An isosceles triangle. A free journalism forum taking place in Vilnius

The forum is ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards in the con­text of wars and inter­na­tion­al con­flicts. This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant aspect for jour­nal­ism in its fight against pro­pa­gan­da and the spread of hate speech.

“For the third year in a row, we hold a forum of jour­nal­ists from Belarus and Lithua­nia (and now Latvia and Esto­nia) here, in the premis­es of the Lithuan­ian Seimas,” said the chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Andrei Bas­tunets. “On the one hand, this indi­cates the sup­port that Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists receive in exile, and the sol­i­dar­i­ty of our col­leagues. On the oth­er hand, the repres­sion against jour­nal­ists and civ­il soci­ety in our coun­try has not only not weak­ened, but even inten­si­fied and reached a kind of plateau. In a sit­u­a­tion of inter­na­tion­al dis­as­ters and wars, it is very impor­tant for us that Belarus, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, and espe­cial­ly our col­leagues behind bars in Belaru­sian pris­ons do not fall out of the focus of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

As the head of the jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tion stressed that now, when for objec­tive and under­stand­able rea­sons Belarus is not in the head­lines, it is very impor­tant for him per­son­al­ly at every inter­na­tion­al meet­ing, forum, con­fer­ence to remind­ed of the isosce­les tri­an­gle of Belarus — Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism — Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists behind bars and polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in gen­er­al.

“A real jour­nal­ist will nev­er become a pro­pa­gan­dist, a pawn in this war,” said the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Ricar­do Gutiér­rez. “Infor­ma­tion does not belong to the pow­er­ful. We need it so that we can pass it on to peo­ple.”

He drew atten­tion to the fact that the world had not seen such mass killings of jour­nal­ists as in the Gaza Strip and Israel, and sug­gest­ed remem­ber­ing the reporters who died while per­form­ing their pro­fes­sion­al duties.

The agen­da includes such top­i­cal issues as keep­ing the long-term atten­tion of the audi­ence to impor­tant top­ics; cre­at­ing con­di­tions for high-qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism under eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, or even mil­i­tary pres­sure; pro­tect­ing free and inde­pen­dent media.

The dis­cus­sion is attend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Lithuan­ian, Lat­vian, and Eston­ian media, as well as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media who have been work­ing in exile for sev­er­al years.

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