Belsat Undertakes Another Accreditation Attempt
First time in ten years, the director of Belsat Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy was allowed entry to Belarus.
Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy visited Belarus for the first time after she was deported in 2005. She had been denied visa to enter Belarus two or three times. Mrs Romaszewska-Guzy considers this to be a sign of liberalization before the presidential elections, as she said in an interview to Belapan. She uses the possibility for not only seeing old friends in Belarus, but also for requesting accreditation for Belsat from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Though, she admits that the system is unpredictable.
In 2014 and 2015, Belarusian courts imposed at least nine fines on Belarusian freelance journalists for that they contribute their works to Belsat TV without the channel’s accreditation here in Belarus.
The channel has been denied accreditation at least three times: in 2008 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the application because they said the documents had been prepared inapppropriately, in 2009 one document in the application package was missing, and in 2013 – because Belsat journalists had many times violated the media law of Belarus (that is they had worked in Belarus without accreditation).
About Belsat: Formally, the channel was established on April 23, 2007, by virtue of an agreement signed by the Polish Foreign Ministry and Telewizja Polska S.A. (Polish Public Television) on joint long-term development and financing of Belsat TV. The satellite channel started to broadcast on December 10, 2007.