The Guardian (London)
March 27, 2006
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.
Even winning three democratic elections in a country where 21 parties
operated freely, and there was a thriving opposition-run media, is no
guarantee you won't be labelled a dictator by the west, as Slobodan
Milosevic found out. The reason Slobo was so labelled was not because he ran
a one-party state or even because of his role in the Yugoslav wars, but
because he represented the "unreformed" Yugoslav Socialist party, of which
the west did not approve.
The west has the same problem with Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Although Chávez
was backed by 58% of Venezuelans in a referendum endorsed by the former US
president Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair called on him to "abide by the rules of
the international community". The "rules" seem to be shorthand for accepting
the social and economic template the west insists on imposing throughout the
world.
The 83% vote for Lukashenko is said to be far too high to be taken
seriously; yet there was
no such western incredulity when the pro-Nato and pro-EU Mikhail
Saakashvili polled 97% in Georgia's 2004 presidential elections. When
Georgian civil-society leaders protested about the authoritarian direction
in which the country was heading, the west stayed silent.
In Ukraine, the scene of elections this weekend, the western-backed orange
revolution of just over a year ago has also left a bitter taste for many.
For all its talk of spreading democracy, respecting the rights of
independent peoples to choose whichever social and economic arrangements
they wish really is the last thing the west wants.
Neil Clark's blog can be read at www.commentisfree.com
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