U.S. Asylum for Pair From Ex-Soviet State

The Clinton administration granted political asylum Friday to two opposition politicians from Belarus, accusing the strategically located former Soviet republic of a pattern of human rights abuses that echoes the repression of the Communist era.

It was the first time since the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 that the United States has conferred refugee status on dissidents from any of the 15 former Soviet republics.

Zenon Poznyak, head of the Belarussian Popular Front, and his press secretary, Sergei Naumchik, announced the decision at a news conference, handing reporters a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service certifying that the agency had “established a well-founded fear of persecution were you to return to your country.” That language represents the internationally recognized standard for asylum.

The men said they fled Belarus because their lives were in danger from the hard-line regime of President Alexander G. Lukashenko. They issued a statement accusing him of reverting to Soviet-era policies and of subverting Belarussian sovereignty by signing an economic agreement with Russia that reduces Belarus to little more than a vassal state.

Last week, Lukashenko announced plans to cancel a parliamentary election, ordering instead a referendum on extending his powers.

In its most recent human rights report, the State Department said the Lukashenko government’s human rights record “worsened markedly as Belarus turned back toward Soviet-era authoritarian practices.”

State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said the Belarussian government’s human rights abuses are the primary irritant preventing a closer relationship between Washington and Minsk. She said that government repression also has undermined the Belarussian economy.

“We bring up Belarus’ human rights record at every opportunity both in Minsk and in Washington,” she said. “We make clear to senior Belarussian officials our belief that Belarus has the potential to prosper and to offer its citizens a high standard of living but [that] an open society is a prerequisite for progress.”

Anti-government demonstrations in Minsk this spring were marked by violent clashes between protesters and police; two major demonstrations there in June and July, however, passed without incident.

Still, U.S. officials said Lukashenko remains intolerant of dissent.

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The Belarussian government has denied that the two men’s lives are at risk and has accused them of trying to cause divisions in the economically troubled republic.

Earlier this month, an aide to Lukashenko said the two men were “destabilizing the political situation in the republic by trying to present themselves as exiles.”

Belarus, between Russia and Poland, was far more reluctant than other former republics in Europe to dismantle the Soviet empire.

The Minsk government recently restored the republic’s Soviet-era flag and other symbols.