How global tech companies enable the Belarusian regime — and the Belarusian revolution · Global Voices
Protest rally against <PERSON> in Minsk, capital of Belarus. Photo CC BY-SA 3.0: Homoatrox / Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.
Belarusians continue to protest against longtime ruler <PERSON>, braving police violence and the cold. As the EU prepares its third package of sanctions against Belarusian officials and enterprises, demands are growing for the West to apply greater economic pressure, in particular to consider banning the supply of certain IT products.
Could such sanctions really work? It’s true that disentangling the country’s supply chains from the West would be no easy feat. But in today’s globalised world, there’s no shortage of alternative options.
A banking ban
One of the most prominent struggles is disconnecting Belarus from SWIFT, the global banking communications network.
This month, Golos (“Voice”), an online platform started by the team of jailed presidential hopeful <PERSON>, polled Belarusians on whether they would support excluding Belarus from SWIFT. Out of more than 400,000 respondents, 64 percent supported the measure.
SWIFT may not be an official EU institution, but as a Belgium-based cooperative it has to follow EU rules and regulations. Should it be instructed to disconnect Belarus, as it did to Iran in 2012, SWIFT will effectively be supporting the Belarusian opposition’s demand for greater economic pressure on <PERSON>’s regime.
<PERSON> himself has acknowledged that threats to disconnect Belarus from SWIFT have been successful at least once. In his interview for the Ukrainian website GordonUA just three days before the August 9 election, the Belarusian leader recounted his 2009 meeting with the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy <PERSON>. “I asked him what would happen if we recognised the sovereignty [of Abkhazia and South Ossetia]… He was prepared for that question. 534
He took out a notebook and started listing: ‘Mr President, Belarus would immediately get disconnected from SWIFT transactions. That was the most serious of the sanctions,” recalled <PERSON>. The Belarusian leader went on to claim that as Russia had not provided any assurances to compensate Belarus for such losses, two breakaway territories in Georgia were never officially recognised by Minsk.
The idea has once again gained traction during recent protests. On November 10, <PERSON>, director of the dissident Belarus Free Theatre, stated that the West should disconnect Belarus from SWIFT as a response to the authorities’ decision to freeze funds to victims of repressions which had been collected through the #BY_help crowdfunding campaign.
“Today <PERSON>’s power is based on the greed of the security forces, the cowardice of state officials and the indecisiveness of part of the population… Any significant pressure from the international community is perceived by the pyramid of power as a weakness for the dictatorship’s foundations”, explained <PERSON> in an interview with GlobalVoices. “These measures deprive the dictatorship of the resources to pay wages to security forces and state officials”.
Many in the Belarusian opposition appear to share these hopes. In November, opposition presidential candidate <PERSON> repeated these calls.
<PERSON> was outraged, claiming that those who called for Belarus to be disconnected from SWIFT wanted to “destroy the country”.
But then the pro-government line changed, attempting to downplay the significance of such a move.
According to the Nasha Niva newspaper, in late November the National Bank of Belarus sent a letter to private banks asking them to connect to the Russian-run Service Bureau SPFS system as soon as possible. This means that even if the EU and US can persuade SWIFT to disconnect Belarus, all major payments will be routed through Russian banks.
Then on December 4, pro-government analyst <PERSON> told the state news agency BELTA: “Since the 1990s when Belarus was threatened with sanctions, the country created its own domestic banking system, Belkart. We’re also plugged into the Russian system. We’re connected to the Chinese system. At present, SWIFT has no monopoly on enabling monetary operations.”
“On the other hand, Belarus’ disconnection from SWIFT will deliver a most powerful blow to the Belarusian radical opposition… because the opposition will not be able to get funding via bank cards”, concluded <PERSON> in the same interview.
The Golos platform dismisses these arguments, stating that “the Russian system that was created as a backup for Russia’s own SWIFT disconnect will not help. 704