Bonum Certa Men Certa

From Belarus With Love — Part II: “Techwashing” an Autocratic Regime?

Series parts:

  1. From Belarus With Love — Part I: Schizophrenic EPO Policy
  2. YOU ARE HERE ☞ “Techwashing” an Autocratic Regime?


The High Technologies Park in Minsk
The High Technologies Park in Minsk - an "extraterritorial" Digital Economy hub - was set up in 2005 by a decree from the Belarusian despot Alexander Lukashenko.



Summary: A quick history of the High Technologies Park of Lukashenko; EPO President (despot) Battistelli and his friend Campinos have outsourced some of the EPO's operations to this "pet project" of Lukashenko

For those who are unfamiliar with the country, it may be worth mentioning that Belarus is a former Soviet Republic which has been "presided" over for almost three decades by Alexander Lukashenko, a mustachioed former collective farm boss, who rules the land with an iron fist.



Back in the early years of the new millennium, Lukashenko was persuaded by his advisors that it was time to move Belarus into the twenty-first century and claim a local slice of the action in the global "Digital Economy".

"Tsepkalo was appointed as the HTP's "Director of Administration" and he remained in charge of the project until he was dismissed by Lukashenko in 2017."Back in the early years of the new millennium, Lukashenko was persuaded by his advisors that it was time to move Belarus into the twenty-first century and claim a local slice of the action in the global "Digital Economy".

And so it came to pass that the Belarus High Technologies Park (HTP) was established by Presidential Decree in September 2005.

The HTP was the brainchild of Valery Tsepkalo, a Belarusian politician, diplomat, and advisor to Lukashenko. He wanted to show that “Belarus can be associated not only with farmers and with potatoes.”

Tsepkalo was appointed as the HTP's "Director of Administration" and he remained in charge of the project until he was dismissed by Lukashenko in 2017.

Valery Tsepkalo
The Belarus HPT was the brainchild of Valery Tsepkalo (l.), formerly a close associate of the country's autocratic leader, Alexander Lukashenko.



The HTP operates as a "special economic zone" - an extraterritorial enclave with its own legal regime - where IT companies receive substantial tax benefits and preferences. Most importantly, under the protection of the government, HTP "residents" are free from most of the day-to-day problems typically encountered by domestic private companies in Belarus, in particular the headaches caused by local bureaucracy and administrative corruption.

HTP tax rates
Companies that qualify as HTP "residents" benefit from the special tax regime of this extraterritorial enclave.



"The HTP operates as a “special economic zone”..."The HTP got off to a promising start and it gave Lukashenko something to brag about. Some critical observers saw it as a convenient PR tool for "techwashing" his autocratic régime.

HTP PR
During its first decade and a half, the HTP was something of a success story and it provided useful PR material for "techwashing" Lukashenko's autocratic regime.



We will return to the HTP later on in this series when we will look at how the Belarusian high-tech dream turned sour in 2020.

But in the next part we will have a look at how Lukashenko's "Digital Economy" project started to attract positive media attention abroad, in particular in Germany, and how this helped to raise the international profile of the HTP's resident companies.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s