A meeting of Belsat TV Supervisory Board was held in Minsk on Wednesday.
The members of the Board are going to address the EU leadership with a request to resume financing Belsat TV, Aleh Trusau, Chairman of the Belarusian Language Society, said. He expressed hope that not only Poland would be a donor to the channel in the future.
Earlier, grants from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Lithuania was part of its budget; the European Commission participated in financing the channel as well.
“I want to believe that our application will contribute to saving Belsat,” Zinaida Bandarenka, a famous Belarusian anchorwoman and member of the Supervisory Board, said.
We perceived the establishment of Belsat seemed to be an act of solidarity with our people, Uladzimir Kolas, a founder of the legendary Belarusian Lyceum, recalls. According to him, Poles, experienced similar problems in their past, were fully aware of the challenges Belarusians were facing. “Our common history made them understand what kind of help we needed,” Kolas added.
“What has been created been 10 years, cannot be destroyed due to some nonsense, naivete or deals. We are doing our best to prevent it,” prominent Belarusian journalist Svyatlana Kalinkina stresses.
The Belsat TV Supervisory Board came into being in 2008. Its members are Belarusian intellectuals and public figures.
On December 18, Witold Wazczykowski, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, voiced the ministry’s plans of Belsat TV transition to a web mode and its journalists’ transfer to TVP Polonia.
- Belsat TV Director makes statement on channel’s future
- Petition in support of Belsat TV appears on Internet
- BelarusDigest: Supporting Belsat is in the real interest of Warsaw and Minsk
There is an online petition to support “Belsat” on the Internet. To sign it, you need to follow the link.
