It was a game played in Minsk.  In the midst of a column of over 10,000 demonstrators marching through the streets of the city on April 25 to commemorate the Chornobyl catastrophe, three boys were acting strangely. They had that wary yet excited look which small boys have when they are about to do something dangerous.
And dangerous it was.  They held a Soviet Belarus flag and were trying to set it on fire.  After it had burned half through, they dropped it and stomped on it with their feet.  Many other demonstrators, marching by, went out of their way to step on it as well.

After several minutes the three boys deliberately made their way to the now thoroughly trampled flag and picked it up. Exchanging glances, equal measures of apprehension and excitement, they began making their way out of the column of demonstrators.

Their purpose became clear only several minutes later when cries of "Provocateur!" were heard and in one spot the crowd swayed back and forth angrily.  The boys had moved to the edge of the crowd in order to taunt the militia and secret service lined up alongside with the mutilated symbol of formerly Soviet Belarus and the contemporary dictatorship it had changed into.  One of these official onlookers had had enough and ran up to seize the flag.  He then raced to a waiting police car, not risking the crowd's ire.  Not this time.

Things were different after the demonstration ended.  Dozens of the action's more prominent leaders were picked up by police for interrogation.  A number of them are civic as well as political leaders.  As is apparent to all but the most obtuse observers, politics and civic activity are inextricably intertwined in Belarus.

For the 40 odd members of the Centers for Pluralism gathered in Minsk, many from post-Soviet states, to listen to several dozen Belarusan colleagues, exchange experiences in NGO activity and talk about future plans, Minsk was a suitable reminder that the shift back to dictatorship is easier than it may seem.

On the surface, Minsk seems normal enough.  True, the omnipresent police wear combat fatigues.  The streets are unusually bare and an atmosphere of repressed anticipation, like a coiled serpent waiting to strike, prevails. For Belarusan NGOs, the choices to be made in their activities and in such a context are inevitably political.  Such as the choice of whether or not to re-register charters for their organizations which include "oaths of allegiance" to the dictator Lukashenko's regime.  Or the choice of whether or not to help organize national presidential elections scheduled for May 16 by the democratic opposition.

These choices define the various NGOs as what they really are.  Some, in their complete subservience to the government cease to be NGOs at all. Others play a waiting game, hoping that, in time, the regime will fall and the door will open to more normal NGO activity, as it is practiced in the West.  Still others are prepared to "taunt" the authorities and express themselves as they see fit.  As with "re-registration", they are forced to play outside the rules set for them by a chaotic despot.  It is the latter NGOs which are worth our attention.

The civil society center "Supolnasc," a member of the Centers for Pluralism network and organizer of the Minsk meeting, stands not only in the forefront of the organizations which cannot agree with the "rules" of an unjust society.  It is the leading NGO working with the young people of Belarus.  For it is the young to whom the future belongs and who are most interested in progress.  Yet what progress can there be in a closed society? That is the issue which NGOs of Belarus, such as Supolnasc, are addressing.

For, just as there are effective NGOs, there are less effective NGOs.  The best NGO activists are often people who are ready, if necessary, to go to the edge.  The edge of the status quo.  In parallel with the case of the boys who taunted the militia, simple NGO activity may turn into an act of defiance.  Most NGO activists are not faced with such choices, but they can hope that, if need be, they will be sufficient to the task.