Authorities liquidating dozens of NGOs

Many of the NGOs that are being shut down were tar­get­ed in raids by law enforce­ment offi­cers ear­li­er this month.

In par­tic­u­lar, the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee has ordered the liq­ui­da­tion of the Cen­ter for Legal Trans­for­ma­tion, a human rights group called Human Con­stan­ta and the Office for Euro­pean Exper­tise and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (OEEC).

OEEC Direc­tor Svi­at­lana Zinkievič wrote in a Face­book post on Fri­day that the orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ued its oper­a­tion despite the liq­ui­da­tion process.

Belarus’ author­i­ties have also launched a process to shut down, among oth­ers, the Office for the Rights of Dis­abled Peo­ple, the Cen­ter for Euro­pean Research, the Cen­ter for Envi­ron­men­tal Solu­tions, Press Club Belarus, the Ime­na char­i­ty, the Belaru­sian Nation­al Youth Coun­cil RADA, an envi­ron­men­tal group called Ekosre­da, edu­ca­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions called Social Inter­ven­tions, Kresy, ASET and Amaro­ka, the Office for the Pro­mo­tion of Ini­tia­tives, the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and For­eign Pol­i­cy Stud­ies.

Oth­er orga­ni­za­tions under liq­ui­da­tion include Mahil­ioŭ Youth Cen­ter, a her­itage pro­tec­tion group called UNOVIS-FORUM, an urban­is­tic project group called Pras­to­ra, and the Vakoli­ca human rights group.

The gov­ern­ment is also shut­ting down a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions engag­ing in assis­tance to pen­sion-age peo­ple and vul­ner­a­ble groups.

The jus­tice min­istry ear­li­er filed law­suits seek­ing the liq­ui­da­tion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter. The lat­ter is chaired by Nobel prize win­ner Svi­at­lana Aliek­si­je­vič.

Speak­ing at a gov­ern­ment meet­ing on Thurs­day, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukašen­ka defend­ed the Belaru­sian government’s crack­down on NGOs.

He said that Belarus had “near­ly 2,000 NGOs, non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, gang­sters and for­eign agents,” which he said were thought­less­ly reg­is­tered by the gov­ern­ment.

“We have now looked back: this is harm­ful to the state! A purge is under­way. Do you think it’s easy? Thou­sands of peo­ple are already work­ing for them, these are our peo­ple, most of whom have been turned, brain­washed with for­eign mon­ey,” he said.