Journalist Siarhei Satsuk asked to publish this text in case of his arrest

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the time for Siarhei’s text has come. Although not as soon as he expect­ed. Euro­ra­dio pub­lished the text he had left.

How journalists are framed in Belarus

I have been framed, total­ly and seri­ous­ly. I am writ­ing this pure­ly in self-defense, so I will start almost from the begin­ning.

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle “Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Health Care: how blood­stained mon­ey are made in Belarus”  on pro­cure­ment of med­ical prod­ucts at a price 9–13 times high­er than the real one, a “mes­sen­ger” came to me. First, he accused me of pub­lish­ing a plant­ed arti­cle. Then, con­tra­dict­ing him­self, he began to press me say­ing: “Why are you pub­lish­ing all this?” , “Why do you hin­der peo­ple’s busi­ness?” , “You don’t get any­thing from this, but you could do well, with­out all that dab­bling in debt and drown­ing in loans”, “How long have you been fight­ing cor­rup­tion, 20 years? Any suc­cess?” And so on.

I answered back, if Belarus were to stop buy­ing med­ical devices at a price 10 times high­er than the real one, it would do for me. The “mes­sen­ger” said it would nev­er hap­pen: it was a sys­tem in place. There­fore, if one, two, or three com­pa­nies were to leave, they would be replaced by oth­ers work­ing in the same way. “Well, they might sell at not 10 times, but 5 times high­er price.”

“That’s a good start, the coun­try’s bud­get would save mil­lions,” I replied.

“Will you get any­thing out of it?”, asked the mes­sen­ger.

“Noth­ing”.

“Do you think this will make our health care bet­ter?”

“I don’t know,” I admit­ted. — “I hope it will”

“It won’t. He will just use the mon­ey to build anoth­er palace,” the mes­sen­ger said, obvi­ous­ly allud­ing to the head of state.

This went on for half an hour. Real­iz­ing that noth­ing could per­suade me, the vis­i­tor went on right to what he had come for. He said some peo­ple had been quite clear that they were run­ning out of patience, that human life and free­dom are worth noth­ing in Belarus, and that doing away with a per­son was eas­i­er than buy­ing tick­ets to the islands. 

I need to explain here that in the course of my last inves­ti­ga­tion in jour­nal­ism, I tried to get one per­son to talk to me frankly, and inter­view her, in order to main­tain objec­tiv­i­ty. To do this, I sent her a bit provoca­tive mes­sage on Linkedin that I could move the date of the pub­li­ca­tion and give her a week to buy tick­ets to an island so that she could live there com­fort­ably for the rest of her life. And here, right after this arti­cle I am con­tact­ed by the “mes­sen­ger” with the words of peo­ple who have lost their patience, that it is eas­i­er for them to do away with a per­son than to buy tick­ets. More­over, as I was told, I was the only trou­ble­mak­er left in Belarus.

Every­thing is very clear. No room for inter­pre­ta­tion. Espe­cial­ly when they back up the warn­ing by say­ing: “Think about your fam­i­ly, what might hap­pen to them…” I know that my fam­i­ly can’t do with­out me. My wife has a dis­abil­i­ty, a car­diac defect, a removed thy­roid, and an aneurysm. As long ago as in 2011 doc­tors could not guar­an­tee that she would live to the end of the year. I know per­fect­ly well that if some­thing hap­pens to me, she won’t come through. No options here. There­fore, I shelved the sec­ond, almost pre­pared, arti­cle that revealed the real own­er of inter­me­di­ary British and Aus­tri­an com­pa­nies that sell us med­ical prod­ucts at prices 10 times high­er than the real ones and 4.5 times as high as the prices for Rus­sia, the coun­try we con­stant­ly cadge mon­ey from. Fam­i­ly is more impor­tant, I decid­ed, and said “STOP” to myself.

It was qui­et for a while, but then the fly­wheel of the Belaru­sian sys­tem began to spin. I think the rea­son was my pre­sen­ta­tion at Bel­sat on the same top­ic — cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health Care.

I’ve been work­ing with law enforce­ment for 20 years and I know that if your con­tacts sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear all at once (they don’t return calls or emails), it means that you have become a per­son of inter­est for crim­i­nal intel­li­gence.

“Well, — I thought, — I have noth­ing to hide, let them spy.”

But then SB [“SB-Belarus Today”. — Euro­ra­dio] pub­lished an arti­cle about EJ.BY and me, stat­ing right up front that I take mon­ey for help­ing to choke off com­peti­tors. They have nei­ther evi­dence, nor any rebut­tal of the facts pre­sent­ed in our inves­ti­ga­tions. Just base­less accu­sa­tions that I thrive on busi­ness com­pe­ti­tion. And then: “If sus­pi­cions are ver­i­fied…” This is not a prob­lem in Belarus, of course.

I am well aware that it pre­pares the infor­ma­tion space for my deten­tion. I know who is doing this. The name of the gen­er­al, who “backs” the sys­temic cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health Care, is known to every­one in this busi­ness. For over ten years, he was the one who sti­fled all attempts of the law enforce­ment agen­cies to fig­ure out this busi­ness, first in the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s office, and then in the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. Now he’s got a con­tract on jour­nal­ists.

Bel­sat is part of the same sto­ry. There is some­one who wants the tri­al over Ihar Lasit­s­ki, the for­mer deputy min­is­ter of health care, to cap the health care cor­rup­tion rum­ble. There are more pow­er­ful and untouch­able peo­ple. No one can mess with them, and there­fore any attempts of jour­nal­ists to dig fur­ther should be stopped.

Siarhei Sat­suk, edi­tor-in-chief of EJ.BY