Halloween is upon us, but given the coronavirus quarantine restrictions, celebrations are likely to be very muted.
Halloween is about make-belief, laughing at the imagined monstrous, mysterious, and para-normal that lurks in our subconscious, or has been instilled in our mindsets. It is exploited for handsome profit by those in business and in the creative spheres who know how to tap this neurosis and even make it fun.
But this year Halloween takes on a very different and real meaning in neighboring Belarus. There the real horror and terror being experienced by the population at the hands of the Lukashenka junta is no joke. It’s the real cruelty of the sort that demented and sadistic minds are shown in films inflicting arbitrarily on unsuspecting, innocent, and powerless victims.
Why am drawing attention to this analogy? Because all this is happening in our neighborhood. Moreover, despite more than 80 days of heroic resistance by the Belarussian people, their plight is not receiving the concern and responses which they warrant. And the human rights situation is deteriorating, not improving.
Megalomaniac dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko is increasingly coming across as a deranged monster. In his latest public statements, he’s declared that “we have nowhere to retreat anymore” and “we will take no more prisoners.”
He has just been shown on TV telling a group of officers that, literally, if anyone raises their hand against a soldier (I suppose he meant any of his stormtroopers and thugs), they should come away with their arms chopped off.
The dictator has ordered that all workers, students, teachers, medical staff, etc., who go on strike or protest should be fired. And this is happening on an alarming scale.
Just in the last 2 days, at least 147 students have been expelled from institutions of higher learning. Leading doctors have been sacked, journalists arrested, and strike leaders detained or intimidated, and people arbitrary and brutally arrested by masked thugs on the streets and outside their homes.
Yesterday, Lukashenko effectively tried to isolate the country by closing the borders with Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, on the pretext of the pandemic but kept the frontier with Russia open.
Thousands of peaceful protesters have been detained since the protests against the rigging by Lukashenko of the presidential election on Aug. 9 that grew into a national revolt. Many have been tortured. An unknown number have been killed or injured and made invalids. Children have been forcibly taken away from parents identified as participating in protests.
In short, Lukashenka’s dangerous behavior, and invective ramblings inciting his security forces to show no mercy to the people he claims to represent, are reminiscent of Hitler’s insane blustering when trapped in his Berlin bunker by the advancing allies.
Are there no respectable officers around this modern maniac to put him in a straitjacket before more lives are lost, blood spilled, and further inestimable damage done? Where are the “good cops” who in films are shown coming over to the side of justice at crucial moments even at the risk of their lives or careers?
Perhaps there are, and some have indeed abandoned the junta. But not enough, it seems, and not at senior enough levels.
One of the questions that is already being asked by Belarusians is how in a traditionally, largely docile country as Belarus Lukashenka managed to breed and motivate such a large army of unfeeling sadists ready to carry out his orders and show such brutality against their own compatriots. Pay and job security are surely not the only explanations.
The situation in Belarus appears to be stalemated. Lukashenka’s junta ignored (or wanted to create that impression) the ultimatum from the democratic opposition to go peacefully by October 26 or face an intensification of resistance through strikes and civil disobedience.
This week has seen more strikes and protests, but not the paralyzing general strike the democratic opposition had hoped for. The junta has replied with more repression, threats, and intimidation. And Lukashenka has stressed over and over that he is not about to leave.
Nevertheless, there was an unexpected development on Oct. 29 which suggested that things are going on behind the scenes which may reflect cracks in the system. On that morning Lukashenka suddenly replaced three senior hardliners in his closest entourage.
To everyone’s astonishment – and we can only imagine the shock within the dictator’s terror machine – he replaced his chief henchman, the ruthless chief of the police, Yuri Karayev. On Oct. 28, as Karayev had shocked even his own colleagues by declaring publicly that the security apparatus was in a state of war with the Belarusian population. He urged the police to shoot first at peaceful demonstrators and ask questions later, if at all.
Karayev was replaced as minister by General Ivan Kubrakov, until now the head of the police in Minsk. Interestingly, for what it was worth in the circumstances, on Oct. 15 publicly he declared that the police are against the use of violence. No apparent change in its approach was however noted.
Karayev’s first deputy Aleksandr Barsukov was also replaced, as well as another top security official, the Secretary of the State Security Committee, Valeriy Vakulchik.
What does this sudden change – Kareyev was confidently blustering away on a TV talk show yesterday – mean? Splits in the ranks? Jitters? Pressure on Lukashenka from inside his system, and/or external? Or Lukashenko cutting an official who had become too full of himself down to size?
A compromise gesture, or just shuffling the pack? Or perhaps simply that Karayev was getting too full of himself and too outspoken. Lukashenka has never tolerated subordinates who became too assertive.
Karayev has been made a police inspector and aide to the president in the Grodno region. There is already an official there treated who was treated similarly in the past by Lukashenko. So hardly a promotion.
Kubrakov’s statements have been more moderate but have not translated into policy. He will be expected to obey orders and not express opinions.
One explanation making the rounds is that Lukashenka has been having more problems with demoralization within the police force, and the depletion of its ranks than we know. Why has he suddenly begun calling for the recruitment of vigilantes from the former military and condoning the use of masked, unidentified, thugs?
At any rate, with Moscow ostensibly not supporting him to the extent that he expected, and the West dragging its feet in extending real as opposed to declaratory support to the Belarusian democratic revolution, Lukashenko has dug his heels in and is apparently ready to fight to the last peaceful Belarusian protester.
So, if you’re marking Halloween in Ukraine or elsewhere, in relative safety and comfort, spare a thought for the Belarusians having to face up to their very real home-grown monster who goes by the name of Lukashenko.
