A scandal in Germany has hit the country’s far right. The deputy of the party of Alternatives for Germany he exploited Belarusian political prisoners to work on his farm. The business, opened four years ago, is located in the Belarusian district of Lida, a few steps from Minsk’s border with Lithuania and Poland.
The affair
Combining political activity with that of an entrepreneur is certainly not a crime, but exploiting political prisoners to pick onions in questionable working conditions is, to say the least, inappropriate in a democratic country. Dornau’s company, Cybulka-Bel, has had considerable success, even supplying the largest supermarket chain in Belarus, Evroopt. The man had kept his activities secret in his homeland, but when his modus operandi the consequences were not that serious: he will have to pay a fine of 21 thousand euros to the parliament of Saxony, the state in which he was elected.
In Dornau’s company, which opened during the pro-democracy protests in Minsk after the 2020 presidential elections, workers lived in terrible conditions. “We worked in an underground warehouse, it was February, we had frozen hands and feet. At seven we had breakfast, then we worked until 6pm without food or water. We ate onions”, said a witness who remained anonymous and identified as Andrei.
Recruitment
Investigations revealed that Dornau had signed an agreement with the Center for the Isolation of Criminals (CIO) in Lida whereby he employed men convicted on political charges to work on his onion plantation. The workers’ “salaries” would be forwarded directly to the Center to pay for their stay at the facility.
As reported by Reform.news, the German politician personally went to the place to inspect the work of the prisoners. Andrei, a fictitious name, was sent there by the IOC and he is not the only one. But only he wanted to tell his story to the newspaper. “I even saw him! A tall, bald man. He came once in his car with German license plates. He entered the warehouse where we were sorting the onions,” he said, referring to Dornau.
Ties with Minsk
The German entrepreneur and politician has often appeared in the public media of the country ruled with an iron fist by Alexander Lukashenko, has often met with high-level officials and has obtained patronage from the Minsk authorities by registering his company in 2020. Dornau has also won tenders in the country and, thanks to his good relationships with local authorities, has been awarded over 1,500 hectares of land for his vegetables for permanent use. This is a vast area which he owns together with his partner Yurij Kunitski who has been working for the Russian and Belarusian propaganda apparatus for years. Kunitski, interviewed in 2021 by a Belarusian newspaper, defended his position and that of his friend Dornau, underlining how everything was carried out according to existing legislation.
