Belarus - an outpost of tyranny, cruelty, repression and control

Belarus: Europe's secret state.

"Belarus is a nation blighted by Soviet-style tyranny under President Alexander Lukashenko, whose one-party rule would be a comedy were it not for the cruelty and repression used to control its long-suffering citizens. ---

In short, the broadcast pictures offer no hint of the repression that has enabled Lukashenko to rule his landlocked state in the geographical heart of Europe for nearly 20 years; or of the systematic crushing of opponents that has earned the 59-year-old megalomaniac the title of "Europe's last dictator". His nation of nine million people remains, in the words of the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, an "outpost of tyranny". It is a last remnant of the Soviet Union replete with its own KGB, political prisoners, show trials, penal colonies, collective farms, command economy and formidable propaganda machine - but not much glasnost or perestroika. It is Europe's shameful little secret."





British GQ-magazine: "Europe's secret state" (full text)
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2014-03/06/belarus-dictatorship-alexander-lukashenko/viewall

Photos: KL