Under Lukashenka's presidency, a number of journalists, members of non-governmental organizations and those connected with the opposition have been beaten, kidnaped, or threatened in circumstances that strongly suggest the responsibility of state security forces. These assaults were usually carried out by men in plainclothes who did not identify themselves. Human Rights Watch is not aware of a single instance in which these assaults has resulted in a prosecution. This failure by Belarus law-enforcement agencies to bring perpetrators of such crimes to justice reinforces the perception that they are carried out by state agents operating in plainclothes with complete impunity.

In addition to these attacks, an April 16, 1998 statement by KGB chief Uladzimir Matskevich announced the institution of a system of official warnings to citizens engaged in "unlawful actions." According to the report, the directive states that a citizen may be summoned for questioning to the KGB's offices on the basis of information of "criminal activity." A file will then be kept on the individual "if he continues to engage in illegal activities." Maskevitch's announcement is problematic because Belarus law enforcement essentially criminalizes many expressions of free speech and assembly.

Yury Khashchevatsky is an internationally renowned documentary film director based in Minsk and is also a board member of Charter 97, a pro-democracy movement. On the night of December 23, 1997 two unidentified men broke into Khashchevatsky's film studio and beat him unconscious, breaking his nose, his foot in three places, and causing him a concussion and multiple bruises and abrasions. No valuables or equipment were stolen or damaged, strongly indicating the intimidatory nature of the assault.95

In November 1996, Khashchevatsky completed a documentary film, An Ordinary President, which is an openly critical, satirical portrait President Lukashenka. The film drew international acclaim and, in 1997, was awarded a prize from the Berlin Film Festival and the prestigious Russian Sakharov Prize. In Belarus, the film's reception was markedly different. On the night of January 22, 1997, a local cable television station in the town of Karelichi, in Grodno region, broadcast the film. The local police and the State Security Committee (KGB) arrived at the station just as the film was ending, broke down the door, confiscated the film and detained nineteen-year-old Maksim Svyrid, the video operator at the station who had broadcast the film. Svyrid was held until 1:00 a.m. and ordered to report to the KGB the next day, whereupon after questioning, he was released.96 On November 19, 1997, Belarusian Video Center Director Sergei Lukyanchikov fired resident engineer, Viktor Chernomorets, and fined the center's chief engineer, Vladimir Tomashevsky, for reportedly having made a copy of the film.97 As a result of this intimidation, An Ordinary President is effectively banned from public viewing in Belarus.

On December 21, just two days before the assault on Khashchevatsky, An Ordinary President was shown on the French/German channel ARTE. Although this channel is not received in Belarus, Human Rights Watch believes that there is a direct correlation between the timing of the assault and the broadcasting of the film. In addition, Khashchevatsky's political affiliations may well have contributed to the attackers' motives, which appear overwhelmingly to have been to intimidate Khashchevatsky and deter him from future political activity or film-making. Shortly after the assault, Khashchevatsky reported the incident to the police. As of this writing there have been no further developments in the investigation.

The arrest of Belarusian businessman Aleksandr Pupeyko may well have been connected, at least in part, to the government's aim to punish or intimidate those who supported Khashchevatsky's work. On December 12, 1997, Pupeyko was arrested by Polish authorities in Warsaw following a request by the Belarusian government to Interpol. The official reason for the request was allegations of fraud under Article 90 (4) of the Belarusian criminal code - "Fraud committed by an organized group, or by an especially dangerous recidivist or causing particularly large damage." Human Rights Watch takes no position on the allegations of fraud against Pupeyko, however, we note that Pupeyko was a major funder of An Ordinary President.98 Human Rights Watch therefore suspects that the Belarusian government's order to Interpol to arrest Pupeyko was motivated by political reprisal. On March 28, 1998, Polish authorities granted Pupeyko political asylum, and on June 1 formally refused the Belarusian government's extradition request citing insufficient evidence and Pupeko's status as an asylum-seeker as the reason.

Oleg Bebenin is currently the editor of the Charter 97 press center bulletin. In October 1997, he was working as the news department editor at the weekly independent newspaper, Imya. On October 31, government security service agents abducted and threatened Bebenin. He gave Human Rights Watch the following account:

Bebenin described his abductors as being quite young, with the elder man being approximately thirty years of age. Here he describes how the men identified themselves:

When I asked them..."where are we going?" they cursorily showed me some ID, on which was written "Security Service" [and]...answered, "You'll soon find out." After that, all conversation finished, they no longer answered my questions and I accordingly fell silent. To be honest, I first thought that they were criminals, because I had come across information about the criminal world. I came to the conclusion that these people had already decided what they were going to do, and I decided to wait until the end.

They took me on the fifteen-kilometer road to Zaslavl' (which is near Zaslavl' itself), which is where we stopped. They took me about fifty meters into the woods. There, the man who sat in the front andwas the elder [spoke] for half an hour...the sense of which was that I had chosen myself the wrong profession. They threatened not just me with physical violence, they passed on their distinct greetings to my colleagues. They said things like... "there is only so much you can fight against the authorities," that "the authorities have their strike force, which will soon start to be employed." The elder man said this, the second stood behind me and occasionally added retorts, which were directed directly at me and which were of a threatening character, he said "we can leave you here, buried underground."101

Bebenin told Human Rights Watch that after half an hour, the men searched him and confiscated his money and telephone card, he believes, in order to delay his return to the city and alert anyone. Bebenin filed a report the following day at the Leninsky District Police Station, whereupon a criminal investigation was launched into his kidnaping. At the time of writing, the investigation has yet to result in a prosecution.

On October 13,1997, Nadezhda Zhukova, a twenty-one-year-old-woman who was working at the time as a trial and demonstration observer for the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC), left the Leninsky District Court, in Minsk. She had tried to obtain information on the trial of two demonstrators, Pavel Syverinets and Yevgeny Skochka, who were arrested following an October 12 demonstration in Minsk. Zhukova told Human Rights Watch what happened:

I left and there, about ten or twenty meters away, were two cars. The first one had licence plates, which seemed to me to be like the plates on police cars (white numbers on a red background), but... the car could also have been from the prosecutor's office, the presidential security service, the KGB, or the court.

As I walked by the first car, two men quickly jumped out and grabbed me. One punched me in the stomach, held my mouth shut and dragged me to the courtyard of the building next door, where they stood me up against the wall...one of them was holding me and the second had a knife that he was playing with in front of me....They said that my face had been seen on all of the video tapes of demonstrations, and they threatened that I would have to be careful if I wanted to keep living a normal life. It was clear that it wasn't connected with some criminal group, since the conversation was entirely about the demonstrations. [They] said that I should be concerned for my life.102

As the men turned to leave, Zhukova asked them who they were, to which, she told Human Rights Watch, they replied "Young Belarusian patriots." Although clearly acting as agents of the state, they may be members of the Belarusian Patriotic Union of Youth (BPSM in Russian), a quasi-governmental, pro-presidential youth organization, which declared in an October 1996 pamphlet and mission statement that it would "suppress opponents ruthlessly."

Zhukova filed a complaint with the Leninsky district prosecutor, and on October 17 met with him. He was dismissive of her story, in particular that her assailants were affiliated in some way with the government. Zhukova told Human Rights Watch:

Zhukova decided at that point to drop the matter; however, on October 21, 1997, her mother received a threatening phone call, which made her change her mind:

Zhukova filed a report of her assault with her local police station, however, as of this writing, the case has been closed and reopened several times and has yet to bring forth a prosecution. Two facts support the notion that Zhukova's assailants were acting on behalf of a state security agency: first, during Zhukova's assault, her assailants made reference to seeing her on police videos of opposition demonstrations and second; the police demonstrated a patent lack of commitment to investigating her assault.

On October 13, 1997, Ina Pimenava, a nineteen-year-old student and the wife of Alexei Shidlovsky, delivered a letter addressed to Zenon Pazniak, the leader of the BPF, in which she accused Vyacheslav Sivchik, the secretary of the BPF, of raping her. However, on October 21, the now banned newspaper, Svaboda, published a letter from Pimenava in which she asserted that the KGB had coerced her into making the allegation in order to discredit Sivchik. Pimenava told Human Rights Watch that the KGB visited her on several occasions, at home and at her university, and threatened her, saying that if she did not make this allegation her husband would never be freed from prison, she would never see him again alive, and that she may herself be imprisoned. Pimenava wrote in her retraction of the rape allegation that she hoped that by publicly exposing KGB coercion she could avoid worse harassment in the future.105

This Web page was created using a Trial Version of HTML Transit 3.0.