As Belarus Faces Further COVID-19 Criticism On Victory Day, Portia Antonia Alexis Explains The Human Cost Of The Vysshaya League

Since the World Health Organisation’s declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11th, almost all sport in the Western hemisphere has ground to a standstill. As I wrote in my last piece for Forbes, a group of renegade states have continued to play sport, regardless. This inglorious collective of dictatorships, including Nicaragua and Tajikistan have been dubbed ‘the Ostrich League’ due to their refusal to stop live sport (or even report cases of the virus).

Most eminent among these ostriches, is Belarus’ U.S sanctioned President, Alexander G. Lukashenko, who has not just mandated that the nation’s top soccer league continue play (despite massive condemnation), but has turned the Vysshaya League to show case his dictatorship. At 13:00 Eastern Time, Dynamo Minsk began their game against Dinamo Brest. Meanwhile, Belarus reports the highest number of coronavirus cases in Eastern Europe (leading Sky News to state that Lukashenko ‘looks hell-bent on turning COVID-19 into a catastrophe for his country’).

I hadn’t intended to report Belarus’ Vysshaya League fixtures (to do so felt tantamount to handing free publicity to a tyrant). But since my last story on COVID-19, I’ve spoken with a number of experts in public health, human rights and economics, including Portia Antonia Alexis, an economics researcher at The London School of Economics, who has a particularly strong rapport with her millennial following on sites like Instagram. As Portia put it to me, my previous article negated to tell Belarus’ back-story, which I reported myself for The Moscow Times in 2014.

Portia is currently writing two educational books for young adults on economics, and pointed out to me that ‘until the interplay is better explained, sport, economics and human rights remain disciplines for academic discourse. What has happened in Belarus during recent months, and what unfolded this weekend, is anything but abstract. It is a subject for discussion that young people care about’.

Portia is referring to the remarkable military parade which President Lukashenko held on Saturday the 9th to celebrate Victory in Europe day. With thousands lining the streets of Minsk, the man we know as ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’ did not so much red card social distancing. He quite literally drove a tank through it.

Victory in Europe Day marks the formal acceptance by the Allies of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945. As both Portia and I wish to make clear, it is important for readers to know that this post serves to recognize (and never deride) just how many citizens of what is now the former Soviet Union lost their lives. Great Britain lost 452,000 military combatants, and France lost 250,000, while it’s accepted that 300,000 U.S soldiers gave their lives. By comparison, the Soviet Union lost 13.8 million soldiers. When civilian casualties are considered, the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Defense calculates that 26.6 million died, a figure accepted by Western experts.

However, in this time of pandemic, even the region’s most authoritarian rulers chose to pan their military parades. Some commentators have suggested that President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to halt his annual Red Square event led Lukashenko to steam ahead with his own parade, in a blatant display of missile sizing. The only other nation with low enough regard for public health to hold parades this weekend was fellow Ostrich League outlier Turkmenistan (who broke precedent in 2018 when they dethroned North Korea as the most authoritarian nation on the planet).

As Portia explained to me, it is important that we call out what has been termed sports-washing by various academics and monitors, one of whom has called Lukashenko’s Vysshaya League ‘a death match’. Portia’s point is that many authoritarian states have used sport to polish their image for decades. But, while older writers remember why Belarus deserves many column inches of denigration, younger fans may not have had chance to digest the back-story of the nation’s human rights violations. I have collated various points Portia gave me here, because they serve as a really sound summary (from a woman nominated for a UN Women’s Change Maker Award) of why for Belarus to have a future, we need to call out the state’s very bleak past.

Why do young people care about Belarus, and the Vysshaya League games that are being played now?

Belarus’ President, Alexander G. Lukashenko, has now been in power since 1994. His human rights record, in the view of numerous NGOs and many EU governments, is despicable. According to a senior member of Belarus’ security services who was able to escape, the country’s systemic use of torture includes “electric shock, smothering…poisoning by tear gas and neuro-paralytic agents, battery, straining of tendons, and piercing of gums by an awl”, which became standard practice after political demonstrations in the early 2000’s. As Pavel Melko told the EU Observer in July 2006, “Some cannot bear the tortures, faint, try to commit suicide. Some, tired from tortures, leap out of the windows”. Lukashenko’s zero tolerance policy to political opposition has repeatedly led security services to mercilessly beat opposition candidates, in many cases using rape as a form of punishment against young women. Lukashenko’s attacks target the young, because Belarus has a young population, who have shown the courage to protest, repeatedly. Movements like the Belarusian Patriotic Youth Union, the Malady Front, and Zubr mobilized peaceful opposition to the 2001 Presidential Election which gave Lukashenko serious cause for concern. There are too many abysmal human rights violations to list here, but perhaps the most serious is President Lukashenko’s strong support for capital punishment. Colonel Oleg Alkaev who led death row in Belarus (before fleeing in 2009) has explained that executions are conducted by firing one single round from a PB-9 pistol in to the convict’s head.

OK, but where does sport and the Vysshaya League come in to this?

Alexander Lukashenko adores sport, and is using soccer to gain a regional, and a domestic, political advantage. Lukashenko’s strategy as President has been to employ sport as a way to whitewash the state’s inexcusable human rights record before the international community. Despite pleas by the human rights community to block Belarus’ bid to host the 2014 Ice Hockey World Championship, Minsk’s bid was successful. Sanctions were partially relaxed in 2015, but, in 2020, Lukashenko saw the perfect opportunity to use sport to further soften his image and win an even greater geopolitical advantage. With the entire world fixated on the COVID-19 pandemic, Lukashenko kept league games open to deflect his attacks on critics and opposition figures. This weekend, while the world criticized Lukashenko’s public parade and league games, it was quietly reaffirmed that Presidential Elections will proceed on August 2nd. The Vysshaya League has been the perfect smokescreen for a crack down on opposition.

Someone counter-arguing this point would say that Kazakhstan, Russia and Azerbaijan regularly host major events. They all have dismal human rights records. Isn’t Belarus just more of the same?

No. This is not the case. Belarus has set precedent in its use of the COVID-19 pandemic to silence political dissent by killing thousands of its own citizens merely to gain international publicity. The President has encouraged fans to attend league games, has regularly ridiculed or downplayed the severity of the disease, and has advocated hard work as the best solution. He has even joked on television that regularly drinking 100ml of vodka may also prove an appropriate remedy.

So how has the phenomenon taken root?

As sanctions have been relaxed, foreign companies can technically offer sports betting options on (or in) Belarus. A foreign company must either acquire a license from the state, or enter a joint-venture with a local company already in possession of the right to operate. The ultimate beneficiary of these license payments is Belarus’ Football Federation. The same is true for licensing rights on broadcast of matches to other markets, where the country has signed roughly ten deals. As business and politics in Belarus are indivisible, many entities and individual implicated in business with foreign companies could be politically exposed, or at risk of political pressure. For the absolute avoidance of doubt, this is not an accusation against any company active in the country, but rather a comment on market conditions voiced by NGOs like Transparency International.

Gambling companies in both Europe and the United States offered odds on matches played on both Saturday the 9th, and today, Sunday 10th. What’s your lead for young people who might be of legal age and placing bets on the league?

Many millennials have not yet had chance to read about Belarus, so I’m sure no one has willfully set out to harm anyone. Belarus’ strategy has been to deliberately omit truth, in order to garner attention for its teams. In these times of lock-down, boredom and isolation, some young people will look for sports fixtures played elsewhere. They may also bet on them. But with these points in mind, I think we all need to ask ourselves a question, as fearlessly as we can. Sport should be something that brings us together, and that shatters so many of the societal and ethnic divides in our societies. In Belarus, sport and particularly the Vysshaya League, have been used as a smoke-screen to white-wash an ugly, authoritarian and deeply oppressive President’s regime. In finance, it’s so important to take time to check in with your conscience. An innocuous bet on a game far away might seem harmless. But the implications for others lives are often greater than we believe.