Union Members Under Attack in Belarus

by James Parks, Apr 2, 2006

Belarusian workers and free trade unions are under attack. In the lead-up to the March 19 presidential election, the government of Belarus intensified its decade-long persecution of Belarusian workers who are fighting to form independent trade unions free from government and employer interference.

Bob Fielding, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s representative in the Ukraine and Belarus, sends this firsthand report of what is happening in that European country.

In the last month, six leaders of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP), and two activists from the Independent Trade and Electronic Workers’ Trade Union were arrested and imprisoned for participating in a get-out-the-vote campaign.

The government of President Alexander Lukashenko declared many routine trade union activities as threats to national security and treason. These activities include speaking with workers about the importance of casting their vote in public places; distributing nonpartisan leaflets with information about how their vote can influence their economic future; and, conducting door-to-door get-out-the vote campaigns.

All the trade unionists were arrested on purely trumped up charges. Some were arrested coming out of their homes to go to work in the morning. Others were seized, while leaving their union offices to go home, and forced into unmarked cars. Six of the eight were held long enough to take them out of the last week of the presidential campaign and prevent them from voting. Six trade unionists remain in prison.

In spite of threats made by the head of the Belarusian KGB that anyone publicly demonstrating after the elections would be tried as terrorists and face the death sentence, the BKDP leaders and members have continued to hold vigils and stay overnight in the snow in the main square in Minsk, calling for free, fair and democratic elections. Although they are subject to immediate arrest as soon as they walk away from the demonstration, they continue to make it through the police lines and secret police traps and ambushes, and bring in much needed food, water and medicines to the rest of the demonstrators.

The Lukashenko regime also detained more than two dozen international journalists covering the election and the protests that followed. The Committee to Protect Journalists says many of those being held have been charged with hooliganism and taking part in illegal protests. The group says journalists from at least five foreign countries are being held, including Canada, Georgia, Poland, Russia and Ukraine. It says five detained journalists were sentenced March 27 to jail terms of eight to 10 days, while another reporter was fined $430.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the world?s largest union federation, called on the European Union to put pressure on the Belarus authorities over these latest authoritarian acts.

?This regime as a long history of anti-union repression and the events of the last few days only serve to show that without genuine democracy, fundamental trade union freedoms cannot be properly exercised,? said IFCTU General Secretary Guy Ryder, adding ?we demand that President Lukashenko put an end to the systematic attacks on trade unionists and others involved in legitimate and peaceful protest action.?
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