A JOINT PRESS RELEASE BY LIBERECO AND EARTHSIGHT
22nd February, 2024
Fifteen months after a damning report exposed a well-known green label for wood, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), for certifying penal colonies and a torture-stained Belarusian wood-product and furniture trade to the EU, Members of the European Parliament, Belarusian political prisoners and politicians and environmental and human rights NGOs have slammed the label for failing to investigate these revelations. They denounce FSC in an open letter published today ahead of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine this weekend, to which the Belarusian regime is an accomplice, and Belarus' first parliamentary elections since the elections of 2020, which were widely regarded as rigged.
Although other wood products have been sanctioned by the EU, the furniture trade FSC licensed for years before its March 2022 withdrawal from the country is still continuing after its departure and remains the biggest unsanctioned category of Belarusian exports to the bloc, propping up a regime complicit in war and rooted in political repression. According to European statistics service Eurostat, more than 103 million Euros of Belarusian wood furniture were imported into the EU from January to November 2023, continuing to contribute a lucrative source of income to Russia’s ally. Poland, Germany, and The Netherlands account for the largest share of Belarusian furniture imports, followed by Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and France.
Read the letter here.
A November 2022 report published by UK-based NGO Earthsight revealed how for years Europe’s largest furniture retail chains, including IKEA and Austrian-headquartered group XXXLutz, the second largest furniture retailer on the continent, had made profits on the backs of political prisoners in Belarus. The profits from the sale of furniture made in prisons and with timber from some of Europe’s last primal forests, including protected areas, had enriched the country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus’ woodworking industry has close ties to his regime and has been called ‘Lukashenko’s last gold mine.’ Sections of the country’s forests are even under Lukashenko’s direct control.
The certification continued despite years of EU sanctions against key government officials linked to the prisons and forests and targetted sectors as well as over a year into the well-documented repression that followed Belarus' stolen presidential elections of August 2020. Many protestors and political figures imprisoned during this period ended up in prisons with FSC certification. This means that FSC enabled and condoned the trade in furniture made in prisons incarcerating peaceful protestors. The report also detailed how forests under direct Presidential control and certified by FSC were being managed by Viktor Sheiman, who had been subject to EU sanctions since 2004 after being named by the EU as personally responsible for the enforced ‘disappearance’ and suspected murder of four Belarusian opposition figures.
Ikea, FSC, and rival certification label PEFC [Progreamme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification], which also provided certification services in Belarus to a less significant degree, announced withdrawal from the country following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related calls from civil society. XXXLutz (which owns the French retailer BUT and German POCO, also named in the report) informed Earthsight in August 2023 that it had cut ties with Belarus. When questioned several months after the scandal, FSC confirmed they have not initiated an investigation into the damning findings.
FSC purports to be a leader in forestry certification. Its label - found on everything from toilet roll and furniture to books and clothing - is meant to ensure that the wood-derived products it certifies for conscious consumers are legal, ethical, and sustainable. But it is falling far short of standards set by legislation in the EU. New EU laws to stop greenwashing such as the EU Green Claims Directive are expected to increase scrutiny of the operation and authenticity of labels such as FSC, but to retain credibility in future FSC must first be accountable for past failures.
Today fourteen MEPs from nine EU states (Germany, Austria, Sweden, The Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania), Belarusian opposition politicians, and 37 environmental and human rights organisations and individuals from more than fourteen countries have come together to demand that the FSC commission an independent investigation into how it came to certify the tainted Belarusian wood and furniture trade in the first place. Signatories include Libereco, Viasna, BelPol, ZMINA, Earthsight, Fern, Progressive Shopper in the US, Forests and Citizens Foundation in Poland, Belarusian diaspora organisations, and many others. Voluntary certification schemes are no substitute for the rule of law in a country. To maintain its integrity, the letter also contains a demand for FSC to assess the need for a minimum level of governance and political freedom to be present in a country before it provides forestry certification services there.
Read the letter here.
Vital Zhuk, a Belarusian who spent 1.5 years in political imprisonment in 2021 and 2022, including in the FSC-certified penal colony 2 in Bobruysk said: "The sale of this furniture is supporting Lukashenko’s regime which continues to torture both political and ordinary prisoners. Several political prisoners have already died in Belarusian prisons, those who are alive suffer from vitamin deficiency and diseases such as scurvy. We should keep on asking questions as we live in a time when each of us must make the choice to be an accomplice to evil or to preserve our honour and soul."
Thomas Waitz, Member of the European Parliament and Co-Chair of the European Green Party: "We as the EU need to establish a strong and airtight sanctions system on wood and all wood products from Belarus. This is our political responsibility. But European and Austrian companies must also step up to their responsibility and withdraw completely from Belarus. The same goes for FSC: Stop certifying state- or regime-owned forests in autocracies! Any activity in the wood sector in these countries fuels the oppression and violence against the democratic opposition, human rights and democracy."
Pavel Latushko, Head of the National Anti-Crisis Management (NAU), Deputy Head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus: ‘’Political prisoners are unlawfully held in various institutions under the Department for the Execution of Punishment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus. In these facilities, they not only endure torture and experience endless days in a solitary confinement, but are also subjected to forced labor. Political prisoners receive almost no reward for their hard work ($0.03-1.38 per month). One of the main activities is woodworking. The law provides preferential conditions for companies seeking cooperation with these institutions, allowing them to purchase goods produced in correctional institutions without following standard procurement procedures or without the need for a procurement procedure at all. This system of forced labor resembles the Stalinist Gulag system."
Christie Miedema, Vice-Chair of Libereco - Partnership for Human Rights (Germany): ‘’Certifying severely underpaid and involuntary prison labour as ‘sustainable’ is inconceivable in any situation but especially in a country like Belarus, whose judicial system and conditions of imprisonment have been criticised by human rights advocates for decades. It is also inconceivable to imagine that the FSC failed to wake up to its previous misjudgement even after the mass detention, torture, and conviction of thousands of peaceful protesters and political opponents in the wake of the rigged elections of 2020. FSC must show accountability to the thousands of innocent people in Belarus’ prison camps over the past four years.’’
Tara Ganesh, Team Lead: Timber. Sanctions and Northern Forests at Earthsight: ‘’FSC’s auditing systems are riddled with conflicts of interest that FSC has failed to fix. This scandal makes it clear that people and nature have long since become secondary to profit at FSC and that it needs to develop a conscience- fast. A good start would be to take the two steps we have called for today.’’
NGO signatories of the open letter
Contact:
