A university closed by the Belarussian president as a possible hive of dissent is flourishing in Lithuania, writes Daniel McLaughlin.
Few aspects of life in Belarus remain untouched by President Lukashenko, the man the White House calls "Europe's last dictator". The media is almost entirely state-controlled, denying the oxygen of publicity to anyone who dares challenge the former collective farm boss and his sprawling security service, the KGB. And in a country where journalists and dissidents are sometimes beaten and jailed and occasionally just disappear, few heads rise above the parapet.
So there was little surprise amid much anger when President Lukashenko turned his attention to Belarus universities, after a breakdown of results from 2001 elections showed the nation's students had voted overwhelmingly against him. His main target was the European Humanities University in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, which he shut down as a likely hive of West-fuelled dissent in 2004, but which has now reopened in neighbouring Lithuania as a "university in exile".
'WE HAVE 170 undergraduates living here in Vilnius, 100 postgraduates and 600 students distance-learning in Belarus," says Prof Anatoly Mikhailov, the university's rector. "It's difficult to re-establish our university abroad, but we have made a start."
President Lukashenko focused on the university as he began to fear his regime could fall victim to the kind of West-backed revolution that had toppled the old guard in ex-Soviet Georgia and was beginning to bubble in Ukraine. His campaign started with a decree limiting the money universities could receive from abroad, restricting exchange programmes, and ordering checks on the "moral-psychological climate" among students.
In Minsk, Prof Mikhailov knew a confrontation was inevitable. Appalled by the stagnant, Sovietised teaching that lingered in Belarus after the collapse of Moscow's empire, he and a few fellow academics had begun collecting money in 1992 to help found a liberal, progressive university.
Over the next decade, the university brought western academics to Minsk, accepted donations from US and European institutions, and acquired a reputation as the most dynamic teaching institution in an increasingly closed country. But by 2004, the college had no place in President Lukashenko's Belarus. First the education minister Alexander Radkov demanded Prof Mikhailov's resignation. When he refused to go, the government ordered the university to quit its building, then revoked its licence for lack of teaching space. President Lukashenko gloated about his victory over an alleged "enemy within".
"There was an implicit, though focused, intention to train, here in Belarus - in the European Humanities University - first of all, the new Belarussian elite, aimed at leading Belarus to the West when the time is appropriate," he declared.
Prof Mikhailov insists the university-in-exile is not a training camp for opponents of President Lukashenko, but an open environment in which young Belarussians can study outside the confines of their homeland. But as President Lukashenko prepares for the March 19th presidential election, Prof Mikhailov fears he will use all the resources at his disposal to maintain his grip on power. "They will not be proper elections at all, and opposition candidates have had no real opportunity to make their voices heard," he tells The Irish Times, echoing US and EU concerns that President Lukashenko will rig the elections.
THE UNIVERSITY RECEIVES funding from Brussels and Washington - fuelling President Lukashenko's claim that it is part of a western plot to oust him - but Prof Mikhailov says the coffers are far from full. He plans to meet Donal Denham, Irish Ambassador to Lithuania next week and Prof Noel Whelan of Limerick University later this month to discuss joint projects.
But his attention will be on Belarus tomorrow week to see if leading opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich can finally topple President Lukashenko. "It is the moment for change in Belarus," says Prof Mikhailov. "But what can you do when absolutely everything is under state control?"