RFE/RL - September 19th, 2003

Minsk, 19 September 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Union officials in Belarus say the head of the country's democratic trade union has been jailed for writing an article critical of the government.

The article by Alyaksandr Yaroshuk criticized a decision by the Belarusian Supreme Court to close down the country's air-traffic controllers' union.

The AFP news agency said Yaroshuk was first forced to give his explanations to Belarus's Prosecutor-General's Office and then was charged with contempt of court. He was convicted and jailed yesterday.

The Belarusian government of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is regularly criticized by human rights groups and foreign governments for suppressing dissent and free speech in the country.

Boris Berezovsky, the controversial Russian billionaire, has been granted political asylum in the UK on account of his increasingly bitter relationship with the Kremlin.

Mr Berezovsky was briefly held by the British authorities in April, in response to Moscow's request for his extradition to face charges of massive fraud.

He has been investigated over a series of contentious investments, most recently over accusations that he bilked a Russian regional government of billions of dollars owed by his car dealership empire.

Mr Berezovsky, who still claims to operate an empire worth billions of dollars both inside and outside Russia, says he is being victimised for his political beliefs.

He is one of the main backers of a fledgling liberal movement in Russia, which stands in opposition to nationalist President Vladimir Putin.

Full story here.

HONG KONG (AP) -- Hong Kong's political leader Tung Chee-hwa said Friday he has withdrawn a controversial anti-subversion bill that was put on hold after a massive protest in July.

Tung said his decision was made amid lingering worries among the public over the bill, and because he felt Hong Kong should focus on making an economic recovery.

Tung said the government will not introduce a new bill until it has gathered enough support from the public. He said the government has no timetable to introduce a new bill.

Hong Kong was forced to delay the security bill after legislative support unraveled following a 500,000-strong protest march on July 1.

Critics fear the proposal outlawing sedition, subversion and treason will suppress civil rights in this former British colony returned to China in 1997.

The failed first attempt to pass the bill shook Tung's administration, spurring the resignations of Financial Secretary Antony Leung and security chief Regina Ip.

His business selling products which were popular in the former east Germany is booming, thanks to a wave of nostalgia for everyday life in the now defunct communist state that has enveloped Germany in recent months.

The summer's cinema hit Goodbye, Lenin, which poignantly recalls life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) - has been followed up by a string of TV programmes celebrating the fashions, food and everyday hassles that characterised life in the eastern part of the country, which was a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union between 1949 and 1989.

The latest, fronted by GDR golden girl Katarina Witt - a former Olympic ice skating champion, was watched on Wednesday night by some 6.5 million people.

"It's very difficult for some people that the GDR is being glorified in this kind of way," says Theo Mitrup, head of a Berlin support group for those who were persecuted under the communist regime.

"There's nothing wrong with recalling the past - indeed - people even probably have happy memories of everyday life under the Nazis - but it's a question of balance. This nostalgia seems to ignore the oppression, the secret police, the intimidation - history somehow is being rewritten."

Although Miss Witt had rejected these criticisms outright, noting that her show was not intended as political debate but to remember how the 16 million people who lived in the GDR "lived, loved and laughed", The GDR Show, which was aired on Wednesday night, did seek to take account of some of the concerns.

Alongside the politicians, former pop icons and everyday east German citizens reminiscing, the show included a long feature on a woman who, at the age of just 14, was imprisoned for 10 years for putting lipstick on a portrait of Stalin which hung in her school.

She served over eight years of her term, a considerable proportion at Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp for political dissidents set up by the Nazis.

Full story here.

Editor's commentary: It is obvious that there is no nostalgia among people for life in concentration camp but an organized FSB campaign with their German stooges to promote Stalinism and Russian imperialism. Only communist murderers and traitors can be nostalgic for those "good" old days under Moscow boot. Transition is always painful but that doesn't mean that we are going to abandon it just because of that. No pain no gain. It is like not fixing your teeth for twenty years and then saying that you don't want to fix them today because it hurts so much. You will eventually lose them all and being nostalgic won't fix your teeth. Delaying transitions and attempts to restore old that never worked will only prolong reforms and better future. If life in communism was so "good" then why it failed to defeat capitalism? We keep hearing endless excuses but we never hear anyone admitting any wrongdoing or taking any responsibility for their failed policies and mismanagement of former communist countries. Fidel Castro continues to blame America for everything bad in Cuba even today while never accepting even one bit of his own responsibility although he is the absolute ruler of Cuba. He would like to buy a time machine and go back to those "good" old days when he looted American capital and when people were buying his propaganda lies but the problem is that people finally realized that he is nothing but a common crook and a traitor who sold his country to foreign communist imperialist powers just to keep his power. You simply can't go back to those days because process is irreversible in this case, people can't be lied over and over again and convinced that already exposed lies are truth. That's why any attempt of bringing back "nostalgia" feelings for "good" old days of living in concentration camp will fail over and over again.