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FIXING THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE?
(The Belarussian minority in Poland after the 2001parliamentary election)
Michael Fleming
The emergence of a new minority rights regime1 in the post-communist period has failed to ensure that the voices of the Belarussian minority in Poland are given due respect. As argued in a previous paper in this journal (Substantiating the new minority rights regime in Poland: Political capital and the importance of deliberation, Annus Albaruthenicus 2001), this failure is a result of marginalisation in democratic fora such as the Sejmik in the Podlaskie voivodship, and the minority’s inability to organise a scalar strategy of empowerment.2
This paper aims to expand upon the argument made in the earlier contribution, in relation to the Belarussian minority. Here I argue that, in order to achieve the substantive equality ‘guaranteed’ through the new minority rights regime, the Belarussians need to be active and successful in three crucial areas. These include the various democratic fora within Podlaskie – including the gmina, powiat and in the Sejmik.3 Secondly, they must be able to develop a scalar strategy of empowerment, in order to influence the decisions affecting them which emanate from locations outside the voivodship. This means establishing voice at the Sejm, Senate, and in European institutions. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the Belarussians need to influence the exercise of power as it operates through discourse. This essentially means challenging and contesting stock notions of the Belarussian area of Hajnowski powiat, imposed, more often than not, from the outside, but which may be incorporated into lay discourse.
Thus, in this paper I analyse those factors which reproduce Belarussian marginalisation. In first instance I discuss the important role of the Voivod in relation to national minorities and note that the SLD-UP victory in the 2001 election, and subsequent installation of Marek Strzaliński as Voivod, may prove to be a positive development. The argument then moves to take into account the on-going conflict over the extension of the Białowieża national park, noting the anti-democratic and misanthropic behaviour of NGOs such as the Polish branch of the American deep ecology organisation Workshop for all Beings, the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and their supporters.
It is in this area that the power of discourse becomes transparent. The representation of Białowieża as the ‘last primeval forest in Europe’, while patently false, does play a crucial function in legitimating the Park’s extension, and silencing the concerns of the local people (who are largely Belarussian).4 Furthermore, the construction of the ‘rural idyll’ inhibits the development of sensible responses to the widespread rural poverty in southern Podlaskie, which is undermining the Belarussian minority’s lifeworld.5
Finally, I discuss the 2001 parliamentary elections. I outline voting preference at the powiat and regional level, and argue that the results indicate marked and longstanding contours of antipathy, which in this case reflect the lack of substantive progress towards democratic inclusion within the voivodship.
THE VOIVOD’S OFFICE
In 2001, the SLD in alliance with UP won the general election. This is an important development, since the new central government has installed its representative in the Podlaskie voivodship (the Voivod), replacing the previous AWS-appointed Voivod. One of the key tasks for the Voivod is to ensure that national policies are implemented and that Poland’s international commitments are adhered to within the voivodship. This includes obligations in regard to national minorities. Under the previous Voivod, Krystyna Łukaszuk, little effort was made to adhere to the letter or spirit of the principal European instrument of minority protection, namely the Council of Europe’s (1995) Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ratified by Poland in December 2000).
The role of the Voivod therefore is that of a senior civil servant, appointed by the government. He / she is accountable to the central government and is placed at a judicious distance from the ebb and flow of regional politics, in order to manage the implementation and monitoring of national policies.6 The Voivod also exerts a tremendous symbolic power within the voivodship. For example, the failure of the former Podlaskie Voivod to meet with the Sejm’s Commission for national and ethnic minorities when it visited Białystok was widely condemned by the national minorities in the region, and applauded by factions within AWS, reflecting the contours of antipathy within the voivodship. For all concerned, the Voivod had demonstrated her political colours, and had symbolically supported the exclusionary tactics then being employed by the Right in the Sejmik.7
What is especially interesting about this example is that a government appointee (i.e. from the executive) refused to consider the views held by the Sejm’s special committee concerned with the rights of minorities, suggesting that either the central government took a very broad interpretation of its minority obligations in Podlaskie (so broad, in fact, as to render them ineffectual) or that the Voivod had acted improperly and therefore warranted sanctioning. Since the Voivod was not sanctioned, and the political storm over her failure to meet with the Sejm’s committee fell into abeyance - largely due to the weakness of the national minorities in Podlaskie, and a lack of action from Warsaw - the weight of evidence shifts to the central government’s (AWS’s) broad interpretation of its obligations in this region.
This hypothesis gains credence if we consider the conflict over the extension of Białowieża forest, which intensified during AWS’s period in office. True, the Polish government was under tremendous pressure - both to extend the park, and to accord it the highest degree of protection - from foreign and domestic interest groups (international environmental NGOs and Polish environmental scientists), as well as from factions within its own group which saw the top-down imposition of national parks as part of the wider project to redeem Poland’s image from the poor environmental record caused by the communists’ methods of industrial expansion.8 But, in failing to even raise the issue of the rights of national minorities in the context of discussion over the future of Białowieża (as mentioned earlier, the people who live in and around Białowieża are largely Belarussian), the central government allowed the misanthropic dogma of environmentalists to take centre stage.9
This in itself is of concern, since an a priori judgement concerning the relative values of the environment vis a vis the rights of local / Belarussian people has been made without any democratic deliberation. However, it has also become clear that the arguments made by the international NGOs and environmental scientists are largely overstated, and frequently spurious.10 This has been extensively analysed by Stuart Franklin in his contribution to the British journal ‘Environment and Planning’ (2002).
The central government’s inadvertent complicity in the environmentalists’ project to disenfranchise the local population prior to March 2000, in and around Białowieża through the action and inaction of the Voivod can also be understood in national and political party terms. Those people who faced the loss of traditional access rights to the Białowieża forest were (and are) also largely SLD supporters – the AWS’s opposition (see below). In the context of Podlaskie’s form of democracy - that is, a dictatorship of the majority - the views of the inhabitants of Białowieża counted for little.11 In failing to take seriously the complaints these people had with the workings of local democratic fora (for example, the Sejmik, where the request for a special committee for national minorities was brusquely pushed aside by the majority), the Voivod failed to demonstrate the impartiality required of her office.
Białowieża is mythologised as ‘the green lungs of Poland’, as a ‘primeval’ forest, and home to the mighty and exotic European bison.12 This mythology is incorporated into nationalist discourse as Białowieża becomes a purely Polish place of sanctuary from the pressures of modernity. As McDowell (1997:262) argues, ‘Places and landscape have no intrinsic meaning. Instead they are socially constructed, embedded within the sets of social relations and the value system of a period’.13
Part of the process of creating meaning about Białowieża has involved excluding the voices of those who live and work within and around the forest. The lived space of local people has been ignored, and replaced by a powerful discourse that represents the forest as primeval, threatened and Polish. The ‘knowledge’ of self-appointed ‘experts’, through the mobilisation of significant political and financial capital during the 1990s from international NGOs such as the WWF, delegitimated local understandings of the forest, and thereby justified the actions deemed necessary by those same ‘experts’.
For example, the environmentalist Simona Kossak, in her flawed book ‘Saga Puszczy Białowieskiej’ (2001), (The Białowieża Forest Saga (2001)), joins a longstanding tradition of denying the identity of the local population, and, if it is acknowledged, it is presented as something alien and foreign – and thus demanding exclusion. The former Voivod tacitly played upon this discourse in order to disregard the legitimate claims made by Belarussians, and therefore failed to give due consideration to the demands of the new minority rights regime.
It was not until the vigorous demonstration of March 2000 by local people against the extension of the national park, that the central government was forcibly made aware of the radical disjuncture between the claims of the environmentalists and the actual real conditions operating in the forest. Consequently, plans to extend the park have been postponed. (Another factor affecting this decision is the fact that the cost of extension will prove to be high).
The victory of SLD at the 2001 general elections saw the replacement of Krystyna Łukaszuk and her cabinet by Marek Strzaliński and his team. This is important, as the new Voivod is not encumbered by the perception that he is anti-national minorities. This, in itself, is symbolically significant since it recalibrates the tone of discussion between minorities and the majority to a fairer plane.
However, since the central government is yet to appraise the situation of the Belarussian minority due to poor monitoring of the implementation of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention, and to acknowledge that the conflict over Białowieża has a national minority dimension, it is unlikely that the Voivod will act on the issue.
The rhetoric of environmental crisis continues to guide the debate about Białowieża. This is evident in Ewa Symonides’ (Main Conservationist of Nature, Vice-Minister of the Environment) 2002 plan for the forest, which seeks to accord high protection to selected stands within the forest. For, while she does acknowledge the concerns of local people, she maintains that: ‘Everything that happens in the Białowieża forest should be geared towards the protection of nature’, without problematising what ‘nature’ is. This lack of rigour reaffirms the hegemonic discourse about Białowieża, which is inherently biased against the legitimate concerns of the local people.14 In substance, the voice of the Belarussians remains marginalised by the powerful crisis discourse, which has been propagated by international environmental NGOs, Polish environmentalists and their allies, and acceded to by the government which is fearful that ‘without effective protection of the forest no Union institution will be persuaded to give help in the development of the region’.15
SCALE AND DEMOCRACY
The Belarussians’ experience of post-communism clearly demonstrates the need to engage with extra-local territorial scales. The systematic exclusion in the Sejmik, a result of both the understanding of democracy within Podlaskie as winner takes all, and more subtle mechanisms of exclusion whereby the claims, perspectives and desires of the national minorities are not given due respect or consideration (the political philosopher Iris Marion Young describes this second form of exclusion as internal exclusion),16 coincides with an economic crisis in the Belarussian heartlands around Hajnówka.
However, as McNeil (2001:347) notes, ‘Any political project which aims to ‘engage’ with extra-local territorial scales must have a strong discursive dimension, both in the sense of practices of talking and meeting and networking, and in the sense of disseminating this public domain’.17 This task is especially difficult, given that a key discursive dimension of the Belarussian experience has been ‘misrepresented’ by environmentalists. In this context, the work of the Danish organisation DANCEE in Białowieża has become critical.18 On a basic level, DANCEE created a forum in which all interested parties would be treated with equal respect (though it quickly became clear that the hardcore of the Polish environmental scientists in Białowieża were at best reluctant parties in dialogue), and which became a means of facilitating compromise. However, DANCEE also played another function, perhaps more important, of legitimating the validity of the Belarussian understandings of the forest. In doing so, DANCEE challenged the notion propagated by some of the environmental scientists that local people do not care about the forest.19
However, the long-term success of DANCEE’s involvement with Białowieża can only be judged in the coming years, after the organisation has departed. For although, following the events of March 2000, DANCEE has worked hard in fostering fora of deliberation, it is not clear whether these will continue to function after the DANCEE project finishes later this year.20 For instance, local people are strongly against the extension of the national park. This position is predicated upon a knowledge of the actual condition of the forest and its history. The WWF, on the other hand, is committed to ‘supporting NGOs’ efforts to enlarge the park, while securing the cultural values and economic needs of local people’.21 The WWF’s stated goals are contradictory. It cannot justify its commitment to extending the national park22 without relying upon spurious claims made about the forest’s history and discredited notions of climax ecology, and at the same time claim to wish to secure the cultural and economic needs of local people.
The desire to extend the national park on the grounds of needing to protect ‘nature’ (itself a social and ideological construct) and biodiversity fails to recognise the excellent work taking place in the managed part of the forest. In short, despite its strenuous public relations campaign to build trust in the local communities, the WWF and its Polish allies are likely to return to their pre-March 2000 scalar strategy to disempower local people. Like Heinrich Goering in the 1940s, international environmental NGOs and their Polish allies see Białowieża as a spectacle; wild, primeval, exotic – people just get in the way.
Indeed, the WWF’s representative in Białowieża, Stefan Jakimiuk, warns that the WWF will not hesitate to use its contacts in Brussels to push its agenda, and that ‘the European parliament’s environmental committee has already asked us to prepare a report on the Białowieża forest’.23 It is likely that the report which the WWF submits will continue to mythologise the forest, and rely upon highly contested claims made by alleged ‘experts’. The European parliament’s environmental committee is yet to ask for a report on the forest from the local people, or from the State Forest service which is responsible for the managed part of Białowieża. This suggests that the organs of local government urgently need to press their perspective within various European institutions, if local people are to avoid further marginalisation.
Local government also needs to challenge the NGOs’ representation of Białowieża. This is extremely difficult, despite the victory of March 2000. The NGOs, especially the WWF, have substantial financial resources with which to sponsor relatively highly paid activists in the local community and to organise lobbying at various scales (local, regional, national and international), as they did with considerable success through the 1990s (and are currently doing). However, local government officials have learned some valuable skills since 2000, and have created useful networks to challenge the WWF’s hegemonic conception of the forest.
Furthermore, there is now greater awareness of the reality of the forest within Polish polity, and a willingness amongst a larger public to challenge the rhetoric of environmental crisis. Nevertheless, the matrix of rhetoric surrounding Białowieża is formidable, and voices at odds with the hegemonic conception are treated with a lack of understanding, and frequently aggression.
The mechanisms which perpetuate the myth of the primeval forest include the still photography of Jan Walencik. In his photographs the forest is depopulated of people, and the carefully selected shots present a partial and prejudicial representation of the forest, which aims to suggest wildness and natural purity. In addition, Telewizja Polska’s (1996) ‘documentary’ ‘Heartbeat’ continues this mythologising agenda by once again emptying the forest of people and dramatically staging shots with an array of technical filmatic techniques. The forest is somewhat different from the conception held by these storytellers. A more balanced view is given by Yorkshire TV’s (1998) documentary ‘Dances with Wolves’ which does not flirt with mythology and sentimentality, but this film is generally unknown.24
POLITICS OF RURAL DISCOURSE IN PODLASKIE
The conflict over Białowieża, while crucial to the entire Belarussian minority project, is not the only problem which the Belarussians face. The economic collapse of southern Podlaskie on the one hand encourages out-migration to centres of assimilation such as Warsaw and Białystok and, on the other, leads to a high acceptance of poverty amongst the Belarussian minority.
The construct of the rural idyll plays a crucial role in the acceptance of poverty. In their seminal work on the rural idyll, Fabes et al (1983)25 outlined several responses to positions of poverty – all of which have resonance amongst the rural Belarussian minority in the Hajnowski powiat. These include:
1. a fatalistic acceptance of a lowly position within a clearly demarcated social hierarchy
2. high tolerance of poverty, with people ‘scraping by’ for as long as possible in their current positions
3. a distinct lack of material aspirations, with priority being allocated instead to family life, good health, and the richness of the rural cultural heritage
4. a stigmatic burden of shame and secrecy which then militates against the seeking of help
However, as Cloke (1997)26 points out, ‘these lay discourses confirm rather than contest countryside cultures of problem-free idyll-ised life’. It is in this environment that foreign and domestic NGOs have been able to successfully propagate their representations of the area, especially that of the Białowieża forest. Indeed, the Belarussian minority’s discourse concerning their own situation is extremely problematic for the longevity of the minority. Natural wastage, and a steady process of out-migration of the youngest and most able, further undermine the community. For, as long as the nature of rural Belarussian poverty is not discussed, a solution to the problem remains distant.
The inability to discuss rural poverty on the same plane as urban poverty, for example, is strongly connected with ideas about the purity, healthiness and naturalness of rural living. Cloke (1997:256) argues that, ‘constructs of rural idyll(s) concomitantly exacerbate and hide poverty in rural geographic space’, and this is true within Podlaskie. For, although the economic crisis in agriculture is well known, there remains a lack of urgency to find a solution to the concomitant poverty. Indeed, the idea of the rural idyll militates against a response, given that the reality of poverty challenges the notion at its core.
Thus, instead of confronting the economic crisis in southern Podlaskie with development strategies which admit industry such as forestry, furniture-making and a revitalised agriculture, the regional development plan (formulated in Białystok by the regional government, without a Belarussian contribution) focuses upon tourism as a panacea for the problems faced by the inhabitants of rural Hajnowski.27
This is inadequate, but it does link well with the WWF’s and its Polish allies’ desire to see forest-related industries curbed and, if possible, phased out. Since tourism alone cannot support the economy of Hajnowski (for the evidence, see Podlaskie statistical yearbook 1975-2001 on the number of tourists visiting Białowieża and surrounding villages), this plan should be viewed as part of a longer term strategy to weaken the supportive capacity of southern Podlaskie. Since the population here is largely from the Belarussian minority, the regional government needs to defend itself against the charges made by Belarussian activists over the last few years, that the economic crisis is an ‘attempt to liquidate our ethnic areas’.28 On the evidence, it seems that it would be very difficult for the regional government to refute the minority’s claims, and it would be forced to rely upon a considerable amount of sophistry.
Thus, one of the main challenges faced by people living in and around Hajnówka is to contest the disempowering discourses which fix their ambitions and lifestyle justifications. If the vigorous protest of March 2000, a reaction to further disenfranchisement of a traditional resource, is to have any greater meaning, it is necessary for these same people to demand something more than mere subsistence offered by the continuation of traditional forest access rights. And this means breaking with the tacit acceptance of the rhetoric of the rural idyll.
CONTOURS OF ANTIPATHY29
The 2001 parliamentary election, which saw AWS split into disarray and Unia Wolności collapse as the ambition of members encouraged the formation of Civic Platform, allowed the SLD in alliance with UP to secure a resounding victory.
In Podlaskie, SLD won 37.91% of the vote for the Sejm, trailed by a considerable margin by Samoobrona (12.04%) and Liga Polskich Rodzin (11.79%). Interestingly, the electoral geography of the 2001 election mirrors to a large degree the geography of national minorities in the voivodship. SLD was the favoured party of the minorities, largely due to its insistence upon formal and, to a lesser degree, substantive equality between majority and minorities. In the Hajnowski powiat, for example, SLD attracted 76.13% of the vote, and in Sejneński 63.72%. In contrast, the right wing Catholic-influenced Liga Polskich Rodzin (LPR) attracted just 2.46% of the vote in Hajnowski and 5.43% in Sejneński. This party was relatively strong in Łomżyński (16.59%) and in Białostocki (16.1%).
The results for the Senate elections show the contours of antipathy more clearly. Seventeen candidates competed for 3 mandates. Two of the mandates were won by the SLD-UP candidates Adam Jamroz (31.17%) and – Belarussian minority member – Sergiusz Plewa (29.97%), and one by Jan Szafraniec of the Liga Polskich Rodzin (28.18%). The table below illustrates the geography of electoral support each candidate received. I also include the results of Jan Syczewski, chairman of the Belarussian Social-Cultural Organisation, and former SLD MP who was dropped following widespread, but misplaced, criticism of comments he made in Minsk in 2001 to the effect that there is more than one form of democracy. Mr Syczewski had tried, during his time in office, to draw attention to the economic crisis in the Belarussian area around Hajnówka, and had played an important role on the Sejm’s Commission for National and Ethnic Minorities.
In the Hajnowski powiat, the vote was essentially split between the two SLD candidates and Jan Syczewski, running as an independent under the ‘Podlasie’ banner. Plewa’s high support, with almost 70% of the vote, reflects the double benefit he enjoyed in the powiat – as a SLD candidate, and being part of the Belarussian minority. Adam Jamroz’s main attraction was the fact that he was the SLD’s leading candidate in the voivodship. Jan Syczewski, on the other hand, would have probably received an even greater proportion of the vote had he been on the SLD platform. Nevertheless, the strong support he received in the Hajnowski powiat does indicate the Belarussian minority’s cohesion around a leftist political programme in which the rights of minorities are given due respect.
The right wing candidate fared poorly in the powiat, and relied upon support from Poles in the area. The table below illustrates the voting pattern in the Hajnowski powiat.
As can be seen in table 2, Szafraniec fared better in gminas in which there is a higher proportion of Poles, such as Hajnówka and Narew, and very poorly in the Belarussian- dominated areas such as Hajnówka gmina. In contrast, the principal Belarussian candidates, whether running on the SLD platform such as Plewa, or Syczewski running as an independent, fared extremely well in the key Belarussian gminas of Hajnówka gmina and Czyże.
The results of the parliamentary election illustrate the saliency of national minority identity both at the voivodship level and at the powiat level. Support for SLD-UP is predicated upon the conviction that this party is more likely to treat national minorities with the respect they are entitled to, both within and without democratic institutions, as well as a firm belief in the leftist agenda which the party proclaims. For, although other parties competing in the Podlaskie voivodship offered support for particular class interests (Samoobrona and the LPR), these parties also made use of ‘national’ rhetoric which alienated potential class allies amongst the Belarussian population.
The electoral split within the voivodship is not so much a division between the economic left and right, but rather between the ideological left and right – between a promise of tolerance and the threat of compulsory conformity. In this respect, the contours of antipathy within the voivodship continue along their historic trajectory – between Belarussian – Pole, Orthodox – Catholic. The resounding victory of SLD-UP may enable a more inclusive democracy to take shape in the voivodship. To ensure that it does, SLD parliamentarians must take steps to sustain meaningful dialogue with their constituents. In practice, this means disrupting the hegemonic idea of the rural idyll, which both hides and exacerbates the problems of their rural constituents, including, but not exclusively, the Belarussian minority. In doing so, representatives will remain in touch with the region as it is actually lived, and will be able to challenge and contest the claims of foreign and Polish NGOs, and misanthropic environmentalists, concerning the ‘primeval’ forest, the purity and simplicity of rural life.
In addition, the Voivod has an important role to play in monitoring the implementation of international and national legislation regarding national minorities. This is a difficult task, given that mechanisms to monitor Poland’s international obligations in regards to national minorities are ‘not perfect’.30
In the changed political situation, it is indeed possible that the intransigence of the Podlaskie Sejmik in regards to minorities may recede, especially if the SLD and UP increase their representation at the forthcoming local elections. Nevertheless, immense challenges remain. Power is not exercised exclusively through coercion, but through discursive means. In this respect, the Voivod needs to be sensitive to the disempowering strategies adopted during the 1990s by various NGOs, and be able to recognise them for what they are. As Cloke (1997:260) notes, ‘dominant cultural constructions of rurality can subsume the potentially problematic and marginalising experiences of rural life into a seemingly hegemonic ‘takeover’ of what meanings should be attached to that rural life’. An understanding of the new minority rights regime can help guard against such ‘takeovers’, and action is warranted to prevent the marginalisation of Belarussian cultural values at the behest of ‘crisis environmentalism’.
CONCLUSION
The marginalisation of the Belarussian minority in Poland continues. In this paper I have outlined some of the mechanisms which perpetuate this marginalisation, and have highlighted a particular salient case, the Białowieża forest conflict, in which democratic practice has been subverted by unaccountable NGOs with substantial scalar reach, on the basis of an alleged overriding ‘just cause’.
The rhetoric of environmental crisis and the concomitant mythology surrounding Białowieża urgently need challenging. There is no doubt that the Białowieża forest is important and valuable, but this does not necessitate the disempowering of local (Belarussian) people, or legitimate spurious claims made about threats to biodiversity and the acceptance of discredited ‘scientific’ theories of climax ecology.
I argued further that the failure of the central government to place the debate of the extension of the national park in its broader context of the rights of national minorities allowed the mythologising tendencies and rhetoric of environmental crisis to take centre stage, forcing the local people into a subservient position when describing their own ‘mała ojczyzna’. It is here that the Polish government needs to fulfil its obligation to the Belarussian national minority, as stated in Article 5 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995):
The Parties undertake to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture, and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.
In the context of the conflict over the future of Bialowieża, local people’s understandings have systematically been marginalised, and indeed the specific claims that national minorities make upon the majority to achieve substantive or, as in Białowieża, even formal equality have not been considered. This is largely due to the massive power differentials between a weak national minority and a powerful, global NGO.
Article 4.2 of the Framework Convention, in relation to the Belarussian minority, requires the Polish State to adopt special measures that take into account their specific conditions.
The Parties undertake to adopt, where necessary, adequate measures in order to promote, in all areas of economic, social, political and cultural life, full and effective equality between persons belonging to a national minority and those belonging to the majority. In this respect, they shall take due account of the specific conditions of the persons belonging to national minorities.
As suggested by this paper, the Polish State needs to act in a number of key areas.
Firstly, the State needs to place the discussion of Białowieża within the context of national minority obligations. This would achieve a number of objectives. It would enable the voice of local people to be heard within democratic fora outside of Podlaskie, and at the same time expose the anti-democratic strategies employed to date by environmental NGOs to appropriate Białowieża. It would also stimulate a much needed debate concerning what a national park actually is, and would reveal that being against the extension of the national park (at IUCN category II) does not equate to being anti-environment, as the international NGOs and their Polish allies like to suggest. The DANCEE report (2001:38) makes clear that the ‘costs and benefits from change [in the status of the forest] may (and in some cases will) impact the EBNP [Extended Białowieża National Park] and the BF [Białowieża Forest] community in a very different way. This is to say that the allocation of costs and benefits must be included in deliberation of the form of change selected’. This is yet to happen.
Giving the Belarussian minority the political space which the Framework Convention ‘guarantees’ them, would enable the Belarussians to contest the disempowering discourse of the rural idyll, and to challenge the negative stereotypes which portray them as backward, simple and, perhaps most importantly, ‘misunderstanding’31 the entire issue surrounding Białowieża.
Secondly, the Podlaskie Voivod should become more proactive in regards to the State’s obligations towards national minorities and, perhaps in conjunction with the Marshall’s office, institute robust mechanisms to monitor that these obligations are fulfilled.
In order to achieve these goals or, if put more bluntly, in order to avoid further marginalisation and ultimate disappearance, the parliamentary representatives of the Belarussians need to act. In the Sejm Eugeniusz Czykwin and in the Senate Sergiusz Plewa have a key role to play in contesting the contemporary discourse surrounding Białowieża. Their main task is to challenge the claims made by NGOs, and to reconfigure the entire debate so that the issue of national minorities is at the forefront of discussion.
The Belarussians, and their local representatives, including Włodzimierz Pietroczuk – Starosta of the Hajnowski Powiat, need to copy the NGOs’ scalar strategy and communicate their concerns to the relevant European institutions – the European Parliament’s Committee for the Environment, the Council of Europe’s Minority Unit, the European Union’s Social and Employment Directorate and the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, for example. In doing so, the relevance of local democracy is sustained and local understandings are given voice, challenging the hegemony of environmental organisations and their allies.
In short, the main problem which the Belarussians face is a lack of voice in the decisions that affect them. This lack of voice is perpetuated by internal and external exclusion in / from democratic fora, and the hegemonic discourse operating concerning their lifeworld – be it a ‘rural idyll’ or the ‘last primeval forest in Europe’. Their exclusion from democratic fora is a result of the majority’s antipathy towards their ‘Belarussianness’, which is generally linked to religious confession (Orthodoxy). The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities provides a solution. However, to ensure that its guarantees are implemented requires voice. The challenge for the Belarussians is to break out of this vicious cycle of exclusion.32
SUMMARY
The emergence of a new minority rights regime in the post-communist period has failed to ensure that the voices of the Belarussian minority in Poland are given due respect. I outline some of the mechanisms which perpetuate the marginalisation of the Belarussian minority and highlight a particular salient case, the Białowieża forest conflict, in which democratic practice has been subverted by unaccountable NGOs with substantial scalar reach, on the basis of an alleged overriding ‘just cause’. I argue that the result of the recent parliamentary elections reflect longstanding contours of antipathy between the majority and minorities, and suggest that the installation of a new Voivod following the SLD-UP victory may encourage a more inclusive politics in the region. I conclude that discussion over the future of Białowieża must acknowledge that those most keenly affected by any change in its status are from the Belarussian national minority, and suggest that the government, through the office of the Voivod, institute more robust methods to monitor the implementation of its obligations towards national minorities.
STRESZCZENIE
Nowa europejska ustawa, dotycząca praw mniejszości narodowych, nie ma jeszcze zastosowania w odniesieniu do Białorusinów w Polsce. W swym artykule wskazuję na mechanizmy, które pogłębiają marginalizację mniejszości białoruskiej i opisuję jeden z przykładów – konflikt o Puszczę Białowieską. W trakcie tego sporu polskiej demokracji zadały cios pewne organizacje pozarządowe, działając w imię tak zwanego wyższego ‘dobrego celu’.
Twierdzę też, że wyniki ostatnich wyborów do Sejmu odzwierciedlają długotrwałe kontury antypatii pomiędzy większością i mniejszościami. Powołanie nowego wojewody w wyniku zwycięstwa SLD-UP może spowodować zmianę dotychczasowej polityki w tym regionie. W zakończeniu twierdzę, że rozmowy dotyczące przyszłości Puszczy Białowieskiej muszą uwzględniać fakt, że wszelkie zmiany najbardziej dotkną mieszkającą tam białoruską mniejszość narodową. Sugeruję, aby polski rząd, za pośrednictwem wojewody, wprowadził bardziej skuteczne metody wcześniejszych analiz, z uwzględnieniem zobowiązań państwa wobec mniejszości narodowych, przed wprowadzaniem w życie swych decyzji.
Michael Fleming defended his doctoral thesis entitled ‘National minorities in post-communist Poland: constructing identity’ in 2001 at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several papers on national minorities in Poland, which have appeared in journals in the UK and in Poland. During 2002 he taught geography at Jesus College, Oxford University. He is currently conducting research on the new national minority rights regime in central Europe.
Michael Fleming w 2001 r. obronił na Uniwersytecie Oksfordzkim pracę doktorską pod tytułem ‘Mniejszości narodowe w postkomunistycznej Polsce: tworzenie tożsamości’. Jest autorem szeregu esejów na temat mniejszości narodowych w Polsce, które zostały opublikowane w czasopismach w Polsce i w Wielkiej Brytanii. W 2002 r. uczył geografii na Uniwersytecie Oksfordzkim. Obecnie zajmuje się badaniem praw mniejszości narodowych w Europie Centralnej.
1 This regime includes the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and is supported by institutions such as the European Union, OSCE and NATO. For further details see Fleming, M. (2002) ‘The new minority rights regime in Poland: the experience of the German, Belarussian and Jewish minorities in Poland since 1989’ in Nations and Nationalism (forthcoming) and Jackson-Preece, J. (1998) National Minorities and the European Nation-States System Clarendon, Oxford
2 A scalar strategy of empowerment refers to the ability to influence decisions affecting one scale (the local area, for example) by acting upon agents (e.g. government officials) operating at another scale (the national scale, for example). In the case of the Belarussians, a successful scalar strategy would see Belarussian voice established in national democratic fora, European institutions, and could also operate through various non-governmental organisations concerned about the rights of national minorities, lobbying at all scales.
3 These correspond to commune, district and regional levels.
4 A primeval forest is one untouched by humans. The historical record clearly demonstrates that the forest has been worked for millennia. In evoking the notion of ‘primeval’ forest, environmentalists are attempting to justify the exclusion of a number of activities from the forest in order to safeguard the ‘virgin / primordial / primeval’ forest, which could not be sanctioned if the forest was viewed as having been heavily influenced by humans. The value assigned to ‘primeval’ forest has been used by environmentalists to override other values. In the case of Białowieża, until March 2000, democratic deliberation was sidelined. For a full discussion of this issue see Franklin, S. (2001) Białowieża forest, Poland: social function and social power D.Phil, Oxford University, and Franklin, S. (2002) ‘Białowieża Forest: Myth, Reality and the Politics of Dispossession – The Power of Representation’ in Environment and Planning (forthcoming) (This paper can also be found at www.ace.lu/se/workshop/postsocpr/publicpapers/Franklin.rtf). In describing Białowieża as being the last primeval forest in Europe, the environmentalists ignore the existence of the Russian European forests. For the Polish environmentalists, this ‘oversight’ echoes the longstanding Polish national myth which pictures Poland as the frontier of Christendom, which translates for many as the frontier of Europe. In this view, Orthodox Christianity is seen as Other, and warrants exclusion. Most Belarussians are Orthodox. For further details of Polish national myths, see Davies, N. (1997) ‘Polish National Mythologies’ in Hosking, G. and Schopflin, G. (1997) Myths and Nationhood Hurst and Company, London
5 The notion of lifeworld is from Jurgen Habermas.
6 The responsibilities of the Voivod are detailed in the law of 5th June 1998 (see particularly Article 15). This law has been updated several times, and is published in Dziennik Ustaw Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 2001, Nr 80, position 872. The 1997 Constitution (article 152) also makes reference to the role of the Voivod, stating that, ‘The representative of the Council of Ministers in the Voivodship is the Voivod’. For further details, see Ochendowski, E (2001) Prawo Administracyjne TNOiK, Toruń.
7 See Fleming, M. (2001) National minorities in post-communist Poland: Constructing identity D.Phil, Oxford University. Also see Rabagliati, A. (2001) A Minority Vote Nomos, Kraków.
8 It is worth noting the contrast between the formation of national parks in Poland and their formation in the United Kingdom. In the UK, the creation of national parks was a consequence of the mass trespass movement of the 1930s, which saw working people demand that the countryside be opened up for the enjoyment of the working class. The national parks were created, in part, to make public the countryside, which had been treated as the exclusive private domain of landlords. In Poland, the 1990s’ creation and expansion of national parks has been a top-down affair, largely accomplished by ministerial decree without mass support. This process has been carried out with a view to European Union accession, and the concomitant need for increased environmental protection, and as a consequence of lobbying by international and national environmental NGOs. The result, rather than to increase public access to the countryside, has been, as the conflict over Białowieża indicates, to restrict access and, in effect, to ‘privatise’ areas. This privatisation does not mean that the right to the exchange value of the countryside has been transferred, but its use-value has. In this sense, the new ‘private’ owners include environmental ‘scientists’ and ‘experts’ – the same people who have demanded the creation and extension of national parks. Those who suffer various levels of exclusion include local people and ‘ordinary folk’ – the very people which the creation of national parks in the UK sought to empower.
9 The government is still to acknowledge that the conflict over Białowieża also requires that the rights of a national minority be taken into account. For, while a change in the status of Białowieża may be a purely administrative matter, the concomitant rights and obligations imposed will have profound consequences for the local (Belarussian) population. In this context, the debate needs to be reframed to take into account Articles 4 and 5 of the Framework Convention (1995).
10 The Worldwide Fund for Nature’s website (accessed on 20th June 2002) describing Białowieża (http://www.panda.org/europe/bialowieza.cfm) is full of inaccuracies, which work to encourage misanthropic policies. For instance, it asserts that thousands of hectares of Białowieża have ‘been left untouched by humans for hundreds of years’. This is incorrect, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.
11 For further details on the political situation in Podlaskie through the 1990s see Fleming, M. (2001) and Rabagliati, A. (2001)
12 The mythology of Białowieża is a powerful discourse, which is utilised in Mickiewicz’s classic ‘Pan Tadeusz’ to allude to the spiritual freedom of the Polish nation. Białowieża as sanctuary is a common motif utilised today by environmentalists. The forest’s ‘wildness’, and its fauna, are also used to symbolise the Polishness of products – the best known being Żubrówka vodka, which features a bison on its label. However, the reality of the forest is somewhat different. Białowieża has been worked for millennia, and much of its biodiversity is a result of man’s interaction with the forest. The ‘wild’ and ‘exotic’ bison, as DANCEE’s report (2001:47) on Białowieża makes clear (see below), is fed intensively during the winter. The reality of a semi-domesticated animal is not as appealing as the myth.
13 McDowell, L. (1997) ‘Imagined places’ in McDowell, L. (1997) Undoing Place? A Geographical Reader Hodder, London.
14 The key issue is whether ‘man’ is part of ‘nature’ or apart from it. The environmentalists generally take the second view (see Kossak, 2001, for example), urging for high protection of Białowieża on the grounds that man only harms the forest and its biodiversity. This radical separation is at odds with local understandings of the forest, which maintain ‘man’s’ position within ‘nature’. Interdependence is acknowledged. Since these positions are mutually exclusive, the WWF’s assertion that it wishes to enlarge the national park and to secure the cultural values of local people (see below) is oxymoronic.
15 See Wajrak, A. (15/5/2002) ‘Czy drwale wejdą do ostatniego w Europie lasu pierwotnego?’ (‘Will lumberjacks enter the last primeval forest in Europe?’) (sic) in Gazeta Wyborcza
16 See Young, I.M. (2001) Inclusion and Democracy OUP, Oxford
17 McNeil, D. (2001) ‘Barcelona as imagined community’ in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 26, No 3 p340-352
18 DANCEE – Danish Cooperation for the Environment in Eastern Europe. DANCEE played a crucial role in fostering dialogue between the various actors - local people, environmentalists, foresters - following the mass demonstration of March 2000 against the extension of the national park.
19 It is therefore extremely surprising that DANCEE funded the translation into English of Kossak’s book, in which she asserts that local people are a major problem of the forest (see page 548, for example). In an interview with the author of this paper (22/3/2002), DANCEE’s co-ordinator in Białowieża, Małgorzata Buszko-Briggs, argued that DANCEE wished to present all sides of the argument. We still await the publication in English of the Belarussian / anti-NGOs position. A publication in English is significant since it has the potential to reach a much larger audience than the same book in Polish. (It should be clear that anti-NGO does not infer being anti-environment.) For a review of Kossak’s book, see Fleming, M. ‘The Białowieża forest conflict’ in Europe and Asia Studies (forthcoming)
20 For an account of DANCEE’s position, see DANCEE (2001) ‘Background to management guidelines for Białowieża forest: Issues of Nature Protection. Management, sustainable development of local communities, and Perspective of the Białowieża National Park Enlargement’ DANCEE Białowieża
21 From WWF website, (http://www.panda.org/europe/weboflife_bialoprogramme.cfm), accessed 20th June 2002. In this statement, the WWF is guilty of obfuscation, since it is one of the major NGOs acting.
22 National parks can be accorded various levels of ‘protection’, ranging from open access and tolerance of a range of economic activity, to extremely restricted access and bans upon many economic activities. The WWF-proposed extension would rank as an IUCN category II park, which would severely restrict access and economic activity. It is worth noting that all of Belarus’ part of the forest is a national park, but has an IUCN category V rating, which allows access and economic activity to take place. In failing to publicise this crucial difference, the WWF have been able to portray the hostility of the local people to ‘their’ plans as being anti-environment, and to cast the Polish State in a similar light (which is important as Poland attempts to accede to the EU). This strategy paid dividends as a relunctant Cimoszewicz government doubled the size of the national park in 1996. However, as Franklin (2001 and 2002) demonstrates, the claims made by environmentalists do not bear up to close scrutiny.
23 See Wajrak, A. (15/5/2002)
24 For further details of the role played by photographic and filmic representations of Białowieża in ‘supporting’ the claims of the environmentalists, see Franklin, S. (2001 / 2002)
25 Fabes, R., Worsley, L. and Howard, M. (1983) ‘The Myth of Rural Idyll’ Child Poverty Action Group, Leicester
26 Cloke, P. (1997) Poor Country: Marginalisation, poverty and rurality in Cloke, P. and Little, J. (1997) ‘Contested Countryside Cultures: Otherness, marginalisation and rurality’
27 Some commentators suggest that the major problem is the lack of co-ordination between the various gminas’ development strategies. While co-ordination is desirable, this is not the major issue, given that gmina budgets in rural Podlaskie are extremely limited, and are focused upon improving basic infrastructure. Nevertheless, co-operation and co-ordination should be encouraged in order to generate economies of scale and scope, as well as to prevent unnecessary function duplication.
28 Interview with Belarussian activist 30/5/2000. Other researchers have noticed similar sentiments. For example, in the research edited by Piotr Glinski, one respondent commented that, ‘This park is for us like a wild Action Vistula’. See Glinski, P. (ed) (2001) ‘Konflikt o Puszczę’ in Pogranicze Volume 10, p72. Action Vistula refers to the forced resettlement of Ukrainians from the south-east to the western and northern territories of Poland in 1946.
29 The data cited in this section is from Państwowa Komisja Wyborcza (website, http://wybory.pkw.gov.pl)
30 Interview with Dobiesław Rzemieniewski (26/6/2002), Head of section dealing with national minorities in Department of Citizenship, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration.
31 The Vice-Marshall of Podlaskie, Dariusz Czyszak, also believes that the extension will not cause unemployment, suggesting that the Belarussians’ position ‘is not an argument, rather some kind of misunderstanding’ (interview with Dariusz Czyszak, Białystok, 12/7/2000)
32 As Czykwin (2000) has shown, this is made especially difficult by the condescending Polish discourse on Belarussians, which works to legitimate exclusion, and undermines Belarussians’ group and individual confidence as negative stereotypes are internalised. See Czykwin, E. (2000) Białoruska mniejszość narodowa jako grupa sygmatyzowana, Trans Humana, Białystok.
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