Highlighting a Country of Interest

So the Cold War has been over for a decade now. But the Soviet era repression and dictatorship isn't so dead.

So my Little Known Country of Interest today is Belarus.

Belarus is a country full of repression, media supression, and imprisionment of opposition leaders. It sounds so reminicent of soviet times past. In many ways that is model from which Belarus is taking its cue. It is a small Eastern European country left to whither once the Soviet Union fell. Its leader, Lukashenka, just won another election and has embraced the culture of corruption.

He banned the use of the name 'President', it is reserved soley for him. So clubs and associations have just had to come up with new names for the cheifs of their organizations. He also banned the use of the independant Belarussian flag, replacing it with the Soviet version. Not to mention the disappearances of some protestors to the government. As well as those being jailed for their opposition.

All in all its a soveit style state that seems to be lost in another time, at least to us. The reality of the situation is that that kind of behavior is more common than we choose to believe. There are still plenty of European dictatorships out there but in many cases we simply choose to ignore them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/28/AR2006042801212.html



tags: politics,Belarus,dictators,Lukashenka