Let's Cultivate Durian At Our Place!

The food counter-sanctions are just a new fraud of the regime

Recently my Russian colleague was on a business trip to Sakhalin. The hospitable Sakhalin people arranged a substantial meal and promised to serve the famous Sakhalin prawns. My colleague, who was very picky and meticulous, started looking at the packages from which the delicacies were taken. The 'famous Sakhalin shrimps' had on their packaging: made in Belarus.

When the state is a big crook, then it is not worth believing its words. But for some reason, having learnt not to believe Yermoshina's figures and indictments of Belarusian investigators, we continue taking seriously such horror stories as retaliatory sanctions against the West. As if they are about to be imposed, and we will have neither Polish apples nor parmesan with ham. Yes, everything will be like before, only expensive and marked "made in Belarus".

Can a state-criminal give up such profitable business, as re-plastering labels and forging phytosanitary certificates? Never. Russia has already got used to "Belarusian" ham and parmesan. And everybody knows about it, but pretends as if it has to be like that: here the sanctions, there the countersanctions, and the assortment doesn't change too much. Only the prices grow. It will be the same for us. The new labels will simply be included in the price.

At first, customers will complain about why it is so expensive. Then they will answer themselves: oh yes, we have retaliatory sanctions, and papaya grown in domestic fields cannot be cheap. It is very expensive to grow papaya, alien to our motherland, against climate, soil and common sense. The Polish apples used to be sold in Russia only under the guise of Belarusian ones, but now they can be sold here as apples of domestic producers. Moreover, thanks to the Russian sanctions the scheme has been working for a long time. It will only require more paper for false certificates.

To make at least three per cent believe in the possibility of growing exotic fruit in our latitudes, the Belarusian television will shoot stories. At night, trucks with soldiers of internal troops will arrive at Lukashenka's mansion. Soldiers will bury apricots and kiwis, papaya and mangoes, tangerines and durians until dawn. In the morning, film crews will drive up. Lukashenka in a bucket hat, Massandra in a tracksuit, Nikolai Lukashenka in full combat gear and Chizh, who was released from arrest for a day as no harvest in Drozdy happens without him, will come out to collect the harvest. Buckets full of durian will be handed to them by the same soldiers disguised as field pests. In the evening, the Belarusian viewers will watch a story about complete import substitution and rejoice.

However, there is a second component to the "counter-sanctions" project. Remember how all but twelve Belarusian travel agencies were suddenly banned from sending invitations to migrants in October. Makei said it was done to prevent illegal migration, and now only reliable trusted companies will be able to do it. True, no one has heard of these companies in the tourism business at all. The trick is to channel this big flow of people who want to cross the border into Europe into a narrow channel. Only the most reliable and loyal to the authorities can stay on its banks. They and members of the family of an infamous character with three per cent have been given a big piece of a dirty but very lucrative business. It will be the same with the Western products: the government knowingly intimidated the importers with the news about the introduction of quotas starting next year. Now the importers have time to make an effort, sell a flat or a kidney, and collect a good round sum to be among the lucky quota holders. True, not everyone will be so lucky. It seems that this business has attracted the attention of either family members or friends and cousins. So, a list similar to that of the Ministry will be adopted for accepting migrants. Only this one will be of the Ministry of Trade, though both are being drawn up in Tsal Dir Bie. So, there are no counter-sanctions; there is just a big fraud.

But the fact that the Council of Ministers has allowed the price of matches to go up is already alarming. Now matches are bound to disappear from the sale, as it always happens before the price rises. But it's okay: a mobile mass grave from Gomel will be driven around the cities, and Belarusians will light its eternal flame. After all, everything In this world has a reason. This senseless construction may be useful as well.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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