For defending freedom of speech, a journalist and a Polish minority activist in Belarus, Andrzej Poczobut, has just been sentenced to eight years in prison camps by dictator Alexsandr "Daddy" Lukashenka.
Practically at the same time, half a world away, for speaking out for freedom of conscience, Father Óscar Danilo Benavidez Dávila, a Catholic priest, drew a 10 year sentence from Nicaragua strongman Daniel Ortega.
Both are but two of many hundreds of political prisoners in their countries. In both cases the victims challenged the official narratives of the post-Communist dictatorships.
In both Nicaragua and Belarus, the post-Communists keep power through terror and mendacity, just like in the bad old days of the Soviet Union. Their particular reading of history serves to justify and legitimize the respective regimes.
Among all the charges against Poczobut, perhaps the most grave was the journalist's condemnation of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 and its consequences, which Minsk regards with favor. In accordance with the treaty, Berlin and Moscow jointly attacked Poland, thus unleashing World War II.
Lukashenka and his minions regard the Red Army's westward aggression as "liberation." Both in Russia and Belarus it is against the law to condemn Nazi-Soviet collaboration and criticize any of its aspects in a way that strays from Stalinist orthodoxy.
This narrative is sacrosanct from 1994 when, taking advantage of the blunders of liberals and others who succeeded to government following the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Belarusian strongman rode to power democratically. Lukashenka has since made a mockery of democracy, falsified elections, and brokered no opposition.
Thus Poczobut became guilty of informing the public that the so-called "liberation" entailed mass shootings and mass deportations to the gulag, not only of the local Poles but also Belarusians, Jews, and other "enemies of the people."
Further, allegedly in a conspiracy with Warsaw, the Belarusian-Polish journalist popularized the struggle of the pro-Western underground Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa — AK) which fought against both the Nazis and Communists as well as their collaborators during World War II and its aftermath.
For example, Poczobut's work proves that some of the "Polish" AK guerrillas, fighting against the Communists into the 1950s, were, in fact, of Orthodox and Belarusian origin, e.g., Lt. Anatol Radziwonik ("Olech"), a pre-war village teacher.
All this flies in the face of the official post-Soviet narrative that the Belarusian guerrillas uniformly supported Stalin, a fiction Lukashenka pushes out daily in his propaganda.
Poczobut's history-writing made him immensely popular not only among many Belarusian Poles, who tend to be Catholics, but also ethnic Belarusians, who are usually Orthodox Christians, in particular in the western parts of the country, which used to be a part of the pre-war Polish Republic.
Meanwhile, in Nicaragua, the reigning Sandinistas invoke the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship back in the 1970s. But they avoid revealing that they subsequently replaced his abuses with their own Soviet-backed reign of terror in the 1980s. Having briefly lost power in a democratic election to well-meaning but rather inept liberals who eschewed purging the reds, the Sandinistas returned to power democratically in 1997.
But then they stopped playing by democratic rules. Ten years later, in 2007, they eventually brought back to power their old comrade, Daniel Ortega. He co-rules with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as president for life. Post-Communist Ortega falsifies elections and brokers no opposition.
Father Dávila has been outspoken in exposing the lies and abuses of the Ortega dictatorship, in particular its violence against students. He was accused of spreading "false information" online (with a single posting) and, thus,"undermining national security and sovereignty." He was consequently sentenced for "conspiracy and cybercrimes."
In the post-Communist jargon it means that Father Dávila was an agent of a foreign power, just like Poczobut. Incidentally, nine other Catholic clergy stand thus accused in Nicaragua.
Warsaw has demanded of the EU to sanction the Belarusian officials who participated in the travesty of justice. Poland has also closed one of the commercial border crossings to Belarus, even though it apparently hurts Polish transport companies.
Meanwhile, international pressure has forced Nicaragua to release 222 political prisoners, including Father Dávila, and expel them from the country. Exceptionally, Bishop Rolando Álvarez refused to board the plane for the U.S. and was promptly sentenced to 26 years in jail.
All the abuse happens because, after 1989, we let the Communists slide into post-Communism with impunity.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington, D.C.; expert on East-Central Europe's Three Seas region; author, among others, of "Intermarium: The Land Between the Baltic and Black Seas." Read Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's Reports — More Here.