This has been an eventful year for relations between Belarus and the European Union. There has been an extraordinary mix of conflict and engagement, from a freeze on the assets of Belarus businessmen to the launch of the Dialogue on Modernisation, a new EU initiative to encourage democratisation in Belarus.

But the essential problem in the EU-Belarus relationship remains: EU policy has always been aimed at getting the authoritarian Belarus state to engage in democratisation, but the EU has never given more than formal support to the role of Belarus civil society. EU policy is not coordinated with Belarus democrats. They cannot currently democratise Belarus alone: they need the help of the EU.

But European politicians think Belarus civil society is weak and do not want to bet on it. So EU policy is based on the irrational hope that an undemocratic state will democratise itself.

European policy on Belarus: more for more?

The EU’s approach to Belarus is framed by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The big idea is that the security of the EU depends on the stability and prosperity of its neighbouring states, which in turn depends on their being democratic. Particularly since the enlargement of 2004, the EU has been preoccupied with democratisation of the Belarusian regime.

After 1996 the EU tried different ways of putting pressure on Belarus, from hard political rhetoric to partial exclusion from the ENP, in the hope that it could turn the Belarus authorities in the right direction. But that approach didn’t work. By 2008 the EU had to admit that Belarus had managed to build a sustainable authoritarian regime. “Restoration of democracy” could no longer be a reasonable pre-condition for re-engaging in cooperation. Insisting upon it would simply move Belarus further away from the EU, raising questions about the effectiveness of the whole ENP process. A new approach was necessary.

In 2009 the Eastern Partnership EU initiative (EaP) created a different framework. EaP allowed Belarus to participate without any preconditions, though development of the mutual relationship was to be guided by the so-called “more for more” principle: the more democratisation there was in the partner country, the deeper the integration with the EU could be.

European policy in the eyes of Belarus authorities

Belarus agreed to play the new European game, which gave it a lot of room for manoeuvre in its relations with the EU. The “more for more” principle allowed it to use the European offer à la carte, choosing only to act in areas in which no significant political change was required and which had evident economic impact. The benefits of democratisation and the European way are not self-evident for the Belarus authorities. Belarus and Azerbaijan are much more prosperous without democracy and serious cooperation with Europe than Ukraine or Moldova, both of which have made much greater moves towards democratisation.  So the Belarus government tried to restrict cooperation to economic, energy and environment policy, leaving political questions aside. The European integration carrot failed decisively on the evening of the presidential election of 19 December 2010, when the Belarus authorities violently broke up a giant peaceful demonstration in Minsk against electoral fraud.

Since December 2010 the EU’s interest in democratisation of Belarus have led to protracted tensions with the Belarus regime’s interest in financial support for economic modernisation.

Brussels recalls ambassadors of all EU member states from Belarus, February 2012. Alexander Mazurkevich | Demotix

It was obvious that the events of the 19 December 2010 needed a response. The EU was torn between punishment, turning a blind eye and wait-and-see.

There have always been EU supporters of strict measures against the Belarusian regime. But there have always been too many obstacles to implement this approach, even after December 2010. An economic embargo could provoke humanitarian disaster. Complete political isolation of Belarus would not be acceptable because of the need to support democratic forces in the country and because of Belarus’s geopolitical importance.

The most desirable European policy for the Belarus authorities would be for Brussels to turn a blind eye — and there are powerful business interests in favour. Lithuania, Latvia and Slovenia have even argued against targeted economic sanctions against Belarus companies and businessmen close to Lukashenko regime. But this approach seems unlikely to prevail. It would entail massive political concessions from the EU — and the Belarus regime does not have the leverage that oil-rich Azerbaijan has.

The compromise option appears to kill two birds with one stone and has been favoured by the EU since December 2010. On one hand, via symbolic sanctions (visa bans, targeted economic sanctions) the EU expresses its principles: it condemns anti-democratic practices and violations of human rights in Belarus. On the other, normalisation of relations depends on a symbolic concession from Belarus authorities: the release of political prisoners. It means that the tension in EU-Belarus relations is put on hold.

Modernisation?

While the EU was waiting for a positive reply from the Belarus government, in spring 2012 the European Commission launched the European Dialogue on Modernisation with Belarus. The initiative appears to be a new attempt to influence the situation in Belarus to make up for the lack of any other effective measures.

The dialogue platform was publicised as open for participation by the political opposition and civil society. There was one condition for the participation of the government, the release of political prisoners. In theory, it should bring a European Belarus into being and lead to necessary reforms for the country’s modernisation. The process could also serve as a basis for future bilateral EU-Belarus relations, including Belarus civil society as well as the government.

But such an outcome is of no interest for the Belarus government. The authorities consider that modernisation can be postponed. The authoritarian system can maintain economic welfare and political stability, and it can find solutions in crises. Many people are still satisfied with the quality of life the regime provides them with. So resuming relations with the EU is not a vital necessity for the Belarus government.

There are many in Belarus, frustrated by the lack of opportunities for economic, social, professional development, who support the ideas of modernisation and Europeanisation of the country. They are the core of civil society in the country and encompass just about all independent non-state structures, including NGOs and private business entities. The problem is that civil society is excluded from decision-making and has no political power.

The European Dialogue on Modernisation could help civil society and the Belarus political opposition to transform the country. It gives them legitimacy for political discussion and makes it clear that Belarus needs to engage with experts as it proceeds to democratisation.

But although the EU can help Belarus democratise, it can’t solve the opposition’s problems — and no EU policy towards Belarus will ever be successful without strong support in the country itself. Democratisation must be a joint project; the EU policy needs to be more coordinated with Belarus civil society. The Dialogue on Modernisation might provide welcome space, but to work it requires two things: consolidation of Belarus civil society in one democratic movement; and clear support from the EU for the new movement. If the former is the responsibility of people in Belarus, the latter depends on EU politicians’ will to abjure their dangerous games with autocrats.

Andrei Yahorau is the Director of the Centre for European Transformation in Minsk

Alena Zuikova is a junior analyst of the Centre for European Transformation and a representative to Brussels of Eurobelarus International Consortium

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In fact the senior officer who had been summoned to passport control to inspect my journalist visa smiled and said “Welcome to Myanmar Mr. BBC”. I gibbered some words of thanks and headed out into the sweltering, glorious night.

In the old days you presented yourself at passport control with a pounding heart and a dry mouth, convinced that at long last you were about to be found out. After all, you had made so many visits as a tourist even the most gullible of immigration officers would be bound to question your devotion to the beauty of Burma.

It didn’t help when my “tourist” trips nearly always coincided with some major political upheaval. What kind of person wants to holiday in Rangoon while thousands of people are being locked up and tortured?

Yet I was never asked that question. Usually the bored officer flicked through the pages until he/she found the required visa, paused for a gut churning few seconds and stamped me into the country.

The real problem was not the men and women who stamped passports. It was the ghosts who haunted the short walk from immigration to customs. If you were going to get nailed going into Burma on a tourist visa it would happen in this little space. So I always made a point of not looking at the spooks from Military Intelligence who were scanning the faces of new arrivals. I knew they had a blacklist of journalists and photographs of their most hated. For some years I numbered among these.

Very occasionally a journalist visa would be issued, usually for an event like the opening of parliament or founders day. But most of the time we were forced to adopt the disguise of tourists. This led to your correspondent parading around Rangoon in a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts and flip-flops during the 2007 “Saffron Revolution”; I cut a figure so florid, plump and ludicrous that nobody could possibly have suspected me capable of appearing on television.

Reporting in those days meant following certain essential rules:

1. Never leave a compromising document, piece of paper in your hotel room.
2. Destroy all notes when you were finished with them.
3. Change taxis at least twice on your way to and from appointments with dissident figures. Lose yourself in markets and busy public places if you suspect you are being tailed.
4. Say NOTHING on the phone that didn’t sound like tourist blather.
5. Make sure to schedule several tourist activities each day so that anybody watching won’t have undue reason to be suspicious.
6. Never identify an informant on camera. This could have profoundly unpleasant consequences for them.
7. Never travel with your tapes. Find an alternative route for them out of the country. Its funny how many different people prove helpful when they know the story is an important one. This is one of the really pleasant surprises, for me, of clandestine operating. There are more idealistic people, committed to press freedom, than you think.

As the list –– and it is by no means complete –– indicates reporting from Burma in those days could be an exhausting business. Getting caught could mean a very unpleasant interrogation and deportation for the correspondent, but much worse for any of his informants. It was the knowledge of what could happen to the people who helped you that made reporting from Burma such a distinctly unnerving experience. Jail and torture were routine for those who took a public stand against the regime.

Since the beginning of 2012 I’ve visited Burma three times. Each trip has been on an official journalist visa. Not once have I been harassed, intimidated or interfered with. I have reported from city slums and rural villages, from huge opposition rallies and from within sedate government compounds. On my first “official” trip I walked the streets of downtown Rangoon interviewing people at random. Again my expectation was that a secret policeman would appear from the shadows and bundle myself and the camera team away. But nothing happened.

Suddenly it was possible to hire fixers who could organise interviews and translate without fear of arrest. We sat at a teashop in the middle of the city with a recently released pro-democracy activist who discussed his plans for the forthcoming by-elections. There were press conferences at Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside residence; they could be prolonged, crowded and exhaustingly democratic occasions: every backpack blogger travelling in Asia seemed to turn up with a question and was given an answer.

On the domestic media scene the iron fisted censorship has been substantially eased. I met young newspaper reporters out on the streets and asking questions of election candidates. The government has lifted restrictions on 30,000 websites, many of which provide political news and commentary.

The privately owned press is testing the boundaries of this new freedom. Exiled journalists were invited to come home for consultations on a new media bill. The only private TV station in the country felt free to broadcast footage of Aung San Suu Kyi addressing the British parliament. The first ever Rangoon Film Festival featured a vivid documentary on the suppression of the Buddhist Monks protests in 2007.

Yet there are still highly problematic areas. Journalist visas still tend to be issued only for landmark occasions: visits by foreign dignitaries, elections, national days of commemoration. Some foreign correspondents are thought to be still on a government blacklist. All blacklists must be scrapped.

As for visits to troubled areas the old habits of concealment and restriction still rule. As a consequence the reporting of the ethnic violence in Rakhine state — which displaced tens of thousands earlier in the summer — was often confused or biased.

Interviews with senior government ministers, especially the President, are very rare. The consequence is that an essential strand of the narrative of change is under-reported. How I long to ask the men at the top why they decided to embark on a process of such profound change, or to challenge both them and the opposition on their response to events in Rakhine state.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, was strangely lethargic on the devastating abuses of human rights known to be taking place. It has been criticized for failing to challenge the outpouring of ethnic chauvinism directed against the Rohingya Muslim minority. In fact senior opposition activist Ko Ko Gyi, a former political prisoner, was among the louder voices that joined in the public marginalization of the minority.

On a more general level the NLD’s media operation can be exasperating. Interview requests can vanish into the ether. Finding the right spokesperson on a given issue is invariably a chore. Some of this is down to the inevitable stresses of a long suppressed organization struggling to come to terms with new freedoms. But the centralizing of the media focus around Aung San Suu Kyi leaves the international media largely ignorant of other voices. Local journalists have also complained about their struggles with the NLD’s press bureau.

For all these misgivings the advance of media freedom in Burma is exciting. Burma has never really known a free press — not in the long years of British colonialism, not in the decades of military rule. The challenge now is to embed a culture of openness in which government and opposition are routinely challenged.

Fergal Keane is an award winning journalist and author. His most recent book is Road of Bones: The Epic Siege of Kohima 1944

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Flag-waving supporters danced to rap music blaring through the Rangoon night accompanied by the raucous singing of Burmese freedom songs.

According to unofficial results the NLD, led by Nobel Peace laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide 43 seats out of 44, contested in special by-elections for the 644 seat parliament.

After almost 20 years kept under house arrest, Suu Kyi is believed to have emerged triumphant with a reported 99 per cent of the vote in her constituency of poor farmers.

After the “Arab Spring”, the pro-democracy movement in Burma, which dates back to the abortive peoples’ uprising in 1988, and was re-ignited by the “Saffron Revolution” led by Buddhist monks in 2007, has once more renewed its peaceful challenge; but this time the Burmese people moved their protest from the streets to the ballot-box.

Recent changes launched by new President and former general Thein Sein made it possible for the NLD to agree to participate in elections for the first time since 1990. In 2010 Suu Kyi, known widely as “the Lady”, and her party boycotted the elections which rubber-stamped the victory of the military‘s political wing the USDP (The Union of Solidarity and Development Party). The changes launched by President Thein Sein, and his pledge to hold free and fair election, made it possible for the NLD to agree to participate in the elections.

President Thein Sein, and Aung San Suu Kyi appear to have forged a surprising degree of trust and understanding.

Thein Sein has surprised and shocked many army generals by his courting of western governments, reducing media censorship, releasing over 600 political prisoners, and permitting Burma’s first credible election since 1990, when the NLD party won just under 80 per cent of all parliamentary seats.

In the Burmese capital of Naypyidaw, there is a galaxy of Suu Kyi pictures on posters, T-shirts and newspaper front pages. If you didn’t know The Lady was running for a parliamentary seat, you would assume she was the latest pop-star sensation or a Hollywood actress.

Instead she is the revered daughter of national hero and founder of Burmese independence, General Aung San, and she is attracting the kind of adulation that comes with sainthood. Only a year ago people would have been arrested for possession of memorabilia of Suu Kyi, who was then held under house arrest.

Prospects for press freedom and a new media law
During the election campaign, a Unesco-sponsored conference on press freedom and the government’s new media law took place in Rangoon. The big surprise was that the contingent of exiled Burmese journalists at the top of the regime’s extensive media blacklist, gained a 6-day visa in order to attend this historic media event.

Internet censorship has also been relaxed. The websites of exiled Burmese media — Irrawaddy magazine, Mizzima news agency and DVB TV, transmitting on satellite from its head office in Oslo, were a high priority in the regime’s systematic suppression of critical information. Now access has been restored and the government has, in principle, agreed to allow some representatives of the exiled media to establish offices in Rangoon.

Information Minister U Kyaw Hsan, who loyally served the military regime for six years prior to the formation of a civilian government in 2010, addressed the conference and affirmed that the new government, headed by President Thein Sein, was committed to increased press freedom.

Currently journals that publish weekly reviews of news and politics must submit their proofs to the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) before publication. Thein Sein declared that he was also committed to the gradual removal of state censorship prior to publication.

Former “enemies of the state” banned by this same Minister of Information were now sitting in the same room, listening to his assurances that he supported press freedom.

In his opening address to a media conference held in Rangoon in March, the minister argued: “we are not drafting the new media law with the intention of banning or hampering press freedom. Our aim is to facilitate the proper use of press freedom for the long-term progress of Myanmar’s media sector”.

The new media regime will allow privately-owned newspapers to publish dailies, (now only weeklies are permitted).The government is expected to carry out its promise to drop prior censorship.

The press are today permitted to print Suu Kyi’s photo on the front page, but U Soe Thein, veteran journalist and editor of The People’s Age Journal complains that the censorship board still uses the red ink to block those stories which are critical of the government or quote the other side in peace negotiations.

Soe Thein said: “In our coverage of recent peace talks and ceasefire agreements with ethnic groups opposed to the government, we are only allowed to cover the government side. We are not allowed to quote anyone from the ethnic rebel side like the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO)”.

“I don’t really trust the minister and his assurances about more press freedom” says Soe Thin, who has been jailed several times for his writings. He insisted “we journalists will continue to push the envelope”.

Many editors and journalists are worried that the new media law contains no clause to protect the media from the repressive laws and the legal machinery of the dictatorship, that could still be used to silence the media and jail them at any time.

Eighty-two-year-old U Win Tin is Burma’s most fearless and respected journalist, who has survived over 20 years imprisonment. Since the late 1980s, he has been a close advisor to Suu Kyi.He says: “the media law gives no protection to journalists. We need legal protection. This is the key issue.” He argues that promises about press freedom don’t add up to much and has called for “tangible guarantees”.

Twenty-one year old Sithu Zeya, a video journalist from Democratic Voice of Burma, who was released from jail in January this year, is a good example of this legal limbo-land that media now inhabit. His release was a conditional freedom. He could still be returned to prison to serve the remaining 18 years of his sentence, if he breaches any of Burma’s all-embracing and ill-defined public order and security laws.

At the March media conference the Information Ministry did not respond to repeated calls for the repeal of legislation that infringed human rights and press freedom.

A joint statement by exiled media groups, which was released following the conference said: “It is important that the media law in Burma should not only focus on freedom of the press and freedom of expression, but also constitute a safeguard for the security and rights of members of the media community.”

In the wake of post-election euphoria there is an emotive surge of hope that the landslide by-election wins will create an irresistible momentum towards press freedom and democracy.

But Aung San Suu Kyi has warned that nothing is irreversible and these reforms can easily be rolled back. Burma is still a military-dominated regime with 25 per cent of the 644 seats in parliament automatically reserved for army officers, far outnumbering the 43 seats that pro-democracy forces have just won.

Both local and exiled journalists who choose to return, are still vulnerable to sudden shifts in the government’s interpretation of “responsible journalism”.The media will continue to be a high risk sector in Burma for a long time to come, as long as the ultimate power still resides in the hands of a military that has become accustomed to being the ultimate guardian of the nation.

Tom Fawthrop is a freelance foreign correspondent based in south-east Asia

Aung San Suu Kyi writes a free speech manifesto for the new edition of Index on Censorship saying : “The fight for freedom begins with freedom of speech”

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Tuesday’s expected declaration of Tunisia’s election results will say much about the main players in its great adventure in democracy building. But it won’t reveal much about what those players plan to do with with their unique mandate. For that you’ll need an independent Tunisian media, in print, on air and online.

In turn that means a new legal and institutional framework based on freedom of expression, swifter development of the broadcast and print media sectors and protections for the the internet against the resurgence of censorship.

Tunisia’s Sunday elections will establish a 217-member constituent assembly to draft a new constitution and give legitimacy to an interim government ahead of full parliamentary elections.

The extraordinary turnout, estimated at an astounding 90 per cent, gives both authority and diversity to the new assembly. It increases the chances that the assembly will allow space for women, rural and inland industrial communities and a proportional voice for minorities — a priority of the Ben Achour Commission that led the election’s organisation.

It also finally gives some kind of true measure to Islamist political influence and brings members of the old regime still in politics out of the shadows.

The stage is set for a complex debate that will test the Tunisian media and its capacity to communicate the works of the new assembly. But despite solid efforts by the country’s post-revolution National Authority to Reform Information and Communication (INRIC) — the media landscape evolution has been slow.

To meet the challenge the new assembly must promote strong constitutional and legal guarantees for freedom of expression rights and access to information. There will need to be a properly supported successor to INRIC, an independent regulatory body that can effectively promote the independence and growth of the media.

The new body and the regulations that it implements will have to guide public service broadcasting as well as private, commercial and community broadcasting and empower and protect journalists dedicated to quality journalism that can serve and inform the public at large.

Just voted, photo by ze_dach on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

These points were raised this month by the International Freedom of Expression Exchange Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG), currently chaired by Index on Censorship.

Based on the results of a two-day strategy workshop of Tunisian media and legal experts held in Tunis on 27 and 28 September, its report also calls for the promotion of a digital culture, by supporting blogging, online activism and citizen journalism.

It’s not clear how the assembly will handle new legislation, or how it will deal with current draft decrees that will have force of law but in the case of the print and broadcast sector have proven highly contentious in their drafting.

An increasingly heated debate between Islamists and secularists in Tunisia led to a street protest by thousands of liberal demonstrators the week before the vote. On 9 October, over 300 pro-Islamists tried to attack the HQ of Nessma TV after a showing of the film Persepolis, which takes an acerbic view of Islamists in Iran.

That was followed by the filing of a claim signed by 144 lawyers alleging breaches of the still valid pre-revolution media law by Nessma TV head Nabil Karoui and articles 226 and 226 (b) of the criminal code prohibiting offences against religion and public decency.

Sami Ben Abdallah, a Tunisian blogger resident in France, was banned from leaving Tunis airport in September and questioned for allegedly sending insulting SMS messages. His family told Reporters sans Frontieres they linked the harrassment to his investigations into a businessman close to the former regime.

These and other incidents suggest that the rights of the independent media in Tunisia is built on much less stable foundations than its citizens expect and demand, especially given its responsibilities in the months to come.

Click here for tweets, links and features from the opening hours of the 23 October constitutional assembly elections in Tunisia on Storify.

Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor at Index on Censorship, which currently chairs the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring group of free expression advocacy organisations.

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