Recidivist from Journalism (interview from Abajour, abridged)

His pri­vate house in the cen­ter of Homel turned out to be squeezed in between Sovi­et-time apart­ment blocks. There is a white-red-white flag wav­ing above the house, and a plac­ard of Uladz­imir Niak­li­ayeu, poet and politi­cian, look­ing out from the win­dow fac­ing the town prison: the full-length por­trait has been here since the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2010.

Many peo­ple deem Kas­tus extra­or­di­nary. His name became famil­iar to local pub­lic in 2007 when he active­ly inves­ti­gat­ed cir­cum­stances around a mass bur­ial of vic­tims of Stal­in­ist repres­sions. At that time, the mass media were shak­en by the infor­ma­tion about the mass grave in the Shchaka­tous­ki for­est, close to Cherni­hiv motor­way. In short time, Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki togeth­er with friends shot an ama­teur doc­u­men­tary “Stalin’s Line. Homel region”. Res­i­dents of near­by vil­lages con­firmed the ver­sion of civ­il activists about crimes of the NKVD (Sovi­et Peo­ple’s Com­mis­sari­at for Inter­nal Affairs). It seems that exact­ly at that moment, the exces­sive­ly active cit­i­zen came in sight of local spe­cial ser­vices.

Then came a peri­od of civ­il and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties: Kas­tus was gath­er­ing sig­na­tures for oppo­si­tion­al can­di­dates, staged anti-alco­hol foot­ball tour­na­ments, cre­at­ed a local web resource. In that time, he made a liv­ing from taxi dri­ving and lay­ing roofs. In between he helped local free­lancers to make reports.

No way back

“I have no way back. Even if now I refused total­ly from con­fronta­tion with the author­i­ties, who would believe me?” says iron­i­cal­ly Kas­tus.

Col­leagues remark the pugna­cious tem­per of the cam­era­man. He bold­ly opens doors to offi­cials’ cab­i­nets, and cov­ers those socio-eco­nom­ic top­ics that are silenced by the author­i­ties. Which, of course, makes the local ver­ti­cal grind the teeth.

The free­lancer has got a good her­itage from his for­mer civ­il activ­i­ties: numer­ous con­tacts with ini­tia­tive peo­ple prac­ti­cal­ly in the whole region of Homel. Often infor­ma­tion from deep province demands trav­el: Kas­tus dri­ves dozens, some­times hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters to make a report. Taxi dri­ver skills are of use.

We are sit­ting in a cozy kitchen with lots of his­to­ry plac­ards. The fridge is dec­o­rat­ed with mag­nets of many civ­il cam­paigns that Kas­tus used to orga­nize. Once, hav­ing returned from builders’ work in Moscow, he bought a half-burnt wood­en house. Grad­u­al­ly, he trans­formed the ruins into a decent cot­tage. Kas­tus says he could earn his liv­ing from phys­i­cal work which he does not eschew until now. How­ev­er, life has unex­pect­ed­ly engaged him with jour­nal­ism.

“From child­hood, I fought for jus­tice. I could start fight­ing when I saw deceit. Then I stud­ied to be a jurist coun­sel­lor. This seems to be the source of my active­ness in jour­nal­ism,” he says.

I touch upon his rep­u­ta­tion of a civ­il activist that has stuck to him until now; and he agrees to a cer­tain extent.

“It seems to me that in Belarus it is hard to draw a dis­tinct line between inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and civ­il activism. As it often hap­pens, pub­lic out­cry can help solve cer­tain social issues that the author­i­ties have ignored for years. With this impli­ca­tion, cer­tain­ly, I am still a civ­il activist.”

He also calls him­self an ama­teur: “You can see your­self as a spe­cial­ist when you reach some high results in your sphere. I think that hav­ing desire, human­i­ties edu­ca­tion or pur­suit of jus­tice are not enough to call one­self a pro­fes­sion­al. Like, for instance, for dri­vers’ license, I have cat­e­go­ry B, so I am an ama­teur. And there are real pro­fes­sion­als some­where around!” – he laughs. “To be seri­ous, there are sev­er­al tal­ent­ed jour­nal­ists in Homel, who do their job in a very pro­fes­sion­al and respon­si­ble man­ner, but they can be count­ed on fin­gers. I con­sid­er myself an ama­teur, a free­lancer who shoots the real life, that is what I see.”

Rea­sons for per­se­cu­tion

Today Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki has got the record num­ber of admin­is­tra­tive fines. He has been charged with “ille­gal pro­duc­tion of infor­ma­tion­al prod­ucts” with­out accred­i­ta­tion. The sum to be paid to the state exceeds 70 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles.

The pros­e­cu­tion fol­lows a beat­en scheme designed by Belaru­sian law enforce­ment agen­cies. After a report is broad­cast on the satel­lite chan­nel Bel­sat, police­men inter­ro­gate heroes of the mate­r­i­al, and they have to give expla­na­tions which serve as a basis for admin­is­tra­tive process which ends up with a tri­al. The out­come is known before­hand. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, seri­ous argu­ments like oblig­a­tions of Belarus in the sphere of free­dom of speech with­in inter­na­tion­al agree­ments do not work here.

Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki says that one can only guess what the real rea­sons are behind the per­se­cu­tion. But he thinks that his video reports – about clos­ing indus­tri­al enter­pris­es, about fail­ures of social stan­dards to be met by the state, about people’s pover­ty – all this ruins the myth of the so-called social state. The jour­nal­ist also assumes that crit­i­cal mate­ri­als might “spoil rep­u­ta­tion” of some­one from the ver­ti­cal, and what he is faced with is revenge.

“As for the police­men who all the time scour in my foot­steps, I can say that in Homel, these com­rades have long ago crum­pled their con­science. I say it because I have to deal with them quite often. I have a feel­ing that their boss­es are more impor­tant for them than the Con­sti­tu­tion of the coun­try. It seems that they deem con­science an unnec­es­sary com­plex that they need to get rid of,” says the free­lancer. /…/

In sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tive cas­es, with the help of lawyers of BAJ, Zhuk­ous­ki has exhaust­ed all nation­al legal reme­dies, with the last instance being the Supreme Court of Belarus. But there is hard­ly a sin­gle case when peo­ple in judi­cial robes defend­ed the jour­nal­ist: for sev­er­al years in a row, there has been the ban for work for jour­nal­ists with­out accred­i­ta­tion. Which, evi­dent­ly, con­tra­dicts to norms of the Con­sti­tu­tion and dis­cred­its the state at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

One of the admin­is­tra­tive cas­es with a fine in the deci­sion for Zhuk­ous­ki has been reg­is­tered with the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee. Soon, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment will have to give expla­na­tions why the cor­re­spon­dent per­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al duties was equaled to a par­tic­i­pant of an unsanc­tioned civ­il action. This was a pick­et of Yury Liashen­ka, an invalid in a wheel­chair from Svet­la­horsk. As usu­al­ly, it end­ed with deten­tion of the pick­eter and the jour­nal­ists Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Larysa Shchyrako­va.

/…/

At the end, I asked Kas­tus if his desire to do jour­nal­ism has not waned. For, it is a hard fate to feel pres­sure and pros­e­cu­tion from the author­i­ties all the time .

“You know, all the deten­tions, tri­als, fines – they are only cir­cum­stances of work. There is no hero­ism on my behalf. It is the same as if a police­man would refuse from going on duty if there were a risk of being killed. I chose inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, and I don’t think it’s an exploit. It’s a wind blow­ing in the face and you know that it will blow con­stant­ly with alter­nat­ing force. You just have to do your work, and every­thing will be fine.”