Jamie Fly, Radio Liberty president: “We’ll go back to Minsk to reopen our office. It’s just a matter of time”

“The freedom struggle front evolved in the Baltic states”

— In the days of the Iron Cur­tain, Radio Lib­er­ty broad­cast to the Sovi­et Union. Many lis­tened to the radio in secret and are still nos­tal­gic about those times. What is your mis­sion now?

— In some ways, our cur­rent work is rem­i­nis­cent of that time. We strive to truth­ful­ly and objec­tive­ly report on what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­tries we broad­cast in.

Until recent­ly, the main dif­fer­ence was that we were not some voice from afar, as was the case dur­ing the Cold War, when we were broad­cast­ing from Munich, Ger­many, but worked direct­ly with our audi­ence and had rep­re­sen­ta­tion offices.

Our Min­sk office was open until 2021, and the office in Moscow had been oper­at­ing for 31 years.

Now we find our­selves in a new phase: we have local jour­nal­is­tic com­pe­tence and under­stand the audience’s needs, but are forced out of the coun­try. Obvi­ous­ly, this is a chal­lenge for both jour­nal­ists and the audi­ence, because their inter­ac­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are now imped­ed.

The new office in Vil­nius will focus on keep­ing in touch with our audi­ence in Belarus and pro­vid­ing them with use­ful and rel­e­vant con­tent.

— The radio sta­tion has offices in Riga and Vil­nius. Why do you give impor­tance to net­work devel­op­ment in the Baltic states? Is it a cer­tain bor­der divid­ing the world into free and non-free?

—

In many ways, the free­dom strug­gle front evolved in the Baltic coun­tries. Their gov­ern­ments sup­port inde­pen­dent media and civ­il soci­ety. Our expe­ri­ence in Prague, Czech Repub­lic, where our head­quar­ters is locat­ed, shows the impor­tance of build­ing part­ner rela­tions with the host gov­ern­ment.

We also thought it made sense to be as close to our audi­ence as pos­si­ble. A strong Belaru­sian dias­po­ra has formed in Vil­nius, the polit­i­cal leader of Belarus is here, too. We con­sid­er it nec­es­sary to become part of this ecosys­tem.

The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar for our Russ­ian jour­nal­ists in Riga. They can inter­act with oth­er media and there are no dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing new employ­ees. For these rea­sons, we chose Riga and Vil­nius as loca­tion for new offices.

— When open­ing head­quar­ters in Prague, Radio Lib­er­ty took spe­cial secu­ri­ty mea­sures. Do you fol­low this prin­ci­ple in Riga and Vil­nius? What do you see as a threat?

— We take the safe­ty of our jour­nal­ists very seri­ous­ly no mat­ter where they are based. Our reporters have repeat­ed­ly been harassed, threat­ened, and expelled from their coun­tries. Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists affil­i­at­ed with RFE/RL are still impris­oned in Belarus.

Our cor­re­spon­dents have reg­u­lar­ly been harassed by the Belaru­sian regime, and we are con­cerned about their safe­ty even if they have already left Belarus.

We usu­al­ly work close­ly with local author­i­ties and care­ful­ly check the office premis­es. Accord­ing to our stan­dards, an office can be opened only after we make sure that it is secure. This is also the case with offices in Vil­nius and Riga.

“By telling the stories of our journalists, we draw broader attention to how difficult the situation in Belarus is”

— For a long time, Belaru­sians had the feel­ing that their coun­try was for­got­ten, and many even have no clear idea where it is on the map. How do you see Belarus? Is there an under­stand­ing in the West that it is a dif­fer­ent coun­try from Rus­sia?

— Since the rigged elec­tions in 2020, Belarus has received con­sid­er­able atten­tion from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. I think the inter­est remains in Wash­ing­ton and oth­er West­ern cap­i­tals, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to the events in Ukraine, the sit­u­a­tion in Min­sk is now out of focus.

At the same time, the posi­tion of our spon­sors who sup­port the work of Radio Free Europe has not changed. We con­tin­ue to receive the nec­es­sary fund­ing from the U.S. Con­gress and are able to work for the Belaru­sian audi­ence. How­ev­er, I find it alarm­ing that the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus looks like an extreme ver­sion of what we see in Rus­sia.

Threats such as the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of jour­nal­ism and the per­se­cu­tion of reporters and their sources must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Equal­ly alarm­ing is the fact that in Belarus, one might end up in jail for vis­it­ing a cer­tain site, lik­ing a pub­li­ca­tion, or shar­ing con­tent on social media.

This has reached an unprece­dent­ed lev­el for Europe. I believe there is a dan­ger that peo­ple like Putin will start mod­el­ing them­selves on Lukashen­ka to main­tain their pow­er.

I think it is nec­es­sary to raise aware­ness of the real sit­u­a­tion in Belarus and pro­vide greater inter­na­tion­al sup­port to jour­nal­ists, and civic activists who are try­ing to change the sit­u­a­tion for the bet­ter.

— To what extent are West­ern politi­cians and pub­lic fig­ures aware of the sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech and human rights in Belarus? This top­ic seems to be bor­ing and more atten­tion is devot­ed to Lukashenka’s state­ments rather than to these issues.

— Amidst the protests, many peo­ple were focused on these top­ics, and I think there is still an under­stand­ing of how extreme the sit­u­a­tion is. In turn, we do our best to attract atten­tion through our report­ing. We must not for­get that two of our jour­nal­ists, Ihar Losik and Andrei Kuznechyk, remain in prison.

Mean­while, the regime tar­gets the reporters’ fam­i­lies, a good exam­ple of which is the per­se­cu­tion of Daria Losik, whose only demand was the release of her hus­band. But as a result, she end­ed up behind bars her­self and is now sep­a­rat­ed from her lit­tle daugh­ter.

By telling the sto­ries of our jour­nal­ists, we also draw broad­er atten­tion to how dif­fi­cult the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus is.

A lot of inter­ac­tion with politi­cians — espe­cial­ly mem­bers of the U.S. Con­gress and Euro­pean par­lia­men­tar­i­ans — has been ded­i­cat­ed to this issue.

It is a con­stant strug­gle to keep Belarus in the inter­na­tion­al spot­light and to ensure that those in the West con­tin­ue to pro­tect the inter­ests of peo­ple who pay the ulti­mate price for their jour­nal­is­tic work.

“We reject the label, and we are not going to tolerate being prevented from doing our job”

— At the moment, many jour­nal­ists and their sources and sub­jects are forced to remain anony­mous. What are your thoughts on these chal­lenges? How do you get infor­ma­tion when access is imped­ed?

— It is not only in Belarus that we face this prob­lem. Often we have to con­ceal our reporters’ iden­ti­ties to pro­tect them from harass­ment. We take these mea­sures if they are nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue report­ing and inter­act­ing with our audi­ences.

In today’s media space, feed­back is extreme­ly impor­tant. Peo­ple want to inter­act with those who pro­vide them with infor­ma­tion. That’s why we work on ways for read­ers and lis­ten­ers to secure­ly deliv­er news to us and share pho­tos and videos.

Obvi­ous­ly, this entails the need to ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion and make sure that it is wor­thy of pub­li­ca­tion. In no way we want to spread rumors and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries based on data from a sin­gle source.

The great thing about dig­i­tal means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is that they allow for a new for­mat of dia­logue with the audi­ence. Much of the work we do here in Vil­nius will focus on just that.

— You men­tioned relat­ed pres­sures in oth­er regions. Can you spec­i­fy in which oth­er coun­tries jour­nal­ists face sim­i­lar chal­lenges?

— The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar in Rus­sia. It can­not be com­pared to Belarus, but the dynam­ics are sim­i­lar. The radio is also present in coun­tries such as Turk­menistan, where access and exchange of infor­ma­tion have long been restrict­ed.

We had a news ser­vice that worked in Iran for a long time. But recent­ly the regime of that coun­try declared the radio a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, and now we can­not con­tin­ue our work there. We also had to close our offices in Azer­bai­jan and Uzbek­istan due to gov­ern­ment pres­sure and per­sis­tent attempts to restrict the flow of infor­ma­tion.

Of course, no two cas­es are alike. Nev­er­the­less, it allows us to learn lessons about how to attract an audi­ence even when gov­ern­ments intro­duce all sorts of obsta­cles and try to block sites, to reg­u­late the Inter­net. It is impos­si­ble to ful­ly con­trol infor­ma­tion in the 21^st cen­tu­ry.

— How did you feel about the fact that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties declared the Inter­net resources of Radio Lib­er­ty extrem­ist in 2021?

—

This is a ridicu­lous label. After all, we worked in Min­sk for many years. And Lukashen­ka even gave us inter­views every so often. When I last came to Belarus in 2019, the gov­ern­ment was plan­ning to give us more press cre­den­tials to expand the pool of jour­nal­ists.

But the sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in 2020 with the growth of the gov­ern­men­t’s sense of its own inse­cu­ri­ty. The mea­sures it takes against the inde­pen­dent media are part of a strat­e­gy to main­tain con­trol.

Obvi­ous­ly, we were not cam­paign­ing for a par­tic­u­lar politi­cian but were cov­er­ing what was going on. Jail time for broad­cast­ing protests from an apart­ment win­dow can­not be called an act of extrem­ism. That is a very weak impu­ta­tion.

We reject this label, and we are not going to put up with being pre­vent­ed from doing our job. And we con­tin­ue our pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties out­side of Belarus.

— One of the high­lights of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paign was stream­ing live news from the streets. This is now impos­si­ble. What will the cov­er­age of Belaru­sian events empha­size now? How do you assess Radio Liberty’s impact on the Belaru­sian audi­ence?

— Although we can’t do stand-uppers, there are many ways we can inter­act with the audi­ence besides live stream­ing. For exam­ple, we make a lot of videos for social media and try to focus on cov­er­ing region­al news. This helps us meet the expec­ta­tions and inter­ests of the audi­ence.

“The priority for our company is the release of journalists who have committed no crime”

— Do you fol­low the fate of RFE/RL work­ers who have been incar­cer­at­ed? What is most trou­bling in their cas­es?

— Of course, we mon­i­tor and put a lot of effort into demand­ing their dis­charge and sup­port­ing their fam­i­lies.

The pri­or­i­ty for our com­pa­ny is the release of jour­nal­ists who have com­mit­ted no crime. The charges against them were com­plete­ly fab­ri­cat­ed, it was revenge, and, as I men­tioned above, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of fear of the Belaru­sian regime. I think this led to the impris­on­ment of many jour­nal­ists who were just doing their job.

— What does the future hold for Belarus? Do you think it will ever be pos­si­ble to reopen the office in Min­sk?

— I know that one day we will return to Min­sk and reopen the office there. I am sure of it. It’s just a mat­ter of time.

Admit­ted­ly, I am opti­mistic about the future of Belarus. We saw how peo­ple stood res­olute­ly for a free and demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try. We saw the courage of lead­ers like Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya. It was very inspir­ing.

The author­i­ties’ efforts to con­trol infor­ma­tion look doomed. Such regimes are unsta­ble. Even­tu­al­ly, they will col­lapse. Again, it is only a mat­ter of time, and vio­lent repres­sion only has­tens the col­lapse. Soon­er or lat­er peo­ple will demand change. It is human nature to yearn for free­dom.

I do not think the regime is capa­ble of pre­sent­ing a vision of the future. This is the rea­son for its des­per­ate desire to restrict the dis­course. It seems to me that this will work for the time being. But I am pos­i­tive that we will live to see the day when we and our audi­ence can return to a free and demo­c­ra­t­ic Belarus.