Last week I interviewed Lizaveta Merliak, who runs Salidarnast, a group campaigning in support of the embattled independent trade union movement in Belarus. Liza was an activist in the Belarusian unions who was forced to leave her country as repression intensified.
By April 2022, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had crushed the independent trade unions in his country. Most of the top leaders were in jail while others were forced into exile. The unions were legally banned. There remain only what Liza calls “yellow unions” — the successor organisations to the trade unions of the Soviet era which never actually represented workers, never went on strike, and always served the interests of the state.
The crushing of the Belarusian trade unions is unusual, at least in Europe. It has happened nowhere else, not even in Putin’s Russia where even the democratic and independent unions remain legal. Even Turkey, where unions are regularly subjected to state repression, they remain legal and continue to represent workers, albeit with some difficulty. But in Belarus, they have been completely wiped out.
I asked Liza why this was the case and she told me that Lukashenko destroyed the trade union movement after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He did so because the Belarusian unions, like unions across Europe, had condemned the brazen Russian aggression. Russia had used Belarus as a staging area, putting its military forces there and crossing the border from there into Ukraine. It had turned Belarus into a partner in its criminal war.
And the reason why Belarus is the worst place in Europe for trade unionists, as Liza explained it, is Vladimir Putin. Putin tells Lukashenko what to do, and Lukashenko does what he is told.
Putin is playing the same role in Belarus as the tsars did in the 19th century, ensuring that democratic revolutions in countries bordering the Russian empire are swiftly crushed. Russian leaders think of democracy as a dangerous virus that could spread across borders, even into Russia.
If Putin gets his way, Ukraine will be transformed into a second Belarus, loyal to the Kremlin, with no free speech, no trade unions or opposition political parties. Ukrainians need only look at the bleak image Belarus presents to understand their fate if Russia wins the war.
To mark the third anniversary of the crushing of the independent trade union movement in Belarus, Salidarnast will be running a number of activities in partnership with unions around the world, including the Interational Trade Union Confederation. They will be running an online campaign hosted by LabourStart aiming to put pressure on the Lukashenko regime.
Unions in Europe in particular need to support these efforts and to raise awareness of the tragic situation facing our brothers and sisters living under the Lukashenko dictatorship. We must show them the same level of solidarity as we have shown to the embattled people of Ukraine. Their fight is our fight and they deserve our full support.
For more information:
Interview with Liza Merliak: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2313632/episodes/16725277
Salidarnast website: http://www.salidarnast.info/
LabourStart’s Belarus news page: https://bit.ly/ls-belarus
This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.