Moreover, I’m citizen of Belarus, but living in Poland, tax resident of Poland. My developer account is tied with legal entity in Poland and bank account in Poland. I was banned too. :/
That’s probably as a result of Apple’s compliance department action.<p>It’s technically Apple who bans the accounts but it’s the US government who makes them to do so.<p>Essentially, there are people and places that US government prohibits US companies to do business with. Not only US companies actually, anyone who wants to do business with US.<p>Syria, North Korea, Crimea, Belarus, Cuba etc. are terrible addresses to open an account with.<p>If you remember, Github banned Syrian developers.[0]<p>[0] : <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...</a>
I have seen these kind of BS for years on HN now (admittedly most of them from Google). I have decoupled from all those big companies so they can't literally destroy me. I use some of their service but it would be of no consequence if they banned me (YouTube account for example).<p>I encourage you all to get back your freedom. It's not sexy or easy but it's better than loosing everything someday because a stupid law has been passed or on an AI whim.
I have a feeling that if Belarus is part of a Ukraine invasion, this will just be a warmup. On the bright side, not having an Apple developer account won't make much difference when you can't purchase anything more advanced than a graphing calculator.<p>That being said, war is dumb and I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail.
This is very stupid. Those in Belarus who can make a living via AppStore are independent from Belarus government or state owned companies for their livelihood. Also they are typically younger and liberal minded.<p>Now the West has taken their livelihood from them, forcing them to depend more and work for Belarus state. Same stupid policy as with Crimea.
Most here claim that sanctions don't work.<p>But capitalism has been the greatest reason why wars are at an all time low. Since there is another way to have a reasonable wage/getting wealthy.<p>Threatening with a war which is happening now, means you won't get the cake both ways.<p>People there could be victims, but people there are also aiding in the military.<p>Nope, it's not perfect. But it's a tool in the toolbox and one of the best that doesn't involve bullets and people getting killed en masse.<p>Note : probably not a popular opinion. But please suggest a better actual solution then that actually is proven to work without giving the bully all they want/threat.
Oh that's a nice move from apple to bring developers from Belarus, Russia and China together...nothing better as having a common enemy....maybe one more day thinking about it Pentagon?
Surely anyone associated with this 'restricted party' should also be locked out of iCloud not just developer accounts.<p>Bricking half a country's phones might create some negative publicity.
Right decision from Apple. Lukashenko may force any developer from Belarus to integrate a backdoor into any app (no matter if they want to do this). Lukashenko may even kill a developer and let his security agency to publish "modified" versions of the app to do some really bad stuff.
This may be a (very sloppy) overfit or some other kind of error on Apple's part.<p>It is difficult to parse the official sanctions directives - but from my understanding they target only certain individuals and institutions - not the country (or its entire banking system) as a whole.