When Poland joins the European Union next year, the EU will border a state that is still in the grip of communist-style totalitarian rule. The country is Belarus, or White Russia, where president Alexander Lukashenko rules with an iron fist. The Czech newspaper Lidové Noviny ran a report on the sad state of human rights in Belarus. It tells the story of two journalists who have been sentenced to "limited freedom" for publishing articles critical of the government. In practice, this "limited freedom" means forced manual labor, also during the Belarussian winter which sees temperatures far below freezing. The journalists say with a wry sense of humor, "If we had Siberia, we'd be moving there."

The journalists are Pavel Mazheiko and Mikola Markievich, whose newspaper Pahonia was shut down after Mazheiko wrote an article before the last presidential election in which he said that no-one, who did not respect others' rights, should be president. He never even named Lukashenko (or anyone else specifically) in the article, yet it was enough to sentence both him and his editor in chief Markievich to forced labor. The authorities also shut down the newspaper. The paper's web site is still up, and on the left column they're counting down the days of forced labor for Markievich (top, 427) and Mazheiko (middle, 246). There's a third, Viktor Ivashkievich at the bottom, who's still got 719 days to go. After some googling, I found this article which identifies him as the editor of the paper Rabochy. Apparently since that page was written he's been imprisoned too.

Aside from the minor issue of commitment to human rights and foreign policy high horses and all that, there's also a selfish reason for Europe to work towards toppling Lukashenko. Although it's not a threat to us at the moment, having a totalitarian regime like this on Europe's doorstep is not a good idea. It's only a matter of time before Lukashenko joins the ranks of other unsavory regimes in the world in actively aiding anti-western forces. Luckily the country land-locked, but the borders with the Ukraine and Russia are porous. It's not a matter of highest urgency from a selfish point of view (the people of Belarus would very much disagree), but we're storing up trouble if we allow Lukashenko to run a totalitarian regime right on our border. The sooner we get rid of him, the better.