Belarus And Sri Lanka: Birds Of A Feather
Pearl Thevanayagam
Both Belarus and Sri Lanka share some commonalities in the field of governance, press freedom and human rights. These do not exist in the two countries and their respective presidents truly and sincerely believe their countries are their own fiefdom and not a democracy as many of us would want to believe.
It may not be common knowledge that as President of Belarus since 1994,Alexander Lukashenko, brazenly extended his term through constitutional amendments to fit in to secure unlimited presidency not unlike our own authoritarian president of two tenures to infinitive thus appropriating himself the leadership of Belarus against the will of his people and against democracy.
Belarusis a one party democracy and it does not tolerate dissent. It declared independence on August 25, 1990 and it is a battered nation successively ruled by invaders.
EJN (Exiled Journalists Network) in UK organised the Press Freedom Forum on Belarus, an annual event examining press freedom in under-reported countries, at the House of Commons in 2007. The event coincided with the visit of Lukashenko to UK where this writer and a Belarusian exiled journalist went to cover the press conference in London. Access was denied to us by the black-suited bodyguards of the president.
On a tip-off the president would be staying in Mayfair that night and hosting a dinner reception, we hot-footed it to the hotel in the biting November cold and stood for hours at the door handing out leaflets outlining the many human rights violations including curtailment of press freedom to the dignitaries arriving to welcome him.
Some of them hissed profane words according to my Belarusian colleague and others simply refused to take our leaflets. Anyhow, we left a bundle at the reception and left another lot at Frontline, the war correspondents’ club in London.
Mahinda Rajapaksa decamped to Belarus of all places to visit his counterpart last week as the UNHRC chiefwas in Sri Lanka on her fact-finding mission. He probably was seeking sagely advice on how to thwart UN scrutiny on his abysmal performance in annihilating a terrorist outfit aka the Tamil Tigers along with 40,000 or more Tamil civilians. Read More
