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Fallen tree in the Bialowieza jungle, which connects Poland and Belarus

Photo: Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto / Getty Images

The FSC seal of approval for sustainable forestry is still one of the most important in the world today - and is regularly criticized.

Human rights organizations and MEPs are now demanding comprehensive clarification from the organization Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which for years has also awarded wood products from Belarus with its quality seal for sustainable wood products.

As early as November 2022, a comprehensive report by the British environmental protection organization “Earthsight” suggested that Western companies had benefited from exploitative conditions in Belarus for years.

The accusation: Companies like Ikea or Höffner, Roller or XXXLutz purchased cheap furniture made from Belarusian wood.

The FSC labeled the goods as harmless, even if they came from Belarusian prisons.

Documents and screenshots supported the suspicion.

Furniture is now Lukashenko's most important EU export

After the revelations, some certificates were revoked, but business initially continued in the autocratically ruled country.

Only after the war of aggression against Ukraine began in spring 2022 did the FSC stop its work in Russia and Belarus.

EU politicians and non-governmental organizations are now demanding in an open letter that the FSC certification of Belarusian penal colonies be independently investigated.

They also recall reports of torture by political prisoners from the dictatorship and that the export of wooden furniture from Belarus, unlike the export of wood, oil, steel or fertilizer, is still not subject to EU sanctions.

For the isolated regime of ruler Alexander Lukashenko, they have become the most important sanction-free export to the West.

The letter's signatories include 37 environmental and human rights organizations as well as victims of the Lukashenko regime and thirteen MEPs from nine EU countries.

In this context, the Austrian MEP and co-chair of the Green Party in Europe, Thomas Waitz, is calling for the sanctions for Belarus to be extended to all wooden products.

European companies are also obliged to finally withdraw from the country.

In a statement he criticized the FSC even more fundamentally: “Stop certifying state or government-owned forests in autocracies!

Any activity in the timber sector in these countries promotes repression and violence against democratic opposition, human rights and democracy."

Rewards for purchasing prison goods

In fact, opposition members from Belarus are also among the signatories of the letter, which is now being published on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Russian attack.

Among those quoted is a Belarusian who was temporarily imprisoned in the FSC-certified penal colony 2 in Bobruysk.

Former Lukashenko minister Pavel Latushko, who is now in exile, compares forced labor in his home country with the Stalinist gulag system and writes: "Political prisoners receive almost no wages for their hard work."

The production of wooden goods is one of the main tasks in many prisons.

The years-long trade in timber with the FSC seal from Belarus is by no means the only scandal in which the non-profit organization headquartered in Germany is involved.

In the past there have been controversies surrounding the clear-cutting of forests and plantations in Sweden, South Africa and South America.

The brutal felling of trees in protected areas by a certified Ikea subsidiary made headlines back in 2011.

Tara Ganesh from “Earthsight” considers the FSC control system to be fundamentally vulnerable because it is shaped primarily according to the interests of the companies involved.

The Belarus scandal, which has not yet been dealt with, is only evidence of this; stricter external controls are necessary: ​​"In order to remain credible in the future, the FSC must first answer for the mistakes of the past."

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