DISINFO: The IMF conditions loans to Belarus with gender equality and rights of sexual minorities
SUMMARY
Strangely, the IMF projects economic decline and unemployment growth in Belarus, although in contrast to foreign countries, it did not implement lockdown measures. It is possible that the Belarusian opposition provided fake statistics to the IMF. As a precondition for a new loan the IMF demands a free price formation. In practice this would mean that prices for surgical masks, antiseptics, drugs, and toilet paper would increase many times during the epidemic. The IMF has long ago become a fake organisation bogged down in bureaucracy, intrigues, and money-laundering. However it conditions the financial support with elections, social programs for population, and even gender equality. It soon may lead to a situation where the IMF will be dealing with sexual minority issues and defend their rights. Furthermore, the IMF is now pushing the government of Belarus to introduce strict limitation for population due to the coronavirus epidemic. Instead of cooperation with the IMF Belarus should negotiate with Russia within the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Russia does not have similar preconditions for price regulation, domestic policies, gender equality, or sexual minorities.
RESPONSE
This publication contains ungrounded allegations about the IMF and its conditioning policy, as well as about the Belarusian opposition which allegedly provides fake statistics to the IMF. It presents Russia as the one and only beneficial partner for Belarus and is consistent with recurring pro-Kremlin propaganda narrative about mean Western actions towards Belarus. The IMF indeed projects Belarus's GDP to decline in 2020 by 6%. However it did not condition financial assistance to Belarus with election, gender equality, sexual minorities rights, or strict limitations amid the coronavirus outbreak. The IMF's Concluding Statement at the end of an official IMF staff visit to Belarus on 5-15 November 2018 advises Belarus to undertake structural reforms, to establish exchange rate flexibility, and to conduct a tighter monetary policy. This publication is one of many which promote a false dilemma for Belarus's development and which paints very bleak prospects for Belarus up to the complete loss of sovereignty and independence in case it does not proceed towards a very close integration format in relations with Russia. See earlier disinformation cases alleging that Belarus faces either normal development under Russia or a forced Polonization and economic devastation, that the only possible scenario for Ukraine and Belarus to prevent their descent into Nazism through the politicisation of national clothes is to become a Russian western federal area, and that the direction of Belarus and other post-Soviet countries' political development is either a union with Russia or unavoidable degradation.