THE BELARUSIAN PARTY OF FREEDOM: AN ACTIVE PLAYER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MINSK 000528

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/18/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM BO
SUBJECT: THE BELARUSIAN PARTY OF FREEDOM: AN ACTIVE PLAYER
OR PARTY ON THE FRINGES?

Classified By: AMBASSADOR GEORGE KROL FOR REASONS 1.4 (B,D)


1. (C) Summary: On May 16, Poloffs met with the leader of
the unregistered Belarusian Party of Freedom (BPF) Sergey
Visotsky at the latter's request to discuss his party's
activities. The BPF first appeared in 1993 as a student
initiative and, according to Visotsky, remains a youth
organization dedicated to removing Lukashenko. He claimed
the BPF was part of the "Khlopits" (Enough) civil-society
campaign and supported the opposition movement during the
March presidential elections, resulting in 23 BPF members
being arrested. Visotsky criticized the International
Republican Institute (IRI) in Vilnius for playing favorites
when allocating funds and accused opposition members of
withholding money from the BPF. Although an interesting
meeting, Visotsky's BPF seems to be a lone party on the
peripheries of the opposition movement. End Summary.


2. (C) Leader of the unregistered Belarusian Party of Freedom
(BPF) Sergey Visotsky on May 16 explained his party's
position in the opposition movement. According to Visotsky,
the BPF is a conservative youth party of 150 active members,
50 of which reside in Minsk. The BPF started as a student
initiative in 1993 and its goal is to seek democratic change
in Belarus and the removal of Lukashenko. The BPF has
chapters in Gomel, Soligorsk, and Mogilev and close ties with
the Ukrainian People's Party and the Belarusian National
Center in Ukraine.

BPF and the Opposition
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3. (C) Visotsky claimed his party and Malady Front (when
under Pavel Severinets' control) were once active partners
and that the Ten Plus Coalition's preferred youth group,
Right Alliance, is an offshoot of the BPF. During the March
19 elections, 23 BPF activists were arrested on October
Square and at least one was later expelled from his
university. The BPF supported the opposition movement during
the elections, but not one particular leader, and would be
willing to coordinate more with both former presidential
candidates Aleksandr Milinkevich and Aleksandr Kozulin.


4. (C) Although he claimed the BPF was an active member of
the opposition movement, the party has gotten the cold
shoulder from its brothers-in-arms. According to Visotsky,
the BPF and Severinets originally created the NDI-funded
"Khlopits" (Enough) civil-society movement. However, when
the time came, Borisov youth activist Sergei Salash and
Belarusian Popular Front deputy Ales Mikhalevich did not
allocate to BPF the necessary funding from the American NGO
the International Republican Institute (IRI). Visotsky
reported the problem to Milinkevich, but the BPF still did
not receive its money, and therefore left the Khlopits
campaign.

BPF Lambastes NDI
--------------


5. (C) Visotsky criticized IRI in Vilnius for leaving his
party without any material or financial support because it
viewed the BPF as an insignificant party that "was not doing
enough." According to Visotsky, his party was not even
invited to the October 2005 Congress of Democratic Forces.
Visotsky said he was tired of foreign conferences and
seminars where nothing was accomplished and seeing financial
support given to the same group of "opposition" activists who
lie about their membership and activities. He told Poloffs
that it was demoralizing to have funding withheld when he
knew it existed.


6. (C) Visotsky said his party was dying because it
financially could not support itself. BPF's headquarters is
a poor apartment on the outskirts of town and the party
cannot afford to carry out its political activities. He said
his party plans to solicit money from Belarusian/Ukrainian
businesses in Kiev, but he was not sure if this would help.
Pitching for U.S. support, Visotsky said the BPF had the
potential to grow if it had computers and the proper material
support.

Ongoing Battles
--------------


7. (C) Visotsky thanked the U.S. for the moral support it
provided BPF during its continuous battle to preserve the
NKVD massacre site Kurapaty from GOB-initiated development.
He claimed it was his party that camped at Kurapaty in

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2001-2002 to protest GOB plans to build Minsk's ring road
through the site. BPF's second battle is to prevent the
growth of the Russian-based neo-nazi party RNE. Although he
did not explain how the BPF was fighting the RNE movement, he
claimed RNE's presence in Belarus in the last year had
increased and had "serious capital" supporting it.

Visotsky's Time In Parliament
--------------


8. (C) Visotsky explained he was the youngest member of
Minsk's City Council in 1995 and received twice as many votes
as the next leading contender. In 1996 he became the
youngest MP in the Upper House of Parliament, again with a
large percentage of the votes in his district. However,
following Lukashenko's 1996 referendum that gave him sweeping
constitutional powers, Visotsky and other anti-Lukashenko
activists lost their seats.

Comment
--------------


9. (C) It was obvious that Visotsky's purpose for meeting
with Poloffs was to solicit financial and material support.
In 2004, Poloffs met with Visotsky and concluded that his
party, although anti-Lukashenko, contributed little to the
opposition movement. In this meeting, Visotsky admitted that
he and members of his party were conservatives, not liberals
(in the American sense of the word),and opined that this may
be the reason for the BPF's unpopularity among the Western
European donors. Although he argued that his party was
active in the anti-Lukashenko election campaign, he failed to
convince us that the BPF was no more than a loner on the
fringes of the opposition movement.
Krol