Edit: By “overthrow” I mean an actual attempt to topple the government, not wandering around aimlessly in a building for 4 hours stealing furniture.
If you actually oppose power you would almost certainly be FBI’d long before you could ever get to a position where you could conceivably stage a coup.
Being barred from election is a very quaint punishment for leading a failed coup.
The only times any head of state has ever been held accountable for their actions is after the government collapses. This is putting into law what is practically true in every single country (if they do not also explicitly spell this out). If the Belarusian government is couped I doubt his immunity would matter much. He’d be on trial regardless if they don’t just kill him.
As a matter of practice the state will never attack itself. Just like Israel isn’t going to be trying Netanyahu for war crimes.
In South Korea you do have basically every president going to prison for corruption once their successor takes office. This is a result of infighting among factions of the ruling class. If another faction gains the upper hand the figurehead of the opposing one is going down. It is not a coup in the traditional sense but it is a different government that goes after the former presidents. And you can be sure that no South Korean president will ever be prosecuted for their policies relating to police brutality etc, actions usually considered head-of-state-y.
The issue with the article is the framing that being punished for trying to overthrow the government (cynically framing US-backed coup plotters as mere “opposition”) is something unique to dystopian authoritarian countries.
Every state is essentially the repression by one class of another. To act like Belarus is unique in this regard is absurd.
It’s not about the morality the issue, it’s about the hypocrisy of western media.
Edit:
Some more commentary. If Lukashenko and his allies are ousted from government and the new government wants to prosecute him for whatever, his legal immunity is gonna disappear real quick. It’s only as valid as it is enforceable.
This is true anywhere. If you and your allies are in power you are extremely safe from prosecution. If your enemy and their allies are in power, and they want to make an example out of you, you are in danger of prosecution.
It is true in the US. If, by some means, electoral or revolutionary, a faction took power in the US that wanted to send Trump to prison for the rest of his life, he’d be in a prison jumpsuit before the day is out. If a faction that wants to protect Trump from any meaningful consequences are in power, as they are now, he will never see a day behind bars. And if the democrats do a heel-face turn and go from empty rhetoric to actually, seriously trying to get him life in prison, you can bet your ass the GOP will put their foot down and explicitly enshrine presidential immunity into law (this will never be necessary, of course). And if, after they do this, they want to throw Obama in prison, you can also bet your ass they will invent an argument as to why he is exempt from presidential immunity and send him straight to the slammer.
Checks and balances are meaningless. No faction is ever at risk of self-prosecution. It will always be some other government doing it to them.
I don’t see the practical value in opposing self-immunity as it is the intrinsic nature of every state. Justice for wrongs perpetrated by heads of state don’t come from state apparatuses, they come from external resistance, whether by taking control of said apparatus or by doing away with the whole thing.
in the transitory states we build between here and communism we should protect ourselves from shitty people getting into power and doing crimes
Belarus is not even a transitory state towards Communism. Any defense we give of it is purely from a disempowered perspective understanding why an anti-west government would do certain things to maintain power. None of our views on how things should be done are really what is being discussed
You’re highlighting the limits of “the state” as a frame of analysis. “The state” is a legal fiction that’s often useful, but that fiction starts getting in the way when you look close enough to see the motivations of different factions or individuals.
Different factions and individuals use the state’s tools for their pet projects all the time. This is why libs are obsessed with rules, institutions, and norms – they want the state to function via the rule of law, not the whims of whoever is in power.
Reminder that “corruption charges” in western democracies are 100% just political purges that marked by the selective punishment and discipline of rival factions and other powerbroker organisations as much as they are marked by the selective overlooking of guilt and complicity in those who are amenable to the ruling faction.
No, I don’t have any proof of this claim whatsoever.