‘If you see Belsat journos, call the police.’ Belarus authorities playing safe?

Its authors strong­ly rec­om­mend heads of local enter­pris­es and col­lec­tive farms not to grant inter­views to Bel­sat TV con­trib­u­tors, free­lancers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ). The doc­u­ment even includes some prompt state­ments: ‘Please do not dis­tract me from my work’ and ‘I am call­ing the police!’

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, if jour­nal­ists start ‘pro­vok­ing’, offi­cials should con­tact Ala Manke­vich, the head of the ide­o­log­i­cal depart­ment at the Svet­la­horsk dis­trict exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, or Kanstantsin Pya­trous­ki, a deputy chair­man of the com­mit­tee.

“I have nev­er pub­lished such doc­u­ments; I do not know how my phone got there. It may be some fake,” Ms Manke­vich said.

No one hin­ders jour­nal­ists from work­ing in Svet­la­horsk dis­trict, she added.

Appar­ent­ly, such bad prac­tices con­tribute to Belarus’ tak­ing 153rd place in the 2019 World Press Free­dom Index, BAJ spokesper­son Barys Haret­s­ki believes.

“It is the first time that the doc­u­ment of this sort has appeared on the Inter­net, but our jour­nal­ists face such sit­u­a­tions very often. The police is called, offi­cials refuse to com­ment – the atmos­phere of total secre­cy is cre­at­ed. But we must not for­get that in 1986 a sim­i­lar polit­i­cal cli­mate led to the fact the soci­ety was not informed of the вшку radi­a­tion haz­ard,” he said.

The BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tive also points out that such treat­ing jour­nal­ists has become an every­day occur­rence in our coun­try.

“In a few days, the Euro­pean Games will kick off in Belarus, but its author­i­ties still do not behave in a Euro­pean way. All over the world, edi­to­r­i­al offices coop­er­ate with free­lance jour­nal­ists, but only in Belarus free­lancers are unwel­come. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties have retained a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry approach to indi­vid­ual jour­nal­ists, edi­tors and even jour­nal­ists’ asso­ci­a­tion. This is unfair and ille­gal. But unfor­tu­nate­ly, this is our real­i­ty,” Haret­s­ki stressed.

Over the recent months, Bel­sat have been close­ly fol­low­ing the devel­op­ments around a bleached pulp plant in Svet­la­horsk. In May, our chan­nel direct­ed pub­lic atten­tion to poor work­ing con­di­tions in a local bus park.