Belarus closes more than 40 NGOs as "foreign agents"

Belarusian authorities have shut down more than 40 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) after the Council of Ministers chaired by Alexandr Lukashenko called them "foreign agents" and "bandits" on Thursday.

Among the disqualified organizations are entities with profiles as different as the defense of human, cultural or ecological rights, among others.

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Viasná (spring in Belarusian), an organization for the defense of human rights, has published this Friday a list of 21 NGOs closed the day before, a list that has been expanded throughout the day and now reaches 43. In addition, the Ministry of Justice has presented before the Supreme Court the process of liquidation of the Association of Journalists of Belarus and the PEN Center.

This last institution, headed by the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Svetlana Alexievich, had recently denounced 621 human rights violations against cultural personalities in the first half of 2021, more than those registered throughout 2020, which rose according to its accounting. at 593.

In the Council of Ministers, Lukashenko announced that it was necessary to continue with the “cleaning” of the NGOs, a task - he lamented - that is not easy, since in Belarus there are around 2,000 “non-commercial organizations”, which he described of "bandits and foreign agents in the small country."

The Belarusian president commented, according to the official BelTA agency, that at the time they had authorized the presence and creation of NGOs in a "democratic" impulse, but "now we have realized that they are harming the State."

According to Lukashenko, "cleaning" them is difficult, as thousands of people who have been "brainwashed with foreign money" work there.

Parallel to the raid on human rights organizations, the Lukashenko regime continues its campaign of persecution against independent journalists and media outlets.

The Association of Journalists of Belarus (APB) denounced earlier this week that in the last 10 days the police have carried out raids on more than 70 media outlets and editorials.

So far this year, according to the APB, law enforcement agencies have carried out more than 100 raids against journalists.

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The harassment of NGOs and journalists that the Belarusian authorities have launched can be explained by the proximity of the anniversary of the start of social protests against the regime after the re-election of Lukashenko as president of the country, results that activists and independent experts consider rigged. On August 9, 2020, the results of those elections were announced, data that the main opposition leader, Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, exiled in Lithuania, did not recognize as legitimate, denounced electoral fraud and assured that she had actually won the elections with between 60 % and 70% of the votes. On the 14th of the same month, the Belarus Coordination Council was created, the main organizer of the protests that shook the country for 10 months.

The Belarus Investigations Committee, a state security body, said last week that it had evidence that various NGOs and the media had been involved in financing the 2020 protests. That would imply that the regime has given a preventive coup to try to avoid a new wave of demonstrations coinciding with that anniversary.

According to Viasná, the number of political prisoners has skyrocketed this year and now totals 436 people, not counting the hundreds who are under investigation.