with Belarus authority and pursuit important objectives, i.e. to exercise the implementation of common law and to explain to the people of Belarus our effort is not for Lukashenko, but for the people of Belarus. So citizens of Belarus will know and understand, their life will change for better, not just by changing Lukashenko, but by changing the regime itself. By doing this, we will be on the right way to democratization and economic development of Belarus.

E.U. will have to continue helping Belarus in its democratic development, rule of law and protection and prevention of violation of human rights for the better of the people of Belarus. Sooner or later the Belarus will have to recognize the right to their citizens to their freedom of speech without censorship of any kind.

Žiga Kotnik (JEF Europe) and Laura Bringina (UEF)