Belarusian computer scientist - brilliant, global and plaything of the Lukashenko regime
Created: 01/10/2022, 02:06 PM
From: Aleksandra Fedorska
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus, attends a meeting of the heads of state and government of the community © Yevgeny Biyatov / dpa
After the 2020 elections, many computer scientists sided with the opposition.
Lukashenko retaliated with arrests and beatings.
Many then left the country.
Minsk - The Belarusian economy is very successful in the IT sector.
In 2020, this area accounted for 7.3 percent of economic output.
Its real added value for the ailing system is its export performance, because most of the services are exported from Belarus.
Those exports brought in $ 2.5 billion last year.
The regime needs and fears its talented and gifted computer scientists, because their attitude towards Lukashenko's rule is divided.
Some of the experts also use the system and work for the security forces.
But the majority of them are on the side of the opposition or have long since emigrated to Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Germany or other countries.
Belarus: Computer scientist - brilliant, global and plaything of the Lukashenko regime
The independent journalists of Outriders have found out in their extensive research that the collapse of the Soviet Union was at the beginning of today's IT boom in Belarus. In the 1990s, the former Soviet engineers were faced with nowhere. They lost their jobs and had little money to survive. The knowledge and skills that they had acquired at the old cadre schools of the Soviet technical universities, however, opened up a new perspective for them, the personal computer (PC). They knew a lot about adding machines and components too, so they started assembling PCs.
Computers weren't accessible to everyone.
It was cheapest to build it yourself from various components.
Hardware sales and maintenance has therefore become a growing and dynamic market.
By 1995 the first larger companies were established that assembled, sold and serviced PCs.
In the course of time, more and more professionals from state-owned companies switched to the IT sector.
In addition, the global software development industry outsourced its operations in the mid-1990s.
Belarusian computer scientists benefited enormously from this.
IT sector in Belarus: employment with computers popular among the population
The state sector also pursued its own IT projects, in particular the first and only Belarusian antivirus program VirusBlokAda from 1997. The study of computers had become so popular that high school students competed for the best computer viruses. They later learned more tricks while hacking more expensive computer games that they could never have afforded. Internet access was also expensive, so many Belarusians created their own private networks to maximize access to the network. There were also local network servers made by computer enthusiasts themselves.
The next big step for the sector was the establishment of the Technology Park (HTP) in Minsk.
This made it possible to work with global IT companies such as IBM.
Significant international investment has flowed into the Belarusian IT sector.
The number of employees in the Minsk Technology Park was over 10,000 professionals in 2019.
According to HTP, there were already 65,000 employees in 2020.
Belarusian computer scientist: With the success came the problems - the relationship with the regime tipped
The IT sector was initially also supported by the Lukashenko regime, and finally the computer scientists provided foreign exchange. In addition, Belarus was able to boast as a modern technology location, because especially in the last few years Minsk has brought more and more own ideas and IT solutions onto the world market. However, the relationship with the regime tipped when it became clear after the election on August 9, 2020 that Lukashenko did not want to give up power *. Many computer scientists and executives from the HTP environment sided with the democratic opposition. In the months that followed, they had to pay for this in the form of imprisonment, beatings and other terrorist acts by the regime.
Above all, Poland * ruled with a special program (Poland Business Harbor) for this professional group. The Baltic states also committed themselves promptly and intensively to the Belarusian computer scientists. “During the autumn of 2020, 42 percent of the specialists who fled Belarus found a new home in Poland. Around 10 percent found refuge in Lithuania. Around 7 percent of Belarusian computer scientists who had to flee their homeland in 2020 moved to Germany, ”writes the Polish weekly magazine
Tygodnik Powszechny
.
The people with excellent IT skills who did not make it abroad are now suffering from Lukashenko's revenge.
There are repeated reports of further waves of arrests in the Belarusian IT sector.
The regime is developing its own strategies and methods to spy on the Internet activities of its citizens.
For this it also uses people who are familiar with this matter.
(Aleksandra Fedorska) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
The nuclear power should be sold to the Baltic States and Poland. Nothing came of it. Belarus is now trying to electrify important areas in order to use the electricity itself.
