Draft on Budget Cuts for Belsat Alarms Channel Managers

The draft doc­u­ment, pre­pared at the For­eign Affairs Min­istry of Poland, reduces 17 mil­lion zlo­ty ($4.2 mil­lion) to 5 mil­lion zlo­ty ($1.2 mil­lion) to be allo­cat­ed for broad­cast­ing of Bel­sat.

Mrs Romaszews­ka com­ment­ed that the deci­sion had been unex­pect­ed for her, and such dras­tic cut down would mean only the end for the chan­nel. She drew atten­tion to the idea for Bel­sat to broad­cast in Russ­ian, which would be anoth­er absur­di­ty, as the Belaru­sian lan­guage has been Belsat’s hall­mark.  I She called the sit­u­a­tion as mis­un­der­stand­ing, deprived of any ratio­nal­i­ty.

Bel­sat TV is a satel­lite tele­vi­sion chan­nel aimed for Belarus. It is intend­ed to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to the cen­sor­ship of Belaru­sian state-run tele­vi­sion. Based in Poland, where there is a sig­nif­i­cant Belaru­sian minor­i­ty, Bel­sat is run under the aegis of the Pol­ish state-run tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Telewiz­ja Pol­s­ka (TVP). It start­ed broad­cast­ing on 10 Decem­ber 2007. The chan­nel is run by about 70 jour­nal­ists locat­ed in Poland, Belarus, and Lithua­nia.

Com­ments from BAJ experts

Ali­ak­san­dr Klask­ous­ki, media expert, Bela­PAN:

“When it comes to ful­fill­ing this rad­i­cal sur­gi­cal vari­ant, it will be a strike on pos­si­bil­i­ties of inform­ing Belaru­sian audi­ence, and gen­er­al­ly on the ideals of free­dom of word.”

“As for the lan­guage aspect, the switch of Bel­sat into Russ­ian – that would been extreme­ly cyn­i­cal vio­lence… When a chan­nel whose dis­tinct fea­ture was 100% Belaru­sian lan­guage starts talk­ing the lan­guage of the state with impe­r­i­al incli­na­tions – this is beyond any belief… It would be bet­ter to slow it down before it’s too late.”

Andrei Bas­tunets, lawyer, chair­per­son of BAJ:

“We are say­ing that there are no inde­pen­dent TV and radio chan­nels in Belarus. It was Bel­sat who per­formed the func­tion of such TV. For this rea­son, jour­nal­ists of Bel­sat have resist­ed per­se­cu­tion on behalf of the author­i­ties for years.”

“There has been the issue of the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da dis­cussed late­ly in Europe on dif­fer­ent plat­forms. One of the main con­clu­sions explains that the audi­ence watch­ing mass media in nation­al lan­guages are affect­ed less. So, the switch for the Russ­ian lan­guage… aris­es bewil­der­ment.”

Pauliyk Byk­ous­ki, media expert:

“It would be an insignif­i­cant step for the media sphere as a whole. But it would be essen­tial for the jour­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty and the civ­il soci­ety. The audi­ence would not notice much because Belsat’s influ­ence is not that high. Anoth­er thing is that the chan­nel employs many jour­nal­ists and gives a choice for those who look for alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion about events in Belarus and in the world, and there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to imple­ment Belaru­sian-lan­guage projects.

“I don’t know if the doc­u­ment will real­ly be approved, the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs act the way they think is bet­ter for them. But I hope that the deci­sion-mak­ers will take into account not only the fac­tors need­ed to improve rela­tions with Belarus, but also the fac­tors that are impor­tant for the civ­il soci­ety in Belarus.”