Edit: By “overthrow” I mean an actual attempt to topple the government, not wandering around aimlessly in a building for 4 hours stealing furniture.
If you actually oppose power you would almost certainly be FBI’d long before you could ever get to a position where you could conceivably stage a coup.
Being barred from election is a very quaint punishment for leading a failed coup.
Our democratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility vs their antidemocratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility
Funny because US presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution, have always had it, but when other countries set their laws up the same way it's dystopian.
In my country, the constitution explicitly makes the monarch immune from any kind of criminal prosecution whatsoever. A still-valid part of the 17th century constitution for the then absolute monarchy excempts "princes of the blood" from being prosecuted before any court but the monarch personally, leading to such absurdities as the current heir apparent having received speeding tickets from his mom, the queen.
As for the actual day to day rulers, the elected politicians and government ministers, they are immune to criminal prosecution unless a majority in parliament decides to allow the prosecution. If government ministers are too be made responsible for anything they do as ministers, this has to happen before a special court of impeachment staffed by political appointees and charges can only be raised by a majority in parliament. As a result, only two ministers has been brought to justice on this side of WWII. Instead, an absurd system of "not even slaps on the wrist" are used to "punish" crimes committed in office. This "punishment" is called a "nose" and literally consists of nothing more than a parliamentary committee passing a resolution to "raise critique" of a minister. The media treats this parish of accountability as big as really big and important news.
But yeah, the rulers of BadCountry™ are not accountable before the law and I should be very concerned about this.
nah we don't need to support this one. no one should have the power to give themselves legal immunity.
I would advise you to not take this at face value. Belarus is an enemy of the west, a bit of a black mark on their record as it is the former Soviet country with the most remaining socialist infrastructure. So the west will try to interpret everything from there as unfavorably as possible. Anything Lukashenko says will always be framed by the west as "authoritarian dictator doing evil authoritarian dictator things" and this just looks like more of that.
in the guardian, which is also incredibly biased against him but we can extract some of these
According to the text of the new law, Lukashenko, were he to leave power, “cannot be held accountable for actions committed in connection with exercising his presidential powers”.
The law also says the president and members of his family will be provided with lifelong state protection, medical care, and life and health insurance. After resigning, the president would also become a permanent lifelong member of the upper house of parliament.
i'm still going with "nah". i would be completely shocked if they didn't already have the basic "you can't sue the cops for kidnapping you when it's a lawful arrest" kind of exception any hierarchy has for its administrators. having dinosaurs in power is bad regardless of who's doing it. Like one of the big reasons the soviet union collapsed was all those old fuckers.
critical support for his opposition to western hegemony, not for riding power to the grave.
The only times any head of state has ever been held accountable for their actions is after the government collapses. This is putting into law what is practically true in every single country (if they do not also explicitly spell this out). If the Belarusian government is couped I doubt his immunity would matter much. He’d be on trial regardless if they don’t just kill him.
As a matter of practice the state will never attack itself. Just like Israel isn’t going to be trying Netanyahu for war crimes.
In South Korea you do have basically every president going to prison for corruption once their successor takes office. This is a result of infighting among factions of the ruling class. If another faction gains the upper hand the figurehead of the opposing one is going down. It is not a coup in the traditional sense but it is a different government that goes after the former presidents. And you can be sure that no South Korean president will ever be prosecuted for their policies relating to police brutality etc, actions usually considered head-of-state-y.
The issue with the article is the framing that being punished for trying to overthrow the government (cynically framing US-backed coup plotters as mere “opposition”) is something unique to dystopian authoritarian countries.
Every state is essentially the repression by one class of another. To act like Belarus is unique in this regard is absurd.
It’s not about the morality the issue, it’s about the hypocrisy of western media.
Edit:
Some more commentary. If Lukashenko and his allies are ousted from government and the new government wants to prosecute him for whatever, his legal immunity is gonna disappear real quick. It’s only as valid as it is enforceable.
This is true anywhere. If you and your allies are in power you are extremely safe from prosecution. If your enemy and their allies are in power, and they want to make an example out of you, you are in danger of prosecution.
It is true in the US. If, by some means, electoral or revolutionary, a faction took power in the US that wanted to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, he’d be in a prison jumpsuit before the day is out. If a faction that wants to protect Trump from any meaningful consequences are in power, as they are now, he will never see a day behind bars. And if the democrats do a heel-face turn and go from empty rhetoric to actually, seriously trying to get him life in prison, you can bet your ass the GOP will put their foot down and explicitly enshrine presidential immunity into law (this will never be necessary, of course). And if, after they do this, they want to throw Obama in prison, you can also bet your ass they will invent an argument as to why he is exempt from presidential immunity and send him straight to the slammer.
Checks and balances are meaningless. No faction is ever at risk of self-prosecution. It will always be some other government doing it to them.
I don’t see the practical value in opposing self-immunity as it is the intrinsic nature of every state. Justice for wrongs perpetrated by heads of state don’t come from state apparatuses, they come from external resistance, whether by taking control of said apparatus or by doing away with the whole thing.
I don’t see the practical value in opposing self-immunity as it is the intrinsic nature of every state. Justice for wrongs perpetrated by heads of state don’t come from state apparatuses, they come from external resistance, whether by taking control of said apparatus or by doing away with the whole thing.
in the transitory states we build between here and communism we should protect ourselves from shitty people getting into power and doing crimes
Belarus is not even a transitory state towards Communism. Any defense we give of it is purely from a disempowered perspective understanding why an anti-west government would do certain things to maintain power. None of our views on how things should be done are really what is being discussed
As a matter of practice the state will never attack itself.
In South Korea you do have basically every president going to prison for corruption once their successor takes office. This is a result of infighting among factions of the ruling class.
You're highlighting the limits of "the state" as a frame of analysis. "The state" is a legal fiction that's often useful, but that fiction starts getting in the way when you look close enough to see the motivations of different factions or individuals.
Different factions and individuals use the state's tools for their pet projects all the time. This is why libs are obsessed with rules, institutions, and norms -- they want the state to function via the rule of law, not the whims of whoever is in power.
No faction is ever at risk of self-prosecution.
Reminder that "corruption charges" in western democracies are 100% just political purges that marked by the selective punishment and discipline of rival factions and other powerbroker organisations as much as they are marked by the selective overlooking of guilt and complicity in those who are amenable to the ruling faction.
No, I don't have any proof of this claim whatsoever.
Oh for sure, though my point is that this is the guardian trying to present this to an English speaking audience who will never actually read the original laws in their original language. If this is true it absolutely shouldn't get any support, but the guardian lies so much about Belarus already that I doubt the authenticity of the whole thing. It seems like a lot of western articles about their enemies, just declaring them a dictator and saying they made a bunch of "evil dictator laws" with no rhyme or reason behind it other than vague gestures at "authoritarianism."
The Guardian is based in Britain, a literal monarchy where the entire extended ruling family lives high on the hog on the taxpayer's dime and are excempt from facing any kind of legal responsibility. One of their princes is a literal pedophile and the worst thing they did to him was to tell him to avoid public events for a while.
And now they expect people to get mad about another country giving retired presidents and their families healthcare?
While I agree with you that there is no need to support Lukashenko uncritically, the crucial context that both you and the outraged west are missing that such immunities are pretty much standard in in most western and liberal countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_immunity#Immunity_of_government_leaders
parliamentary immunity being a bad idea that western nations do doesn't mean everybody else should do it too. It just means the critique shouldn't come from the state department.
i'd also be very surprised if they didn't already have a basic version of it, but i'm not a belarussian lawyer
It means that being selectively outraged that he's doing it is pointless. Why only get worked up over a systemic problem as soon as it's done by enemies of the western NATO aligned consensus?
i'm against it here too, but it only usually comes up when we're talking about holding police accountable within the liberal system.
I think political leaders and police officers are very distinct things and bad analogies
Yeah but what he’s doing here doesn’t seem any more unique than existing laws in any country.
the lifelong parliament seat is kinda different and pretty wack
Still, it is not that different from British life peers or Italian senators for life, institutions that are never covered in this way by the media outlets who are now clutching their pearls over Lukashenko.
Life peers have the closest thing to no political power at all. The Lord's only purpose these days is to delay legislation and force review of bills.
i simply take it for granted that no state is worthy of support. Having done so, I can proceed to adequately criticize the propaganda my own government feeds me about other governments.
in the civilized west we simply have the current porky-in-chief pardon the previous porky-in-chief
Show
That so-called insurrection was a joke even to the state media the day it happened and for several days afterward. Then about 2 weeks later or so they tried to spin it into some horrible tragedy that almost plunged the US into an autocratic dictatorship.
The cops openly invited people in. That's not at all how it would go if there was any threat whatsoever.
Inventing a computer virus that zaps liberals every time they use the word "authoritarian".
no, in the US we don't need to do this because the next guy just says "we tortured some folks" and we move on.
Aren't all world leaders essentially barred from criminal prosecution while sitting? Does this extend to after the term of a Belarus leader at all?
No one is immune to 
