You cannot be serious

You cannot be serious

The Belarus saga exposes the hollowness of the west's support for human rights and democracy

Neil Clark


When is an election not considered free and fair by the west? Answer: when it delivers victory to a government that rejects neoliberal orthodoxy and refuses to orientate its foreign policy towards Washington or Brussels. There is no other conclusion one can come to after both the US and the EU announced swingeing sanctions on Belarus after the re-election of President Lukashenko.

Many may believe the sanctions deserved - after all, the election has been condemned by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the country's human-rights record has been attacked by Amnesty International. But even if we believe the worst about Lukashenko (and it is widely accepted by opponents that he has majority support in Belarus), the democratic failings of the former Soviet republic pale into insignificance compared with those of other governments that the west, far from penalising, has rewarded generously.

There is no talk of sanctions on Egypt, despite sweeping restrictions placed on opposition candidates, its thousands of political prisoners and widespread use of torture; on the contrary, Hosni Mubarak's country is the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid. And while Condoleezza Rice quotes with approval OSCE reports on Belarus, she seems less keen to respond to its verdict on central Asian states such as Turkmenistan - a country that an OSCE official, Hrair Baliyan, has described as lacking even a "semblance of pluralism".

The US and its European allies have long used the smokescreen of democracy and human rights to undermine regimes of which they do not approve, while turning a blind eye to undemocratic practices and rights abuses in countries that do their bidding. A succession of governments have been labelled undemocratic by the US despite holding free elections: Guatemala in the 50s, Chile in the 70s, Nicaragua in the 80s, the rump Yugoslavia in the 90s. Pro-western dictatorships such as the Shah's Iran, Pinochet's Chile and Suharto's Indonesia have been generously bankrolled.

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