Lukashenka’s “Yugoslav scenario” – threats to departed Belarusians
On March 7, Alexander Lukashenko announced the official version of the attack on the Russian military aircraft AWACS 50-A at the Machulishchi airfield near Minsk. Responsibility for preparing the sabotage was assigned to the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as to its “accomplices” among Belarusian political emigrants outside the country and opponents of the regime in Belarus itself. Lukashenka’s speech was traditionally rife with conspiracy theories and contained insults against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The so-called “fugitives” – opponents of the regime abroad – were especially affected, whom the “permanent president” even threatened with reprisals.
This is not the first time such threats have been heard from the lips of Lukashenka and his associates. They are also replicated by Belarusian state propaganda, which has been discussing various ways to “punish” both the leaders of the protest movement and ordinary activists for the third year now. At the same time, there are hints, and sometimes even open calls for the kidnapping and removal of “enemies” to Belarus, and even its physical liquidation.
Are Lukashenka’s words intimidating populist bravado or is official Minsk really going to resort to radical methods?
Not Israel, but Yugoslavia
Since August 2020, anti-Semitic tendencies have risen sharply in Belarusian state propaganda, manifested, among other things, in attacks on critics of the current government of Jewish origin, in the dissemination of conspiracy narratives with an expressive anti-Semitic tone and in the shameless political instrumentalization of the Holocaust theme.
This characteristic did not, however, prevent propagandists from taking advantage of Israel’s example: just as the Jewish state and its foreign intelligence service Mossad, protecting national interests and despite international criticism, repress Israel’s enemies around the world, Belarus should too. At the same time, the fact that the targets of the Mossad’s actions were by no means political opponents of the Israeli authorities, but Nazi criminals (Adolf Eichmann’s case), Palestinian officials and activists who chose the path of armed struggle against Israel and resorted to actively to terror, was deliberately sidelined, and so, possibly, were those responsible for Iran’s nuclear program, which proclaimed its aim the destruction of the State of Israel.
If propaganda references to the Israeli experience do not stand up to scrutiny, are distorted and, at times, openly anti-Semitic, then a comparison with the relatively little-known case of Yugoslavia seems more appropriate. Between 1967 and 1989, Yugoslav secret services killed 29 Croatian dissidents in Germany.
Assassinations ordered by Marshal Tito
After the Second World War in West Germany and, above all, in Bavaria, numerous political emigrants from Croatia found refuge, defending the separation of the republic from Yugoslavia. The number of Croatian political emigrants grew steadily and approached the 10,000 mark in the first half of the 1980s. The Croatian press was published in Germany, the “Croatian National Committee” was created in Munich, and individual activists were resisted armed forces to the communist dictatorship and, in particular, developed plans for terrorist attacks on the territory of Yugoslavia.
The activities of the Croatian diaspora were closely monitored both by West German secret services, with which many emigrants collaborated, and by the security of the Yugoslav (especially Croatian) state, which created its extensive intelligence network in the West German Federal Republic.
In the second half of the 1960s, President Josip Broz Tito gave the “Chekists” the green light to liquidate Croatian political emigrants. The killings continued until the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the victims were politicians and activists as well as journalists and public figures. The killers acted deliberately bold and cruel. The objective of Belgrade and Zagreb was not just the elimination of specific figures, but also an attempt to intimidate and demoralize the Croatian community in the BRD.
The murder of Stepan Dzhurekovich in July 1983 in the Bavarian Wolfratshausen has become a symbol of crimes. In the early 1980s, the victim served as director of marketing for the large Yugoslav oil and gas company INA. Accused in his homeland of economic crimes, Dzhurekovich fled in 1982 to the Federal Republic of Germany, with whose special services he had previously maintained relations.
In West Germany, he became a prominent figure among the Croatian emigration and published a series of incriminating books on Yugoslavia’s economic and political system. The murder of Stepan Dzhurekovich became a reprisal against the former “man of the system”, declared a “traitor”. A tragic fate befell his son Damir, who moved to Canada and there, according to a very controversial official version, committed suicide in 1987.
A series of murders of Croats in Germany came to the attention of the German press only in 2016 – as part of the trial of former head of Croatian state security Zdravko Mustač and his subordinate Josip Perkovich. The Munich Regional Supreme Court found them guilty of organizing and preparing the murder of Dzhurekovich Sr. and condemned them to life imprisonment.
Belarus 2020 and Yugoslavia 1980
There are serious differences between present-day Belarus and what was then Yugoslavia, but there are also a number of common features.
If Minsk is in a state of deep isolation in the European direction, then Belgrade had close ties with Western countries, and Yugoslavia was counting on expanding cooperation with them. In May 1978, the Balkan country won the right to host the Winter Olympic Games, held in February 1984 in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Unlike Lukashenka, after the repression of the protests and, at the latest, after supporting Russia in the war against Ukraine, Marshal Tito and his successors had something to lose economically and politically. The FRG was one of Yugoslavia’s main partners in the West and there was no need to rely on Moscow’s support. However, the interests of national security (as they were understood in Belgrade and Zagreb), as well as the thirst for reprisals against opponents and “traitors” outweighed all risks.
It will be much easier for the Lukashenka regime to decide on such measures. If the FRG and Bavaria became centers of Croatian political and intellectual emigration, then most Belarusian political emigrants settled in Poland and Lithuania, and their number significantly exceeds the number of Croats in the FRG. Minsk’s official relations with the EU and especially with these countries remain very strained. If Bonn in the 1970s and 1980s showed no interest in a change of power in Yugoslavia (not to mention secession from Croatia), then Vilnius and Warsaw not only actively work with democratic forces, but also support an extremely tough course towards to Belarus authorities and are betting on the change of power in Minsk.
Among Belarusian political emigrants today there are supporters of radical methods of struggle against the Lukashenka regime, and in Ukraine Belarusian volunteers are participating in the war on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and do not hide the fact that their ultimate goal is the liberation of Belarus .
Like the Yugoslav special services in the FRG, the Belarusian “Chekists” obviously do not sit idly by. Both Warsaw and Vilnius are increasingly celebrating their activities on the territory of these countries, and the seemingly meaningless trials in absentia of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Pavel Latushko and their associates, from a practical point of view, may indeed be a harbinger of radical actions.
Since the events of 2020, the Lukashenka regime has demonstrated firmness and an uncompromising attitude, without thinking about the political and economic consequences. Examples abound: the forced landing of a Ryanair flight with Roman Protasevich on board in May 2021, the artificial migration crisis at the borders of Belarus and the EU, the ongoing large-scale crackdowns in Belarus itself, and the introduction of death penalty for high treason and a ten-year sentence for Nobel laureate Ales Belyatsky. The Belarusian authorities should not be dissuaded, and behind them looms the sinister figure of the Kremlin, which since Soviet times has resorted to kidnapping and murdering “enemies” and “traitors” in the West. Under these conditions, the implementation of the “Yugoslavian scenario” does not seem so unlikely.
Author: Alexander Friedman, historian, associate member of the Humboldt University of Berlin.
The commentary expresses the author’s personal opinion. It may not agree with the opinion of the editors and of Deutsche Welle as a whole.
Source: DW
Anna White is a journalist at 247 News Reel, where she writes on world news and current events. She is known for her insightful analysis and compelling storytelling. Anna’s articles have been widely read and shared, earning her a reputation as a talented and respected journalist. She delivers in-depth and accurate understanding of the world’s most pressing issues.