Last weekend was a real holiday for some Belarusians as the Orthodox Easter was marked with truly good news of the release of two political prisoners. Andrei Sannikov, a former presidential candidate, and one of his main campaign aides, Dzmitry Bandarenka, stepped out of the jails they had been kept in for 16 months each. The long-awaited deep breaths of freedom, although still limited, for the opposition activists themselves, their families and friends were welcomed by all democratically-minded Belarusians and their supporters around the world.

Still, the good news does not sparkle a lot of hope for the country as a whole. Despite Sannikov and Bandarenka now being on the other side of jail bars, Belarus is still far away from freedom.

Two men of courage and civic stand freed, families re-united: no doubt the event is positive and encouraging. But — and there is no doubt about this either — it does not highlight any change of the situation inside Belarus, nor of the usual habits of the Belarusian authorities that have a long “tradition” of trading political prisoners to the West for economic benefits.

According to Belarusian human rights defenders, 13 more political prisoners are still behind bars in the country, including one more former presidential candidate, Mikalay Statkevich, and one of the leading human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Ales Bialiatski.

Listen to Index’s Mike Harris and Belarus Free Theatre’s Natalia Koliada discuss Sannikov’s release on the BBC’s The World Tonight here (at 27 minutes)

Sannikov and Bandarenka are still considered to be criminals. Officially they were freed as the result of a pardon they had asked President Aleksandr Lukashenko for. Sannikov told journalists on Monday he will spend eight more years under police supervision. His wife, well-known Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip, was not able to meet her husband when he arrived at Minsk train station Sunday night: according to her own sentence received after the anti-government protests of 19 December 2010, she must obey a daily curfew of 10pm. So, freedom in Belarus is quite a relative notion.

Quite a number of Belarusian analysts have pointed out that the release of Sannikov and Bandarenka was the result of solidarity actions within the country’s civil society, campaigning led by international organisations, and European Union sanctions (namely a travel ban for Belarusian officials responsible for human rights violations and pointed economic restrictions against some enterprises considered to be “purses of the regime”). But there is for sure one more component of this equation, which is Russia.

It is clear that the release of the two political prisoners is a kind of invitation to the EU to normalise its relationship with Belarus. It is clearly a signal to Brussels, but there is no real intention of change behind it: just the same old game.

President Lukashenko’s simple — yet quite successful — strategy is to balance between Russia and the EU, and try to gain economic benefits (like loans or cheap gas prices) by making use of the geopolitical contradictions between them. Worsening of relations with Moscow once it gets tired of subsidising Lukashenko’s ineffective economy and his pathological unwillingness to stick to his promises usually leads to a change in anti-Western rhetoric and simulation of dialogue attempts with the EU.

This is exactly the case now. Lukashenko seems to lose the momentum of unconditional support from Kremlin as its “old new” leader Vladimir Putin gets very clear about the rules of the game. Russia clearly keeps away from backing Lukashenko in his “diplomatic war” with Europe, and it is obvious that the conflict with Brussels reached its climax with all EU ambassadors leaving Minsk at the end of February. The lack of support from his eastern neighbour makes Lukashenko seek attempts to normalise his relations with Europe — well, to the extent his own understanding of “normalisation” goes. Sannikov and Bandarenka’s release is a test of how the EU will react. For the same “testing” purposes the Belarusian President also postponed his official annual address to the Parliament, previously planned for 19 April. The official reason was Lukashenko’s alleged “disagreement with excessively harsh measures of reaction to the problems in relations of Belarus with its partners.”

Yet, Europe shows quite a strong stance on this situation. The Chairman of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and EU Commissioner, Stefan Fule, all welcomed Sannikov and Bandarenka’s release. But they pointed out it is only the first step, as all the political prisoners must be released and also rehabilitated, with a clear understanding the authorities of Belarus can fulfil the former, but will never agree on the latter.

The diplomatic “dance” to follow is surely one Lukashenko will try to lead. And it will be the real test of the consistency of the EU policy and the firmness of its position — with a clear temptation of declaring “a breakthrough to a dialogue” too soon, and a threat of the situation to worsen again if the response is too disengaging. Finding the right balance is a tricky mission — but one gets additional advantage, when one’s counterpart is trying hard to get his balance right as well, both in political sense and on accounting sheets of struggling budget.

Then there is the most important component of the equation. Andrei Dmitriev, one of the leaders of Tell the Truth campaign and a former political prisoner himself, wrote on his Facebook page on Monday that he was surprised so few people came to meet Sannikov in Minsk: half of the small crowd that gathered in front of the train station on Sunday night were journalists. Almost no leaders of other oppositional forces were there to great their colleague. The opposition is still recovering from the severe crackdown after December 2010 with continuous nightmare of searches, interrogations, courts and torture that followed. It surely needs to unite forces and summon their strengths to prove the regime is wrong thinking the democratic movement of Belarus is crashed. The upcoming Parliamentary election campaign scheduled for 2012 will be a good time for that.

Just let the weekend smiles of Andrei Sannikov’s family give us some hope.

Andrei Aliaksandrau is the vice chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists

Index is campaigning with the Belarus Committee to liberate the 13 remaining political prisoners in Europe’s last dictatorship. Find out more here.

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Europe’s last dictatorship is clamping down on online activism, with a new law effectively requiring everyone to be a state spy. Mike Harris reports

As of this morning, the internet in Belarus got smaller. A draconian new law is in force that allows the authorities to prosecute internet cafes if their users visit any foreign sites without being “monitored” by the owner. All commercial activity online is now illegal unless conducted via a .by (Belarusian) domain name, making Amazon and eBay’s operations against the law unless they collaborate with the regime’s censorship and register there. The law effectively implements the privatisation of state censorship: everyone is required to be a state spy. Belarusians who allow friends to use their internet connection at home will be responsible for the sites they visit. Some have tried to defend the law, stating all countries regulate the internet in some form – but the Belarusian banned list of websites contains all the leading opposition websites. The fine for visiting these sites is half a month’s wages for a single view.

The Arab spring has been a wake-up call to the world’s remaining despots. The internet allowed images of open dissent to disseminate instantly. As Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak found out, once you reach a critical mass of public protest you haven’t got long to board your private jet. It’s a lesson learned by Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and Europe’s last dictator, and also by the Belarusian opposition.

Lukashenko attempted to destroy the political opposition after the rigged 2010 presidential elections. Seven of the nine presidential candidates were arrested alongside thousands of political activists. The will of those detained was tested: there are allegations that presidential candidates Andrei Sannikov and Mikalai Statkevich have been tortured while in prison. The opposition is yet to recover; many of its leading figures have fled to Lithuania and Poland.

Within this vacuum of leadership, the internet helped spur a civil society backlash. After the sentencing of the presidential candidates, a movement inspired by the Arab spring “The Revolution Via Social Networks” mushroomed into a wave of protests that brought dissent to towns across Belarus usually loyal to Lukashenko. As the penal code had already criminalised spontaneous political protest with its requirements for pre-notification, the demonstrations were silent, with no slogans, no banners, no flags, no shouting, no swearing – just clapping.

“The Revolution Via Social Networks” (RSN) helped co-ordinate these protests online via VKontakte (the biggest rival to Facebook in Russia and Belarus with more than 135 million registered users). RSN now has more than 32,000 supporters.

RSN splits its four administrators between Minsk and Krakow to keep the page active even when the state blocks access to the page, or the country’s secret police (hauntingly still called the KGB) intimidate them.

The protests were so effective at associating clapping with dissent that the traditional 3 July independence day military parade was held without applause with only the brass bands of the military puncturing the silence. As lines of soldiers, trucks, tanks and special forces paraded past Lukashenko and his six-year-old son dressed in military uniform, those gathered waved flags in a crowd packed with plain-clothed agents ready to arrest anyone who dared clap or boo.

The internet has kept the pressure on the regime in other ways. Protesters photograph the KGB and post their pictures online in readiness for future trials against those who commit human rights violations. A Facebook group “Wanted criminals in civilian clothes”, blogs and Posobniki.com all help to expose those complicit in the regime’s crimes. The web has also helped spread the stories of individuals who have faced brutality by the regime.

It’s this effectiveness that has made the internet a target for Lukashenko. The law enacted in July 2010 allowed the government to force Belarusian ISPs to block sites within 24 hours.

The new measures coming into force today merely build upon these restrictions. The official position of the Belarusian government from the operations and analysis centre of the presidential administration is: “The access of citizens to internet resources, including foreign ones, is not restricted in Belarus.” Yet, in reality the government blocks websites at will, especially during protests. Just after Christmas, the leading opposition website Charter 97 (which works closely with Index on Censorship) was hacked, its archive part-deleted and a defamatory post about jailed presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov published on the site. The site’s editor, Natalia Radzina, who has faced years of vile death and rape threats and escaped from Belarus after being placed in internal exile last year, says she has “no doubt” that the government was behind the hack. This is one of a series of attacks on Charter 97, which include co-ordinated DDoS (denial of service) attacks orchestrated by the KGB through an illegal botnet of up to 35,000 infected computers worldwide.

The regime has even darker methods of silencing its critics. In September 2010, I flew to Minsk to meet Belarusian civil society activists including the founder of the Charter 97 website, Oleg Bebenin. The day I landed he was found hung in his dacha, his leg broken, with his beloved son’s hammock wrapped around his neck. I spoke to his closest friends at his funeral including Andrei Sannikov and Natalia Radzina. No one believed he had committed suicide, all thought he had been killed by the state. Bebenin isn’t the only opposition figure to have died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances under Lukashenko’s rule, a chill on freedom of expression far more powerful than any changes in the law.

Today marks yet another low in Belarus’s miserable slide back to its Soviet past. Clapping in the street is now illegal. NGOs have been forced underground and their work criminalised.

Former presidential candidates languish in jail. The internet is the last free public space.

Lukashenko will do all he can to close down this freedom. In Europe, the battle has opened between the netizens of Belarus and its government. Who wins will be a matter of interest for us all.

Mike Harris is Head of Advocacy at Index on Censorship.

This article originally appeared on Comment is Free on 6 January.

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