Petition in support of Belsat TV appears on Internet


Belsat TV solidarity campaign on web

Internet users are calling on Poland’s President Andrzej Duda to keep Belsat TV from falling apart. The appeal to Polish leader appeared on the website Change.org.

“We are deeply concerned over Polish media reports about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ plans to significantly reduce financing the television channel Belsat TV and stop its broadcast in the Belarusian language.

On a practical level, such changes would mean the closure of Belsat, the only independent Belarusian-language TV channel, which has become a permanent support of public opinion and national identity of Belarusians. In case of its liquidation, the population of Belarus would be left to propagandist media outlets controlled by Minsk and Moscow regimes.

Belsat TV started broadcasting on December 10, 2007 at the initiative of Polish journalist and public figure Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy who became its Director and is still in charge of it. Over the past nine years, one has repeatedly praised Belsat journalists’ contribution to developing Belarus’s civil society and promotion of the country’s history through returning to the native language which had been removed from official and everyday usage in the Soviet times.

Numerous awards given by Polish and European institutions to Belsat TV attest to its highest professional standards.

Belsat journalists have often been persecuted by the Belarusian authorities.

We, Belsat TV viewers, appeal to the government and people of Poland with a request to keep Belsat as it is, in accordance with the slogan that has been united our peoples for centuries – For Our Freedom and Yours!”

A few days ago, a campaign of solidarity with Belsat TV started on the Internet –  a lot of people explain why channel is important to them and use hashtag #белсатжывi (Live, Belsat).

Click here to sign the petition

#белсатжывi

On Sunday evening, Witold Wazczykowski, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, voiced the ministry’s plans of the channel’s transition to a web mode and its journalists’ transfer to TVP Polonia.

belsat.eu

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