Internet Freedom in Belarus

Last Friday, the Index on Censorship, a freedom of expression advocacy group, published a new report documenting the growing limits to internet freedom imposed by the Lukashenka regime in Belarus.  It points particularly to evidence that the regime is currently working to build a system to track the activities of all internet users in the country.

Belarus, which has been ruled by Aleksandr Lukashenka since 1994, has faced growing internet censorship by the regime for years, but compared to severely curtailed independent media and freedom of expression in every other aspect of life in Belarus, the internet has been relatively free.  Lukashenka’s grab to bring the internet into his iron grip is particularly problematic because if the regime succeeds in gaining the ability to completely monitor the internet, any venues for broad free speech and civil movements to develop will essentially be gone.

It’s notable that the regime is actively working on better tools of repression.  While an authoritarian regime looking to improve its oppressive tactics is not particularly newsworthy, in Belarus, Lukashenka was able to maintain his rule during his first fourteen years of power with fairly little effort.  Backed by significant oil and natural gas subsidies from Russia, Lukashenka grew the Belarusian economy and showed his people strong economic returns that improved the quality of their lives, essentially locking in their support.  But when Russia abruptly changed its policy 2007, it sent the Belarusian economy into a tailspin. Lukashenka had to look for other means of income, flirting with relationships with Iran, Venezuela, and China, and even turning to the EU and the IMF for help.

Maybe Lukashenka’s nervous.  He knows the ground under him has shifted, and he’s worried.  Should we be optimistic?  If the regime is nervous, the opposition movement may know it.  But in Belarus today, it’s nearly impossible for the opposition to make any progress.  It’s too hard to navigate the cumbersome legal code, the media is nearly completely controlled by the state, activists are openly harassed and abused.

The last time Lukashenka was nervous, he cracked down.  After the Color Revolutions and the beginnings of the Arab Spring, security forces brutally crushed peaceful protestors.  The protestors changed tactics, opting for flash-mob type demonstrations, like clapping wordlessly in public places.  Lukashenka outlawed public clapping.  This plan to track the activities of all of Belarus’ internet users is likely a response to the fact that Belarus is changing.  The population saw cracks in the regime’s veneer after 2007.  More and more people turned to the internet for news, desperate to see the world beyond the limited lens of the Lukashenka regime.

It’s painful to watch the world’s last Soviet strongman tighten even further the bonds of his already intransigent limits on expression.  But the Belarusian people, crushed under eighteen years of oppression, can do little about it.  If the regime succeeds in taking away even the relative freedom of the internet, it may push even further down the road any chance for a true opposition movement to take root.