• Actual
  • Law and the media
  • Helpful
  • Work areas and campaigns
  • Reviews and monitoring
  • Belsat Director in a Public Meeting at Press Club in Minsk

    “Minsk is changing a lot, and there is a drastic difference between the capital and the province” this is how Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy formulated her fresh impressions from Belarus. It is the second time in the decade that Mrs Romaszewska visits Belarus: after she was deported in 2005, for ten years she had been denied a visa to Belarus.

    On May 31, the Press Club Belarus held a public meeting with Belsat director, after she made a trip to the north of the country and before another trip to southern regions. She told about nowadays Belsat, their expectations, and answered the questions of the public.

    “I was assured there would be no cut-downs in financ­ing from the Pol­ish side”

    Bel­sat has been broad­cast­ing for nine years, and Mrs Romaszews­ka believes it to be the main suc­cess.

    But the sit­u­a­tion with the “thaw” in rela­tions with Belarus, on the one hand, opens up oppor­tu­ni­ties, but on the oth­er hand, cre­ates some prob­lem­at­ic issues.

    “There are now less repres­sions against jour­nal­ists. Our reporters can get to major­i­ty of places, even though they have no accred­i­ta­tion. On the oth­er hand, our spon­sors who fund us are now get­ting away from Belarus. They con­sid­er that the sit­u­a­tion is improv­ing, and Europe has many oth­er prob­lems. We’ve lost a sig­nif­i­cant part of financ­ing from West­ern Europe. Mean­while, I was assured that there would be no cut-downs from the Pol­ish side. In our ninth year of work, it would have been a waste of already invest­ed mon­ey…»

    “If some­body wants to stop us here, we will keep work­ing from Poland.”

    “Bel­sat is now broad­cast­ing through two chan­nels – the satel­lite chan­nel and the Inter­net. Satel­lite pro­grams are more aimed for the province, and the Inter­net is more aimed for Min­sk and large cities. We are not going to aban­don satel­lite broad­cast­ing, but now we put high­er stakes on devel­op­ing the web­site.

    We pur­sue two tasks: the first one being infor­ma­tion and the sec­ond one is large pro­grams. And we are plan­ning to record more pro­grams in Min­sk. For the time being, the main work is done here, in Poland we only assem­ble it into a seam­less set. But if some­body wants to stop us here, we will keep work­ing from Poland. It is essen­tial that it is a joint Belarus-Poland project. Every­one is doing their part. I deal with shap­ing the gen­er­al line, where­as my col­leagues decide what it will look like specif­i­cal­ly…

    The channel’s man­age­ment are expect­ing the Belarus For­eign Affairs’ Min­istry to respond to our request to accred­it ten of our jour­nal­ists in the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus. The requests have been lodged since 2008, every time it was in vain. “I am prone to think that this time there will be a refusal, too. But let’s see, I will not prophet.”

    “Why the author­i­ties deny accred­i­ta­tion? I don’t know the answer. It stems from the nature of these author­i­ties. I don’t see any use in it for them. But some­times they like to do so. I don’t think, though, that with accred­i­ta­tion our work will get eas­i­er. Even if we get the accred­i­ta­tion, we won’t become “Rus­sia Today.”

    Has Bel­sat some­thing to do to counter Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da? 

    “We are con­sid­er­ing all the time a pos­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate Russ­ian-lan­guage pro­grams. But first, I have to get my col­leagues’ con­sent, and sec­ond, I have to find financ­ing for this. Opin­ions regard­ing the lan­guage issues has split into two oppo­sites. One side thinks that the Belaru­sian lan­guage is our trade­mark, the oth­er side believes that the Russ­ian lan­guage would allow to engage larg­er audi­ences.

    I stick to the lat­ter. The ques­tion of the Russ­ian lan­guage is the ques­tion of our effec­tive­ness. Our sig­nal reach­es as far as the Urals; we could be watched even in the Crimea.  The ide­al vari­ant could be twins: one chan­nel is a nor­mal Bel­sat for Belarus, and the sec­ond chan­nel is aimed for the Russ­ian audi­ences.

    Bel­sat does not fol­low a polit­i­cal line, but sticks to two prin­ci­ples. The first prin­ci­ple is that Belarus is a part of West­ern Europe and West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. The sec­ond prin­ci­ple is that Com­mu­nism is a crim­i­nal regime. These are our basic, undis­putable views of con­tem­po­rary real­i­ty.

    “Free­lancers are largest con­cern”

    “I am going to meet Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki, the Homel-based free­lancer who is now the cham­pi­on in the num­ber of fines for work with­out accred­i­ta­tion. How­ev­er, by doing this, I can only show that I am con­cerned with the issue,” she admits. “Free­lancers are our largest con­cern. What should we do when the author­i­ties chose to pres­sur­ize indi­vid­ual jour­nal­ists?

    One of the first ques­tions from our col­leagues who came to be employed by Bel­sat was: “Can you guar­an­tee our safe­ty?” And I answered no, I could not, unfor­tu­nate­ly. This is your respon­si­bil­i­ty, if you want to take the risk or not.

    I know that BAJ helps, and we are very grate­ful. It would have been very dif­fi­cult with­out it. We have no any spe­cif­ic ideas how to solve the issue. We can always say: when you’ve had enough of it, come to Poland, take a lit­tle break. But it is very hard to change the sit­u­a­tion. We can only promise that we won’t leave the per­son alone. Even if BAJ does not help, we won’t for­get about these peo­ple.”

    The most important news and materials in our Telegram channel — subscribe!
    @bajmedia
    Most read
    Every day send to your mailbox: actual offers (grants, vacancies, competitions, scholarships), announcements of events (lectures, performances, presentations, press conferences) and good content.

    Subscribe

    * indicates required

    By subscribing to the newsletter, you agree to the Privacy Policy