KGB supervises purge of “unreliable” citizens ahead of election – report
December 28, Pozirk. Police in Belarus have received lists of citizens who participated in the 2020 protests and an order to carry out preventive measures in the run-up to the presidential election, the ByPol association of former security officers said, citing its own source.
It noted that the lists were compiled on the basis of the so-called Disorder database. The purge is supervised by the Committee for State Security (KGB), not the interior ministry. Security forces are tasked with “preventing protests [like those] that began during the previous ‘elections’ of 2020.”
“Officers must ensure that these people do not protest. To this end, individual ‘unreliable’ Belarusians may be charged with administrative or criminal offenses ahead of the ‘elections,’ even for far-fetched or insignificant reasons,” the report said.
It added that “security officials are confident that there will most likely be no protests, so they are not taking their duties seriously.”
Belarus will hold its seventh presidential election from January 21 to 26, with the whole election cycle limited to just three months.
The current campaign is taking place in a purged political landscape amid a new wave of crackdown on regime critics.
Belarus has not held a single free and fair election since 1996 by the standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Pundit: presidential race notable for militaristic rhetoric
December 18, Pozirk. The upcoming presidential election in Belarus stands out for its heavy militaristic rhetoric, Paŭluk Bykoŭski, a Media IQ analyst, said at a conference in Warsaw yesterday. While Belarusian authorities typically seek to ensure that elections pass off …