Belarus struggles with the West on the ideological front

Belarus is trying to attack the West in the field where Belarusan regime feels its own weakness.

Let us recall that Belarusan Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently presented a report named "Human Rights Violations in Certain Countries in 2012". The report blames 25 Western states of serous human rights violations.

Frequent accusations of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, multiple TV programmes and now the report are the main tools which the Belarusan government uses against the Western to win an ideological war. As many other parts of state propaganda, the accusations have little support in facts or deliberately misleading. But on the domestic level, they seem to serve the purpose well.

The best defence is a good offense

The practice of blaming western democracies for human rights violations is a rather wide-spread among authoritarian regimes. It helps to divert attention from domestic problems to foreign problems and at the same time to respond in kind to governments that dared to criticise them.

For instance, take the case of Iran. In October 2011 one of the Iranian leading Ayatollahs responsible for judicial system of the country held a long TV-speech explaining why it was time to bring an action before the international courts against the USA for multiple human rights violations.

In May 2012, the North Korea took the initiative and officially blamed the West for abusing human rights all over the world by organising revolutions and suppressing the protests.

In December 2012 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement criticising European governments and the United States for mistreatment of ethnic minorities and brutal dispersals of the mass demonstrations.

Now Belarus has officially joined the club. It is true that even the best functioning democracies deserve criticism. But when the criticism is made by the country with a worst human rights record in Europe, it is nothing but pure politics.

Belarusan report with numerous mistakes and distortions

The report seems to be prepared in haste. Some data is simply inaccurate, sometimes Belarusan Ministry of Foreign Affairs deliberately misrepresents what "human rights" are.

Some "accusations" from the Belarusan report seem comic rather than serious. Belgium, for example, is said to discriminate those over 45 years old 8% more often than the other groups while applying for a job. In several countries high unemployment among youth and migrants, poverty, low salaries are also considered human rights violations by Belarusan governmental specialists.

Sometimes western governments are accused of human rights violations when they were actually protecting them. The Danish government is guilty for not censoring the cartoons about Prophet Mohammed.

The US government, in order to respect the rights of Muslims, should have banned "the Innocence of Muslims" movie and prosecute its director. Norwegian court was too soft to Anders Breivik.

Perhaps these numerous mistakes attracted more international attention than the report itself. "Foreign Policy" magazine has showed several mismatches in it. For example according to the Belarusan report, Jill Stein, candidate for presidency from the Green Party, was a man but in fact she is a woman.

The authors of the report think that the USA should have also allowed Texas to become independent. As "Foreign Policy" magazine’s columnist Joshua Keating sharply put it: "It appears that if Texas ever did secede, Belarus might be the first to recognise it".

Opportunities to protect abused rights

One must be honest and admit that some of the human rights violations, described in the report indeed took place. This concerns mistreatment of migrants, brutal crackdown on the "Occupy" movement demonstrations, torture in American and European prisons etc.

But what Belarusan officials tend to omit is the possibility of western victims of human rights abuses to defend themselves in courts effectively. What seems exotic in Belarus often happens in democratic states: wrong governmental or judicial decisions are overruled.

This concerns, for instance, the case of the Lithuanian journalist Dainius Radzevicius, who was unlawfully accused of libel by the city district court. But the Belarusan report does not mention that this decision was overruled by the appeal court afterwards.

Citing the decisions of the European Court for Human Rights is the moment of a real hypocrisy in the Belarusan report. The authors use the one of the greatest European institution’s decisions although Belarusans are not allowed to use it. Belarusans are the only European nation for whom the doors of this Court are closed.

Describing the cases of torture in American prisons, the Belarusan Ministry of Foreign Affairs forgets to mention that most were subsequently punished for it.  In Belarus such justice seldom prevails. For example, ex-candidate on presidential elections Ales Mihalevich reported about torture in Belarusan prisons (so as many political prisoners did) and had to leave the country fearing for his life. Naturally, "the independent" investigation did not confirm any of these allegations.

Tool in an ideological war

Belarusan political analyst and journalist Aliaksandr Klaskouski in his comment to BelarusDigest said: "This document was made by the [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] officials without any enthusiasm. That is why there are so many silly mistakes in it. The purpose was to show Lukashenka, that MFA fights back to the ideological foes".

Referring to human rights is the tool of the governmental propaganda within the country and towards the foreign opponents. It became one of the legitimate battlefields for the regime. Belarusan ruler himself several times mentioned the western human rights abuses during his last press-conference.

Belarusan state media keeps the pace with its master. For example, Belarusan state television features a weekly programme called "Human Rights: Outlook into the World". Week after week Soviet-style state propagandist "breaks myths" about western democracies.

Some of the programme's revelations are that the USA control the world media, the West is obsessed with plans to occupy all the oil-producing countries and to overthrow governments who do not want to follow their orders. The West according to the Belarusan television is also waging an information war waged against Belarus and its allies - Iran, Venezuela and Cuba and finances global terrorism.

Belarusan authorities deliberately seem to have put human rights on the chessboard of ideological struggle. They aim not so much to show how bad the West is, but rather to ridicule and undermine the whole idea of human rights violations.