Ales Krautsevich: “Belarusian authoritarian regime wants to have everything under control”

• 11.02.2010, 16:25

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Ales Krautsevich thinks a reason for persecution of the Union of Poles is not a national conflict but an authoritarian character of the Belarusian government.

The authorities do not want to register the Union of Poles led by Andzelika Borys. As Radio Svaboda reminds, the militia has recently taken the Polish House in Ivyanets by storm. On February 10, supporters of Andzelika Borys held a protest action in front of the Polish House in Hrodna, where headquarters of the pro-governmental Union of Poles led by Stanislau Syamashka is situated.

Doctor of Historical Science, Professor Ales Krautsevich keeps in touch with is Polish colleagues. He also follows the events related to the unions of Poles led by Stanislau Syamashka and Andzelika Borys.

“The situation with the conflict in the Union of Poles, split up in two, is connected with a character of the Belarusian authorities, their narrow-mindedness,” Ales Krautsevich says. “There’s nothing of a national conflict, a desire to humiliate the Poles. There’s a desire of the authoritarian regime to have everything under control, to hold everybody in fear, to have everybody obedient. When the authorities expressed a wish that the country’s biggest NGO, the Union of Poles, should be headed by a person, loyal to the regime of Lukashenka, they tied to do this by every means possible.”

Ales Krautsevich concludes:

“These authorities cannot allow people to make a free choice anywhere – in an NGO, political power, local governmental bodes, parliamentary or presidential elections. The narrow- mindedness of the authorities is that it has led to a conflict with the strong neighbour, an international political conflict that both countries, Belarus and Poland, and even the authorities, do not need. This is pure and simple stupidity, this narrow-mindedness of the authorities that want to control everyone,” the historian says.