“I see contradictory attitudes towards Belarusians.” Hot topics at Kyiv press conference

The Ukrain­ian side at the meet­ing was rep­re­sent­ed by the NUJU chair­man Ser­hii Tamilenko, famous Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal ana­lyst Yevhen Mah­da, and jour­nal­ists and media edi­tors. Daria Chultsova and Ales Minau, both for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and jour­nal­ists, as well as deputy chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Barys Haret­s­ki, came to speak from the Belaru­sian side.

Regular convicts initially saw political prisoners as “aliens”

In recent years, the influ­ence of Russ­ian pol­i­tics has dis­tanced Belaru­sians and Ukraini­ans, despite their tra­di­tion­al close­ness. We some­times learned about cer­tain devel­op­ments in the two coun­tries through the dis­tort­ed mir­ror of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.

We must hon­est­ly admit that we, Ukraini­ans and Belaru­sians, know too lit­tle about each oth­er.

For almost three years, bru­tal repres­sion has been going on in Belarus, pri­mar­i­ly against civ­il soci­ety. Thir­ty-five jour­nal­ists are being held cap­tive, and over 1,400 peo­ple have been rec­og­nized as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. How­ev­er, Ukrain­ian soci­ety is most­ly unaware of what is real­ly going on in our coun­try.

Much of Ukrain­ian soci­ety is unaware of the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of jour­nal­ism in Belarus. And the sto­ry of Bel­sat TV cor­re­spon­dent Daria Chultso­va, who spent two years in a cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, comes as a shock to many in Kyiv:

“When I got to the pen­i­ten­tiary, they put a lot of pres­sure on me – to extort a guilty plea, to make me sign a peti­tion for clemen­cy. Almost every day the admin­is­tra­tion want­ed to see me. They exert­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure, threat­ened me with fil­ing vio­la­tion reports and plac­ing me in a pun­ish­ment cell. There’s a spe­cial block where they put those who should stay under more pres­sure than oth­ers. At first, my friend Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va) was there.”

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist, in prison she stayed among the con­victs sen­tenced for mur­der, sell­ing drugs, and eva­sion of pay­ing alimo­ny. At first, they saw polit­i­cal pris­on­ers as “aliens.” But over time they real­ized that these were nor­mal peo­ple, despite the label “prone to extrem­ism” that many polit­i­cal pris­on­ers are assigned in prison.

“They treat­ed us just fine, except when the admin­is­tra­tion asked them to do some­thing provoca­tive in rela­tion to polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Such provo­ca­tions were abun­dant,” Daria Chultso­va shared.

Admit­ted­ly, she felt sup­port­ed by let­ters she received from strangers.

How­ev­er, after the out­break of war in Ukraine, the pen­i­ten­tiary sys­tem began allow­ing let­ters only from fam­i­ly, while reduc­ing the num­ber of phone calls allowed and increas­ing pres­sure.

“Few jour­nal­ists find the strength to return to their pro­fes­sion after being pros­e­cut­ed. What can we do to speed up the release of the rest of our Belaru­sian col­leagues?” Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists asked Daria Chultso­va.

“I think things will change if Ukraine wins the war. That is the most like­ly and quick­est sce­nario. Oth­er­wise, it is impos­si­ble. The sanc­tions aren’t work­ing. Peo­ple are being arrest­ed against all odds,” replied the Bel­sat TV cor­re­spon­dent.

She also not­ed that after she has seen the sys­tem from the inside she could not keep qui­et about the ille­gal con­vic­tions and humil­i­a­tion of peo­ple, vio­la­tion of free­dom of speech and human dig­ni­ty.

“It is important for Ukrainians to have a friend in the North, not an enemy”

Con­tin­u­ing the sad theme, the deputy chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Barys Haret­s­ki, empha­sized that repres­sion does not stop when a per­son has already been unjust­ly con­vict­ed.

This hap­pened to anoth­er Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ist, Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va), who was detained when cov­er­ing protests along with Daria Chultso­va. When she was already in jail, an addi­tion­al crim­i­nal case was brought against her and the sen­tence was extend­ed by eight more years.

“The regime first liq­ui­dat­ed BAJ and then rec­og­nized it as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion, like most inde­pen­dent media,” recalls Barys Haret­s­ki. “For any kind of coop­er­a­tion with the media, a per­son can be sen­tenced to two to six years in prison – for com­ment­ing, shar­ing or send­ing a pho­to. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are many such cas­es”.

One of the sad exam­ples is the con­vic­tion of anoth­er for­mer Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ist, Iry­na Slau­nika­va, who alleged­ly pro­mot­ed extrem­ist activ­i­ties, i.e. the work of the chan­nel.

“Why do I think that Ukrain­ian soci­ety needs to know about the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus?”, the BAJ deputy chair­man raised an impor­tant issue. “It is a mis­take to ignore it because the strate­gic task of Rus­sia is to make peo­ple see Belarus as a part of Rus­sia. I’m sure that Ukraine and Ukraini­ans are inter­est­ed in hav­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic, pro-Euro­pean neigh­bor. Both for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic rea­sons and, above all, for secu­ri­ty rea­sons. So that there is no gray zone or satel­lite of tyran­ny in the north. This may not be artic­u­lat­ed in Ukrain­ian soci­ety at the moment – there is a war going on – but Ukraini­ans ben­e­fit from a Euro­pean Belarus with­out a dic­ta­tor­ship.”

This point of view was sup­port­ed by Yevhen Mah­da, direc­tor of the Insti­tute of World Pol­i­cy (Ukraine):

“When peo­ple are try­ing to equate Belaru­sians and Rus­sians, they are help­ing Rus­sia. From the first days of the war, I kept say­ing that the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Belaru­sian troops was unac­cept­able. I com­mu­ni­cat­ed it to the Belaru­sian and Ukrain­ian media. It’s a good thing that this did not hap­pen. Belaru­sian-Ukrain­ian rela­tions are cur­rent­ly frozen. The hoar­frost is there, but hot steam gets through at ran­dom. The involve­ment of Belaru­sian troops will ruin rela­tions between the peo­ples for years to come”.

“Ukrainian media fail to report on Belarusians who do not support the war”

Mean­while, says Barys Haret­s­ki, many Ukrain­ian media tend to remain silent about devel­op­ments in Belarus. They say it is a gray area and claim to be unin­ter­est­ed in what is hap­pen­ing there.

In this regard, we can recall the con­tro­ver­sial reac­tion of Ukrain­ian media and politi­cians to the award­ing of the Nobel Prize to Ales Biali­ats­ki, as well as the selec­tive trans­la­tion of Joe Biden’s speech in War­saw.

“I’ve been work­ing in Ukraine since the end of 2021 and I com­mu­ni­cate a lot with peo­ple and see con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tudes towards Belaru­sians: they are either very good or very bad,” Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Ales Minau shared his expe­ri­ence. “When peo­ple who sur­vived the atroc­i­ties say, ‘We sym­pa­thize with you, Belaru­sians,’ it’s impres­sive. Then I ask, ‘How do you know about our sit­u­a­tion?’ No one replied that they had heard about it from the Ukrain­ian media”.

With­in 10–15 min­utes, the reporter said, he could con­vince those who had a neg­a­tive atti­tude towards Belaru­sians.

“At the same time, the Ukrain­ian media fail to report on Belaru­sians who do not sup­port the war,” he stressed.

It is worth not­ing sev­er­al oth­er myths that pre­vail in Ukrain­ian soci­ety: sup­pos­ed­ly, the major­i­ty of Belaru­sians sup­port the war, Putin, and Lukashen­ka. How­ev­er, research by inde­pen­dent soci­ol­o­gists sug­gests the oppo­site.

“This atti­tude has formed because from March to Octo­ber 2022, mis­siles were launched from the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus and the Russ­ian troops entered from there,” explained Yevhen Mah­da. “But we can­not say that the Repub­lic of Belarus ful­ly sup­ports Russia’s actions”.

The polit­i­cal ana­lyst empha­sized the impor­tance of dis­sem­i­nat­ing truth­ful infor­ma­tion about Ukraine in the Belaru­sian media:

“Inde­pen­dent soci­ol­o­gists con­duct­ed a study and found that the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra is in close con­tact with their com­pa­tri­ots, friends and rel­a­tives. About 5% of the Belaru­sian pop­u­la­tion has left the coun­try, while the major­i­ty remains. We must try to tell them the truth.”

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, the idea of cre­at­ing a Belaru­sian-Ukrain­ian media was raised, which could be a point of com­mon inter­est. This is not a new idea. How­ev­er, this ini­tia­tive now comes from below and seems to have much more prospects.

“I urge you not to turn out the light, to cover the developments in the face of darkness”

The Belaru­sian media com­mu­ni­ty was prob­a­bly one of the first to respond to the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine with both objec­tive cov­er­ages of the war and sup­port for Ukrain­ian col­leagues.

“I remem­ber well many Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists tex­ting and email­ing us,” con­firmed Lina Kushch, first sec­re­tary of the Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ists of Ukraine. “They all had the same ques­tion: how to help? We know very well that inde­pen­dent media in Belarus oppose the war and sup­port our coun­try”.

She not­ed that it is a big mis­take to equate the peo­ple and the regime in Belarus.

“There have nev­er been easy times in Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism,” added Barys Haret­s­ki. “Now, how­ev­er, the media sec­tor is fac­ing an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult test. Jour­nal­ists keep spread­ing truth­ful and accu­rate infor­ma­tion about Ukraine, even if it is an unpleas­ant and sore top­ic for Belaru­sians.”

He also recalled that many Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were based in Cherni­hiv, Kyiv and Lviv when the Russ­ian inva­sion start­ed.

“Late­ly, the law enforce­ment offi­cers have start­ed raid­ing jour­nal­ists’ homes at night,” BAJ deputy chair­man once again turned to the Belaru­sian theme. “This is what evil dic­ta­tor­ships love – to work in the dark, when noth­ing is seen and remains unclear. Jour­nal­ism, on the con­trary, brings light. Only then one can make informed deci­sions. I urge you to keep the light on and to keep report­ing on the devel­op­ments. Then the myths that arise from a lack of infor­ma­tion will not have a chance.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists express­es its sin­cere grat­i­tude to the Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ists of Ukraine for many years of sol­i­dar­i­ty, coop­er­a­tion and sup­port and declares uncon­di­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty with all Ukrain­ian col­leagues!

Jour­nal­ists mat­ter!

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