«For them, the events in our region are a conflict between Russia and satellite countries.» Belarusian journalist talks about visiting South Korea

«I have never seen such a thing in Belarus»

Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki is a jour­nal­ist from Mahileu. Almost from the very begin­ning of the foun­da­tion of Bel­sat, he worked at that TV chan­nel. As he says, it was there where he learned the reporter’s craft doing news and inter­views. For two years he worked as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent in Moscow.

His first major doc­u­men­tary work was a film about a 25-year-old Belaru­sian Mikhail Zhyzneus­ki, who died dur­ing the Euro­maid­an in Ukraine.

«When the polit­i­cal cam­paign of 2020 began, I imme­di­ate­ly real­ized where every­thing was head­ing,» says the reporter. «I was inter­est­ed in the per­son­al­i­ty of Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki, who was­n’t tak­en seri­ous­ly by the media at first. He was an ordi­nary blog­ger who spoke the lan­guage of the com­mon peo­ple and trolled offi­cials. How­ev­er, behind the exter­nal image, I saw a new type of politi­cian who attract­ed atten­tion and could com­pete with Lukashen­ka.”

The jour­nal­ist start­ed fol­low­ing the blog­ger, film­ing his meet­ings with peo­ple, con­ver­sa­tions with gov­ern­ment offi­cials. It was a big invest­ment in the future project.

«At first I thought it would be a film about the move­ment around Tsikhanous­ki,» the inter­locu­tor of the BAJ notes. «Then his team began to form, and ordi­nary peo­ple joined it. It was impor­tant for me to show a unique phe­nom­e­non: car­ing cit­i­zens were get­ting involved in polit­i­cal events in order to change real­i­ty. First of all, I was inter­est­ed in this social phe­nom­e­non. I have nev­er seen such a thing in Belarus.»

The heroes of the film Don’t be afraid are med­ical pro­fes­sion­al Vol­ha Paula­va, engi­neer Aleh Maiseyeu, house­keep­er Antan­i­na Kanavala­va, who col­lect­ed sig­na­tures, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the elec­tion cam­paign, and sought to do the best for the coun­try.

The unique­ness of the film is that each stage of the Tsikhanous­ki cam­paign (first Siarhei’s, and then Svi­at­lana’s) was record­ed by Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki, who from the very begin­ning man­aged to see the poten­tial for his project.

BAJ calls on col­leagues around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of your impris­oned col­leagues, take pic­tures with them at famous sights of your city (not in Belarus) and post them on social media with the tags #СвабодуЖурналістам and #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist, and also send them to us baj@baj.by.

«The bud­get was very mod­est. I used two sim­ple cam­eras for film­ing. How­ev­er, the process of col­lect­ing the mate­r­i­al took a lot of time, about ten months,» the jour­nal­ist says. «As a result, it was pos­si­ble to record how the wave of pop­u­lar indig­na­tion rose against the dic­ta­tor­ship.»

From the very begin­ning of the elec­tion cam­paign, the jour­nal­ist was under a threat of deten­tion. He even had to serve sev­er­al days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest.

«After the elec­tion, I received a sig­nal that I was being looked for,» the author of the film con­tin­ues. «At that time, I was in a dif­fi­cult psy­cho­log­i­cal state after the deten­tion of col­leagues, friends, and the heroes of the film. I was espe­cial­ly shocked by the arrest of a very close friend Daria Chultso­va. I real­ized that I would not be able to work on the film in Belarus any­more, and I imme­di­ate­ly left.»

What festival and what Jürgen Hinzpeter?

The jour­nal­ist man­aged to take the video archive abroad and has already safe­ly pro­duced the film. It was released in 2021.

«I want­ed the film to be sim­ple, clear, and dynam­ic, so that an ordi­nary per­son could under­stand our his­to­ry,» empha­sizes Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki. «First of all, I focused on the Belaru­sian audi­ence, but the film was also received well by for­eign­ers.»

At some point, he was offered to apply to the Hinzpeter Awards Doc­u­men­tary Film Fes­ti­val, which takes place in South Korea. 

«Until then, I had nev­er applied for such awards», says the inter­locu­tor of BAJ. «This was the first attempt. I thought: why not? I did the paper­work and quick­ly for­got about it. And after a while, a let­ter of con­grat­u­la­tions came.”

It should be not­ed that the fes­ti­val is impor­tant for the mod­ern his­to­ry of South Korea. It is named after a Ger­man jour­nal­ist Jür­gen Hinzpeter, who report­ed the events in the city of Gwangju in 1980.

That year there was an upris­ing against the dic­ta­tor­ship that had been reign­ing for the pre­vi­ous decades. It was bru­tal­ly sup­pressed, and sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple fell vic­tims. How­ev­er, these events are con­sid­ered the start­ing point for the democ­ra­cy. Although the city was cor­doned off by the mil­i­tary, Jür­gen Hinzpeter man­aged to get the video mate­ri­als out, and thus the whole world learned about the crimes of the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of South Korea at that time.

Of course, the changes did not hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly, but the first step was the upris­ing in Gwangju, and the role of the Ger­man reporter in let­ting the truth be known can­not be exag­ger­at­ed.

Giv­ing the vic­to­ry to Mikhail Arshyn­ski’s film, the fes­ti­val jury appre­ci­at­ed the ded­i­ca­tion of the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist.

By historical standards, quite recently it was an authoritarian state

Now South Korea is known as a demo­c­ra­t­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal coun­try, which pro­duces mod­ern cars, smart­phones, and robots. How­ev­er, by his­tor­i­cal stan­dards, quite recent­ly it was an author­i­tar­i­an state where human rights were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly vio­lat­ed.

After the Gwangju upris­ing, the author­i­tar­i­an regime last­ed anoth­er eight years. How did the changes hap­pen? Some are talk­ing about the inevitable iner­tia of those events, some are talk­ing about the influ­ence of inter­na­tion­al pres­sure.

«Dur­ing my stay in this Asian coun­try, it was clear­ly felt that only the peo­ple them­selves can and should decide their fate,» empha­sizes Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki. «Before I went to Korea, I thought that the Unit­ed States played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the suc­cess of the coun­try. But this is not so — peo­ple them­selves have achieved pros­per­i­ty. And no one but them.»

Despite the wars, occu­pa­tion, and col­lapse of the coun­try that South Korea has faced over the past cen­tu­ry, the state has not been destroyed and the will of the peo­ple has not been bro­ken.

«It is impos­si­ble not to notice a lot in com­mon between our coun­tries,» the jour­nal­ist draws a par­al­lel. «Both Belarus and South Korea are locat­ed between empires, and there­fore they reg­u­lar­ly faced exis­ten­tial threats. This gave me an under­stand­ing: what­ev­er hap­pens in Belarus in the near future, it will only give us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make our move and ensure our inde­pen­dence.»

«The rise of nationalists» and «it’s not our business to interfere there»

It seems that South Kore­ans, hav­ing such expe­ri­ence, must have sup­port­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic changes in Belarus in 2020. At the very least showed sol­i­dar­i­ty.

«But it’s not that sim­ple,» sighs Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki. «The Belaru­sian rev­o­lu­tion did not lead to loud dec­la­ra­tions. The protests were received in silence. More­over, Seoul con­tin­ues to coop­er­ate with the regime.

Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist, it is relat­ed to the pecu­liar vision of our region which South Kore­ans have. It seems that many politi­cians, influ­encers, and intel­lec­tu­als per­ceive the events in Ukraine and Belarus as a con­flict between Rus­sia and its satel­lite coun­tries.

«Even among edu­cat­ed peo­ple, one can hear nar­ra­tives of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da,» says the jour­nal­ist with a sur­prise. «Dur­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic forum where I par­tic­i­pat­ed, one of the speak­ers pro­mot­ed the state­ment that this is «the rise of nation­al­ists» and «it is not our busi­ness to inter­fere there».

Of course, the Belaru­sian explained that the events in Belarus and Ukraine have the same roots, and this is due to Rus­si­a’s neo­colo­nial pol­i­cy towards its neigh­bors. That this is an attempt to seize, sub­ju­gate, estab­lish con­trol in the «ances­tral ter­ri­to­ries».

He also spoke about the ter­ri­ble human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus and the fate of impris­oned jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va). Due to the fact that the vis­it was orga­nized at a high lev­el, this infor­ma­tion was con­veyed to politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, and deci­sion-mak­ers.

«Freedom of speech must be constantly defended»

In the Index of Free­dom of Speech-2023, South Korea ranks 47th. For com­par­i­son: Belarus is on the 157th posi­tion.

«But one can­not be com­plete­ly sat­is­fied with the sit­u­a­tion of jour­nal­ists and media,» believes Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki. «Free­dom of speech must be con­stant­ly defend­ed, and it is so in South Korea as well. The coun­try has a high lev­el of cor­rup­tion and strong polit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion, which affects jour­nal­ism.”

In par­tic­u­lar, there were per­sis­tent attempts by politi­cians to influ­ence the media more, but this instant­ly caused a wave of indig­na­tion.

The media can be divid­ed into two groups: lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive. Both have influ­ence, sup­port dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ties, and cov­er events in dif­fer­ent ways.

«It is much more impor­tant that state insti­tu­tions are not closed to the press, and politi­cians are avail­able for jour­nal­ists. This is an indi­ca­tor of the role of the media in soci­ety,» the BAJ inter­locu­tor notes.

Dur­ing his vis­it to Seoul, the Belaru­sian was invit­ed to a pho­to exhi­bi­tion held in the par­lia­ment. It was ded­i­cat­ed to the vic­tims of the war in Ukraine. It is symp­to­matic that it was arranged by the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media who bet­ter under­stand the process­es in East­ern Europe.

Pho­tographs, like oth­er doc­u­men­taries, record events for many years, to which the best evi­dence is the work of Jür­gen Hinzpeter.

«This allows you to explore the sit­u­a­tion deep­er, and not to make a super­fi­cial sto­ry,» believes Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki. «If we talk about doc­u­men­taries, then over time they become even more rel­e­vant, as they tell about his­tor­i­cal changes in soci­ety.»

The jour­nal­ist does not rule out that he will make a con­tin­u­a­tion of the film if the events in Belarus acquire a new dynam­ic. At the same time, he has a great desire to con­tin­ue report­ing in doc­u­men­taries and on oth­er top­ics.

Read more:

“I stay so that those who have been imprisoned or forced to leave have a place to return to”. Motivations of journalists who choose to stay in Belarus

Poland Puts Sanctions On 365 Belarusians Over Journalist’s Jailing

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