Belsat Undertakes Another Accreditation Attempt

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.