‘No aim to discredit Lukashenka’. Swiss magazine about Belarus, Minsk and Belsat TV
Belsat TV Information Programming Director Aleksy Dzikawicki, phot. medienwoche.ch
An article about Belsat TV appeared in the Swiss e-zine Medienwoche.
According to its author Jens Mattern, now Europe holds that Minsk is not only as a capital of a dictatorship where human rights are violated, but a venue of negotiations on the Ukrainian conflict. Belarus, which had previously been a ‘Europe’s bogeyman’ became a ‘mediator between Russia and Ukraine, and even between the East and the West’, he states.
Foreign countries are disengaging from Belarusian affairs and supporting democrace in the country because of a relative calm in ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’ and focusing on Ukraine and Syria, which is not good for Belsat TV that has been operating for 9 years outside Belarus, but for the sake of it, says Mr Matern.
For example, Scandinavian countries which provided significant aid before, cut off funding the independent television channel. Today the Belarusian-language TV is financed primarily by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs which covers 70% of its costs, stresses Jens Matern.
Although Belsat TV is located in Poland, many journalists and contributors work in Belarus. As the Belarusian Foreign Ministery has repeatedly denied registration to the TV station for political reasons, its contributors are at the authorities’ gunpoint for working without it.
“The prosecutors watch our newscasts and later punish journalists for filming footage without accreditation,” the Swiss portal quotes Belsat TV Information Programming Director Aleksy Dzikawicki.
Belsat has no aim to discredit Belarus president Alyaksandr Lukashenka, it simply draws attention to the issues and problems being hushed by state-controlled media. If there is a good reason, Belsat does praise those in power; for instance, the channel welcomed the fact that the government began to promote the Belarusian language which had previously been driven away from almost all fields,” the author notes.
In his view, Belsat is watched primarily by residents of small cities, towns and villages where cable TV and Internet are still not a dime a dozen. Considering that, the independent television channel pays a lot of attention to regional issues and social topics.
“Indeed, intellectual elites mainly settle in Minsk, but we should not neglect provinces,”Dzikawicki believes.
Medienwoche.ch is an independent Swiss online magazine dedicated to the world’s media. It publishes numerous surveys, interviews, reports, opinions, etc.
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