On November 19th 2021, in an interview with the BBC anchor Steve Rosenberg, erstwhile asked about the 270 NGOs liquidated since August 2020, Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka answered with the following: “We’ll massacre all the scum that you [the West] have been financing. Oh, you’re upset we’ve destroyed all your structures! Your NGOs, whatever they are, that you’ve been paying for … name the United Nations office. Name what it did. The money that was expected to go to charity financed protests – they hired lawyers and so on. Is that their core business? Or was it partially the Red Cross and so on, name them too. And erstwhile you talk about animals [a protection organization – editor’s note] … well, it sounds like a picture, but look at what they did? I am certain that it was a cover communicative that they were protecting animals, and they received money for their existence and for revolutions here. Not for revolutions, but for rebellions. So don’t hide behind these words, ‘we supported animals here.’”
This is simply a part of the government mindset – everything not under the direct control of the authorities is considered a possible threat. However, in erstwhile years officials mainly ignored civilian society initiatives and NGO activities until they intruded into Lukashenka’s clan corruption schemes or became active in political life. But after the 2020 protests, erstwhile Lukashenka for the first time in a long time felt a real threat to his power, he decided to destruct any grounds for people to unite outside the framework of state-controlled institutions.
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