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  • Journalist Siarhei Satsuk asked to publish this text in case of his arrest

    A few months ago, EJ.BY chief editor, Siarhei Satsuk faced pressure from the high and the mighty and left a text with Euroradio he asked to publish in case of his arrest. He describes the reasons for his possible arrest and the threats he had received from the "messenger" — a representative of a businessman from the health care industry.

    On March 25, 2020, Satsuk was arrested by officers of the Financial Investigation Department of the State Control Committee of Belarus. Allegedly, he is suspected of taking a bribe.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the time for Siarhei’s text has come. Although not as soon as he expect­ed. Euro­ra­dio pub­lished the text he had left.

    Сергей Сацук

    How journalists are framed in Belarus

    I have been framed, total­ly and seri­ous­ly. I am writ­ing this pure­ly in self-defense, so I will start almost from the begin­ning.

    Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle «Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Health Care: how blood­stained mon­ey are made in Belarus»  on pro­cure­ment of med­ical prod­ucts at a price 9–13 times high­er than the real one, a “mes­sen­ger” came to me. First, he accused me of pub­lish­ing a plant­ed arti­cle. Then, con­tra­dict­ing him­self, he began to press me say­ing: «Why are you pub­lish­ing all this?” , “Why do you hin­der peo­ple’s busi­ness?” , “You don’t get any­thing from this, but you could do well, with­out all that dab­bling in debt and drown­ing in loans”, “How long have you been fight­ing cor­rup­tion, 20 years? Any suc­cess?» And so on.

    I answered back, if Belarus were to stop buy­ing med­ical devices at a price 10 times high­er than the real one, it would do for me. The «mes­sen­ger» said it would nev­er hap­pen: it was a sys­tem in place. There­fore, if one, two, or three com­pa­nies were to leave, they would be replaced by oth­ers work­ing in the same way. “Well, they might sell at not 10 times, but 5 times high­er price.»

    «That’s a good start, the coun­try’s bud­get would save mil­lions,» I replied.

    «Will you get any­thing out of it?», asked the mes­sen­ger.

    «Noth­ing».

    «Do you think this will make our health care bet­ter?»

    «I don’t know,» I admit­ted. — «I hope it will»

    «It won’t. He will just use the mon­ey to build anoth­er palace,» the mes­sen­ger said, obvi­ous­ly allud­ing to the head of state.

    This went on for half an hour. Real­iz­ing that noth­ing could per­suade me, the vis­i­tor went on right to what he had come for. He said some peo­ple had been quite clear that they were run­ning out of patience, that human life and free­dom are worth noth­ing in Belarus, and that doing away with a per­son was eas­i­er than buy­ing tick­ets to the islands. 

    I need to explain here that in the course of my last inves­ti­ga­tion in jour­nal­ism, I tried to get one per­son to talk to me frankly, and inter­view her, in order to main­tain objec­tiv­i­ty. To do this, I sent her a bit provoca­tive mes­sage on Linkedin that I could move the date of the pub­li­ca­tion and give her a week to buy tick­ets to an island so that she could live there com­fort­ably for the rest of her life. And here, right after this arti­cle I am con­tact­ed by the “mes­sen­ger» with the words of peo­ple who have lost their patience, that it is eas­i­er for them to do away with a per­son than to buy tick­ets. More­over, as I was told, I was the only trou­ble­mak­er left in Belarus.

    Every­thing is very clear. No room for inter­pre­ta­tion. Espe­cial­ly when they back up the warn­ing by say­ing: «Think about your fam­i­ly, what might hap­pen to them…” I know that my fam­i­ly can’t do with­out me. My wife has a dis­abil­i­ty, a car­diac defect, a removed thy­roid, and an aneurysm. As long ago as in 2011 doc­tors could not guar­an­tee that she would live to the end of the year. I know per­fect­ly well that if some­thing hap­pens to me, she won’t come through. No options here. There­fore, I shelved the sec­ond, almost pre­pared, arti­cle that revealed the real own­er of inter­me­di­ary British and Aus­tri­an com­pa­nies that sell us med­ical prod­ucts at prices 10 times high­er than the real ones and 4.5 times as high as the prices for Rus­sia, the coun­try we con­stant­ly cadge mon­ey from. Fam­i­ly is more impor­tant, I decid­ed, and said “STOP” to myself.

    It was qui­et for a while, but then the fly­wheel of the Belaru­sian sys­tem began to spin. I think the rea­son was my pre­sen­ta­tion at Bel­sat on the same top­ic — cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health Care.

    I’ve been work­ing with law enforce­ment for 20 years and I know that if your con­tacts sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear all at once (they don’t return calls or emails), it means that you have become a per­son of inter­est for crim­i­nal intel­li­gence.

    «Well, I thought, I have noth­ing to hide, let them spy.”

    But then SB [«SB-Belarus Today». — Euro­ra­dio] pub­lished an arti­cle about EJ.BY and me, stat­ing right up front that I take mon­ey for help­ing to choke off com­peti­tors. They have nei­ther evi­dence, nor any rebut­tal of the facts pre­sent­ed in our inves­ti­ga­tions. Just base­less accu­sa­tions that I thrive on busi­ness com­pe­ti­tion. And then: «If sus­pi­cions are ver­i­fied…” This is not a prob­lem in Belarus, of course.

    I am well aware that it pre­pares the infor­ma­tion space for my deten­tion. I know who is doing this. The name of the gen­er­al, who «backs» the sys­temic cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health Care, is known to every­one in this busi­ness. For over ten years, he was the one who sti­fled all attempts of the law enforce­ment agen­cies to fig­ure out this busi­ness, first in the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s office, and then in the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. Now he’s got a con­tract on jour­nal­ists.

    Bel­sat is part of the same sto­ry. There is some­one who wants the tri­al over Ihar Lasit­s­ki, the for­mer deputy min­is­ter of health care, to cap the health care cor­rup­tion rum­ble. There are more pow­er­ful and untouch­able peo­ple. No one can mess with them, and there­fore any attempts of jour­nal­ists to dig fur­ther should be stopped.

    Siarhei Sat­suk, edi­tor-in-chief of EJ.BY

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