“Like dancing on a minefield”: Belarus civil society destroyed by the authorities
In Belarus, the authorities, cracking down on dissent, have swept away virtually the entire independent NGO sector.
By Maryia Sysoi for BBC News Russian.
Women still call the former staff members of the refuge shelter ‘Radislava’. Victims of domestic violence, they ring in search of help, the organisation though is no longer operating.
Across the country hundreds of hospitalised young orphaned children are no longer looked after by nannies; funding for the project dried up when the government closed the crowdfunding media platform ‘Imena’, its main source of income. Elsewhere the Office for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities used to support up to 1,400 people a year. Now, it has been ‘outlawed’. The list goes on.
As part of a major crackdown in 2020, Belarussian security forces managed to suppress mass demonstrations protesting against the results of the presidential election, which was widely believed to have been manipulated.
In 2021, the authorities widened their attacks to include independent media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). At the time Aleksandr Lukashenko made the extraordinary accusation that civil society itself was being financed from abroad in order to ‘organise a coup and revolt’.
Since then, huge numbers of NGOs operating in Belarus have been systematically dismantled, with human rights defenders recording more than 1,280 organisations no longer being active. Charitable, human rights, women’s, environmental, educational, historical, and sporting organisations – both newly formed and established ‘old-timers’ started in the early 1990s, huge numbers have been repressed.
BBC is blocked in Russia. We’ve attached the story in Russian as a pdf file for readers there.
Running from a violent husband
“The women did not believe it until the very end… no one was evicted until the last day. Two women had no place to go”, recounts Vera (we have changed her name), a former employee at the ‘Radislava’ shelter. The NGO, which existed for 20 years, was subject to raids and arrests in January 2022. In the end, the government liquidated it.
‘Radislava’, according to its former management, operated without state funding. There were private donations, crowdfunding campaigns, and assistance both from foreign donors and Belarussian companies.
Having started out with shelter-apartments, the organisation then built a house for 30 women and children and had planned a new one with space for 50. Since 2018, the shelter has helped over 500 women; they lived in the house anywhere between a few days and half a year, during which time they met with lawyers and psychologists.
In 2018, ‘Radislava’ along with a number of other NGOs, lobbied for a law against domestic violence, but after fierce criticism from Aleksandr Lukashenko the draft law was dropped. ‘Radislava’ not only directly helped those in need, the organisation provided training for district police precincts, doctors, psychologists, and sociologists. Their booklets could be found in the Department of Internal Affairs and health centres. Some government websites are still providing the shelter’s number, but these days no one is there to answer.
On November 9, 2021, Olga Gorbunova, the head of ‘Radislava’, was detained, having been identified on a video from the 2020 protests. At the same time, the ex-husband of one of the shelter’s guests wrote complaints about ‘Radislava’. The man alleged that they forced guests to go to protest rallies, and that in the basement of the house white, red, and white (the colours of the opposition movement) stickers and flags were printed and sewn. None of this was true, says Olga, but the allegations were enough for the authorities to shut ‘Radislava’ down.
Several other NGOs combating domestic violence have also been forcibly closed. This includes ‘Gender Perspectives’, the organisation that launched and administered a nationwide hotline for victims of domestic violence. The line has gone, but the phone number remains on several government websites.
“There is nothing left, everything is ruined. We rolled back into the 90s”, says Olga. “Women have nowhere else to call, to get advice or legal assistance, no place to hide”.
Olga spent six months in a pre-trial detention centre and received three years of house arrest with severe restrictions placed on her movements. She managed to flee Belarus and has since become a representative on social issues in the United Transitional Cabinet of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who is widely believed to have won the 2020 elections, and is now essentially running an alternative Belarusian government in exile.
Domestic violence is one of the areas in which Olga continues to work. She claims that the problem has worsened lately, and the statistics are hidden: “They [the authorities] do not have enough staff to work on domestic violence. Everyone now enforces political repression, to identify ‘offenders’ under politically motivated charges”. Recently, Olga created a petition demanding access to statistics on domestic violence. But she was denied access being told that the information was ‘classified as restricted official information’.
“Women cannot get divorced safely anymore because they cannot safely turn to the police. The police immediately questions their reliability as a victim,” says former shelter employee Vera.
She adds that people are afraid that they would be accused of taking part in the protests, and prefer not to go to the authorities.
The state does have a service for women affected by domestic violence - the so-called ‘crisis rooms’. According to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, there are 137 of them, with 429 beds. Official statistics say that in 2020, 384 victims of domestic violence passed through them, in 2021, 340.
At the same time, the ‘Radislava’s shelters had always been full: in 2020, there were 90 people in them. Figures for 2021 did not survive the closing of the organisation.
As ‘Radislava’ representatives explain, the crisis rooms lack privacy, the duration of stay is limited and state specialists are not qualified to work with women who are victims of violence.
Marina (whose real name we have been asked not to reveal) was helped greatly by the shelter. After her divorce, stalking, threats and intimidation of her children all became part of her daily routine - until she found the phone number for ‘Radislava’ online.
“If it weren’t for ‘Radislava’, I wouldn’t have managed to keep my children’s mental health intact. I could not have stripped him (Marina’s ex-husband) of parental rights, because the legal process is so drawn out. I’m not sure how it would have ended”
Marina appealed to the authorities, asking for a restraining order against her ex-husband, but couldn’t get one. She hid in a rented apartment, but he quickly found her. The shelter was the only safe place.
“The addresses of the [state] crisis rooms are available online. Can you tell me how the crisis room can help me if he is waiting for me just around the corner?” she asks.
“Bandits and Foreign Agents”
“We will cut off all the scoundrels that you have funded. It disturbs you that we destroyed your structures, NGOs, and others”. So said Aleksandr Lukashenko in an interview with the BBC in November 2021.
In various speeches in recent years, he has called NGOs “bandits and foreign agents”, “traitors”, and “a harm to the state”, claiming that they “organised a coup and a revolt” and openly referring to what has since happened to them as a ‘mop-up operation’.
Since 2021, more than 1,280 NGOs in Belarus have either been closed by the authorities, or have wound up their activities entirely. This data is collected by Lawtrend, which is itself in the process of ending its operations in Belarus and instead works primarily from Georgia. The lists of organisations that have closed is increasing, with several shutting down week on week.
The exact number of non-governmental organisations that were operating in Belarus, is a matter of speculation. Information on the site president.gov.by under the ‘Civil Society’ section is accurate up to January 1, 2021. Before the beginning of the “mop-up” they numbered 3,021 public associations, 25 trade unions and about 400 charitable organisations. But many NGOs were registered in the form of institutions, and statistics are not available for them, explains Olga Smolyanko, head of Lawtrend.
“We believe that approximately 25% have disappeared… We assume that there were about 5,000-6,000 NGOs in Belarus. But this figure is completely unofficial”, says Olga Smolyanko.
Former head of ‘Radislava’ Olga Gorbunova is more categorical in her assessment. “This is scorched earth [policy]. If we were talking about a working civil society sector that promoted human rights and raised very difficult, painful questions for the country, it would be a completely different story. In my opinion, the vast majority of the real organisations have been liquidated”.
Aleksandr Lukashenko has said several times that there are 'too many NGOs working in Belarus, a country with a population of 9.25 million. But figures from the European Center for Non-profit Law (ECNL) show the opposite. According to the CSO Meter, the number comes to 3.5 NGOs per 10,000 inhabitants. This would make Belarus the country with the lowest number of NGO’s out of all the Eastern Partnership countries. According to the ECNL the country is behind Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova, and Georgia. In Ukraine the figure is 4.5 times higher, in Moldova, 12.5 times.
And these calculations were made based on figures from 2020, even before the mass liquidation of NGOs began.
According to the indexes that determine the sustainability of civil society (among them the one calculated by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Belarus has received poor ratings year on year. This is due to, among other things, the scarce legislative framework, the limited capacity of NGOs to advocate and provide services, and crucially the lack of access to funding.
‘Survival mode’
Those NGOs that still work in the country are afraid to speak out. We have managed to speak to representatives of two organisations; both have asked us to hide not only their names, but the names of their NGOs and even areas they work in, out of fear of retribution from the authorities.
Aleksandr (not his real name) says that funding shortfalls are a huge concern for NGOs. His organisation receives nothing from the state and takes donations from individuals and businesses. But doing so has become more and more difficult.
“Businesses are scared. They openly ask - are you not blacklisted?” says Aleksandr. His organisation has barely managed to raise its annual budget, but they cannot rely on foreign aid, nor on transfers from ordinary Belarusians, who in recent years have been leaving the country en masse. “Foreign aid used to be crucial, but now I don’t even consider it. Honestly, I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I don’t want problems.”
Yevgeny (also not his real name) says that NGOs are subjected to audits, being checked over and over again with increasing regularity. “We must learn to continue living in this situation here and now. This is like dancing in a minefield. Insofar as we can create some breathing space around ourselves… we do. And even then, only as luck would have it,” he says.
There are other issues too. There are fewer volunteers - people are leaving or are starting to think more about their own wellbeing. Both NGOs have the same promotional problems: without crowdfunding platforms and independent media, only social networks remain.
But even that is not a solution.
Aleksandr says that his organisation often “thinks a hundred times” before reaching out to an influencer: “Some bloggers defend political views, belonging in one political camp or another”.
“10 years of self-deception”
Analysts have two possible answers to why the authorities have attacked the NGO sector.
“I think they really believe that NGOs were the cause of the 2020 protests. This aggression is precisely because they fear a repeat. Indeed, there have been marches even by people with disabilities, and numerous ones”, says Daria Tsarik, a specialist in philanthropy and social investment.
“But it was a revolution of [democratic] values. If you take any sector where there was a little wealth - medical, IT - everybody protested, because [they would say] ‘I’m doing fine, but there’s something wrong in the country, and I want it to be better’.”
"The last 10 years have been a time of self-deception [for Belarusians]…. [the idea] that you can represent a sector in a country in which this sector is not even implied to exist”, she adds.
“When a spiral of repression occurs, media and civil society organisations are the first to be targeted. Because they are not just society's helpers, but they form public opinion, they raise awareness, and express an alternative view,” adds Olga Smolyanko.
The effect of repression will accumulate and will certainly be visible in society, she believes: “Civil society organisations frequently work in areas where the state cannot or does not want them. They promoted the problems of people the state never noticed. Now that these organisations are closed, there are gaps. The effect will be clear in a few years, but it can already be said that a number of [vulnerable] groups have been left without proper NGO support.”
That effect may be clearer for many Belarusians much sooner than they had thought. As a result of the official ‘mop-up’ independent observers now say that no registered independent human rights organisations now remain in Belarus.
Read this story in Russian here.
