Belarus Journalists Meet EU Politicians to Raise Issues of Belarusian Media Sphere

Dur­ing the vis­it, the jour­nal­ists had meet­ings with politi­cians and offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of EU struc­tures and France – rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, the Office on Neigh­bor­hood Pol­i­cy, the East­ern Part­ner­ship Pro­gram, the office of the Coun­cil of Europe, and deputies of the Nation­al Assem­bly of France.

With­in the vis­it, there were orga­nized round-table dis­cus­sions and press con­fer­ences, meet­ings with French and Bel­gian jour­nal­ists, mem­bers and lead­ers of numer­ous asso­ci­a­tions and jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions.

Freelancers of Nordic Countries Make a Statement to Support Colleagues in Belarus

Larysa Shcyrako­va and Vol­ha Chay­chyts con­tribute to the TV chan­nel Bel­sat, so they had a lot to tell regard­ing their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties: pres­sure, con­tin­u­ous judi­cial pros­e­cu­tion, huge fines, deten­tions and inter­rup­tions when gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion, threats to take away chil­dren, unground­ed per­se­cu­tion by offi­cers of court, psy­cho­log­i­cal attack­ing and uncon­cealed sur­veil­lance.

The jour­nal­ists told about the gen­er­al sit­u­a­tion with the free­dom of speech. In par­tic­u­lar, they men­tioned inter­rup­tions in the work of the TV chan­nel Bel­sat, block­ing of the web­sites charter97.org and belaruspartisan.org at the begin­ning of the year, crim­i­nal cas­es against blog­gers, and the BelTA case.

The free­dom of speech is nar­row­ing along­side with the increas­ing sup­port for Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on behalf of Euro­pean politi­cians, when no tough demands are brought for­ward to the head of the state cur­rent­ly.

The nation­al mech­a­nisms in Belarus do not help to defend the jour­nal­ists: the court and the law enforce­ment sys­tems do not work in their favor, the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court denies that there is any vio­la­tion of the jour­nal­ists’ rights.

“In a sit­u­a­tion as such a pres­sure from Euro­pean politi­cians on Belaru­sian author­i­ties would be log­i­cal, but this does not hap­pen. We talked to politi­cians off the record, so I can sum up for you the gen­er­al mes­sage,” tells Vol­ha Chay­chyts. “As the Euro­pean offi­cials explain, the new strat­e­gy accounts for that Europe had already tried the way of putting for­ward demands and sanc­tions against Belaru­sian offi­cials. But this led to even big­ger iso­la­tion of Belarus, more prox­im­i­ty and deep­er polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic depen­dence on Rus­sia.

In that case, the EU did not have any pos­si­bil­i­ty to influ­ence what was going on in the coun­try. The episodes of thaw with prin­ci­pled demands did not give results, either. Because, meet­ing the demands would mean for the author­i­ties cre­ation of inse­cure con­di­tions for them­selves.

The main tasks for the Euro­pean politi­cians is to estab­lish con­tacts and con­nec­tions, to have at least in future a pos­si­bil­i­ty to influ­ence democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the coun­try and grad­u­al­ly, step by step, to build up their sphere of influ­ence.

The politi­cians remark that the head of Belarus wel­comes them with an enthu­si­asm nev­er expressed before. They are ready to meet halfway, to respond with sup­port, includ­ing finan­cial one, to state struc­tures, insti­tutes and orga­ni­za­tions.

EU politi­cians clear­ly see the state of democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech in Belarus, but remark that anoth­er dec­la­ra­tion of demands is a way to nowhere, anoth­er wall against engag­ing the coun­try into the Euro­pean space. So, these are Euro­pean offi­cials who plan a num­ber of meet­ings, edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams, financ­ing of numer­ous projects, and they hope that thanks to the pro­grams they will be able to change the world­view of the same offi­cials who have influ­ence in Belarus.”

When meet­ing their col­leagues, the jour­nal­ists dis­cussed what the jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty could to hold the issue of Belarus on the agen­da, so that the ques­tion of Belaru­sian and Euro­pean rela­tions were wide­ly dis­cussed in both Euro­pean mass media and soci­ety, and so that gen­uine inter­est appeared to what is going on in Belarus.

The press con­fer­ences in Paris and Brus­sels were of high inter­est for Euro­pean jour­nal­ists, the issues of Belaru­sian media were dis­cussed in press.

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