Two weeks ago the Kyiv-based foundation Modern Art Center hosted the launching of Belsat TV, the first and only independent television channel in Belarus. Belsat’s information editor Aleksei Dzikavitsky has met the Kyiv press and answered The Day correspondent’s questions.
How did your channel emerge?
“The situation with free mass media in Belarus has been deteriorating for 15 years since Aleksandr Lukashenko, who had promised all journalists during his election campaign that they would be able to work freely, came to power. But in practice many newspapers have been closed and our colleague, cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky, who worked for Russian TV and had previously been Lukashenko’s personal cameraman, was killed: he was just kidnapped and murdered no one knows where. In the 2000s, there were only two national independent newspapers left in a ten-million Belarus, which were, incidentally, printed in Russia, and 13 independent publications in the regions.
“They have a small circulation and cannot be sold at newsstands – and if you are not at a newsstand, you don’t exist at all. We have opened a Radio Liberty office in Belarus, but radio, with all due respect for it (I myself worked on the radio for 10 years), is a thing of yesterday. The most influential media today are television and the internet.
“In 2006 a colleague of mine, Po-lish TV correspondent Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guza, was deported from Belarus for her reports on what was going on in the country. So this lady decided to set up independent television for Belarus in Poland by her own efforts with assistance from her friends. At first nobody believed in this project, for TV is not the radio or a newspaper. It is quite an expensive thing that also requires skill, experience, and a team effort. But the channel was set up a year later in Poland. We could not have organized this in Belarus.”
Who is funding you?
“This is official and open information: we are funded by Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We hide nothing.”
When did you go on the air for the first time?
“On December 10, 2007, International Human Rights Day. It was at first a three-hour program. As soon as three months later, the authorities saw that the channel was gaining strength and struck on us.”
What was the pretext?
“March 25 in Belarus is Freedom Day, a holiday banned by the regime. On that day Minsk saw a major protest demonstration which was brutally broken up by riot police. Ours was the world’s only TV channel that showed this on the same day. Other channels have to work under official accreditation and dispatch the footage to their editorial offices by way of state-run television. Of course, nobody was allowed to dispatch the filmed material, whereas we have a specially arranged system of transmission. We showed the picture of beatings as soon as an hour later, and all European TV channels also showed them. And in two days, on March 27, police and KGB men broke into the apartments of all our people at 8 a.m. The people were summarily detained, intimidated, and had almost all their filming equipment taken away. That was a very powerful blow. They thought we would not be working any longer.”
How did you manage to recover?
“We not only refused to give in but also continued our informational program on the next day. Naturally, it is very difficult for us to defend our people. If the government chooses to put somebody inside, it will do so – not for coming with a camera but for failure to obey the police or ‘hooliganism.’ As for the equipment, we are, naturally, not so naive. We are quite aptly called guerrilla-style television: like the guerrillas, who used to dig shelters to hide their weapons, we also have secret places to hide the necessary equipment. When the equipment has been taken away, our man goes to that place, takes the required devices, and the next day a cameraman or a journalist can work. Besides, there are people who stand by the cameraman in a dangerous situation: for example, her films for 15 minutes, they take the cassette and go away, while he inserts a new one. So even if he has been detained, the channel will still have the film.”
It is clear about the capital, but what about the promises?
“We are proud that we managed to help very much in small towns. The point is that when bureaucrats see a television crew, no matter where from, they are afraid to ask, fearing that it is state-run television. The latter is part of the governmental system here. They are afraid of the very fact of seeing a camera. We were once filming an orphanage in front of which there was a huge dumping ground which nobody could remove for the past 10 years. No sooner had we arrived and begun to speak to people than bulldozers came and began to clear this garbage.”
Absurdity…
“There are even comic situations sometimes. For example, one of our cameramen was filming a mass-scale protest action. He had brought a ca-mera without a ‘cube’ (the channel’s emblem) and began to work. But the KGB usually films all actions as well. So a plainclothesman comes up to him and asks: ‘What are you doing here?’ And our stone-faced man answers: ‘And what are you doing here?’ ‘I am at work,’ that one says. ‘I am at work, too,’ our man says. The KGB man said ‘I got it’ and went away. For the KGB, the prosecution service and the police film the opposition each for their own purposes, and they sometimes do not know who is filming for whom. Of course, this could happen in the very beginning, not is impossible…”
What else do you have, in addition to politics?
“We make documentary films, a thing now in decline in Belarus, and support film directors with our orders. We also make cultural, economic and international programs as well as talk shows. We made a series of films and programs dedicated to Freedom Day so that Belarusians know what kind of day it is. Nobody did so except for us.”
And what is the unifying concept?
“From the very outset, our motto has been ‘Belsat is a channel made by Belarusians for Belarusians.’ We have a Belarusian view of all that occurs and, secondly, we broadcast in the Belarusian language only. Russian accounts now for 90 percent of state-run television’s screen time. Language is a priority issue for us.”
What is the structure of your broadcasting today?
“We now broadcast for six hours a day, show morning and evening blocks. We manage to make a daily 22-minute informational program which includes politics, culture, sport, and weather news. Incidentally, 80-90 percent of the filming is done in Belarus on the day the program is shown. Our colleagues in Belarus film from morning until midday, then they compress and dispatch a video, and we edit it and make a news bulletin. Efficiency and timeliness was our ultimate goal. We willingly take footage from the Youtube internet site if they illustrate a situation better than we do. Generally speaking, if someone had wanted to make this kind of television 15 years ago, this would have been impossible. But now there is the internet, small cameras that can fit into your hand, and cell phone cameras. So now it is more difficult to seize what has been filmed. We also show a half-an-hour political journalism program, A Week in Focus, on Sundays, to which we invite well-known experts to comment on the most important events. What is important in today’s Belarus is not so much information as political comment. One can read information everywhere, for instance, in the internet. But it is more important to explain why the government and the opposition do things one way or another.”
Do you manage to make live broadcasts in addition to news bulletins in the studio?
“We do this when some high-profile events take place, such as, for example, the largest Belarusian rock festival Pasovyshche. Ironically, it is held in Poland, a few kilometers away from the border with Belarus. This is an oasis of ethnic music and language, and we broadcast live from there. We have also managed to work out a technique that allows us to broadcast live during a news bulletin. Of course, the quality is not as high as we would like it to be, but still…”
Who are your experts?
“The situation with experts has been very difficult, especially in the last while. The authorities are trying to harass them. If they see somebody commenting for us, they send a policeman to them the next day, who asks; ‘Why did you speak for an unregistered channel?’ People, who work in governmental institutions, begin to have problems. Luckily, there is rather a wide circle of independent experts in Belarus, who work at non-governmental foundations or research centers and usually are our experts. Add to this our colleagues – independent journalists.”
About the colleagues: who work for you?
“It is usually young and socially active people from a democratic milieu, their average age is 25. They study or have already graduated and are often members of non-governmental organizations. They do all kinds of things – from protecting the environment to defending the Belarusian language in our country. We do not employ those who have previously worked at state-run television. We needed to recruit young and creative-minded people and teach them what TV is. There are about 60 people in my information section. Some of them work in Warsaw, some in Belarus, and some in other countries. We had to teach them all to be in television.”
Is there any kind of selection?
“We do not employ those who have submitted no references. A candidate should submit character references from at least two people who can vouch for him or her and who are sufficiently known, at least to us. That’s the only way.”
But the regime must be surely trying to plant its “moles” on you…
“I think the authorities are working on how to do us harm by means of stool pigeons. They know very well the vast majority of our procedures, our style of work, etc. We have to face it. When there are 120 people in the team, there may be a snitch among them. What really matters is that we should not fall into paranoia: after all, this is exactly what the secret services expect us to do.”
Was it difficult to establish your own network of correspondents?
“Work is still going on. We are trying to cover not only the capital and regional centers but also smaller cities. We reinforce some of our offices, but if someone quits, we look for other people. We are always trying to expand.”
I am aware of asking a risky question, but please tell me at least in general terms how you transmit information.
“We have at least three channels through which we hand over video to the Warsaw editorial office. It is difficult to discuss this, you know… I do not rule out that the secret services know a part of this, but all everything.”
Obviously, you have more than enough problems, but which of them are the most acute?
“Status. Access to materials connected with the authorities, including all kinds of briefings, etc. Lack of financial resources. But, above all, it is harassment of our people, intimidation of their families, detentions, and interrogations. Our colleague Ivan Shulga recently spent ten days in jail for not letting KGB men into our clandestine office in Minsk. He came out to have a smoke, while they stood waiting for a good opportunity to go in. They said to Ivan when he came out: ‘Push the door intercom button and tell them to let us in.’ He said ‘OK’ and when they walked with him to the intercom, he cried out: ‘Don’t let them in, they’re cops!’ He was arrested and charged with beating up and breaking the leg of a policeman. On the next day this policeman came to the court on his own, without any plaster on him, and produced a hospital memo that his leg was broken. What cynicism! Ivan could have gone down for assaulting a policeman in the line of duty. But we raised such hell that this became known even in the European Parliament, Baroness Ashton spoke out… So the court adjourned for four hours – they didn’t know what to do. Finally, he was given a ten-day term only.”
One should, of course, judge about things by comparison. I recently happened to see a film about underground television in Burma…
“We made a program about them. Our correspondent visited their office in Denmark. Yes, they don’t pussyfoot in Burma. You can end up in prison for up 60 years for working without accreditation. In other words, if they catch a young man filming without permission, they put him inside for the rest of his lifetime. Incomparable…”
All the more so that Belarus watches you.
“We can be received via the satellites Sirius and Astra by dish aerials in most countries of Europe. Although sociological surveys are, of course, rather disputable, our information says that 10-12 percent of Belarusians watch us. It is about a million people – a very serious audience indeed.”
Why is the regime still standing?
“To understand this, one must know the specific mental features of the Belarusian people, a people of guerrillas. There was a Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, and Soviet guerrilla movement during Word War II in Polissia, where my grandfather lived. My gramps saw power changing eight times in that place. What is a change of power in wartime? It means losing all that you have earned so far. You have some money, but it is invalid from today onwards. You have some position and career, but this does not matter, either, because a new power has come and you go back to square one. There was a certain upsurge in Belarus in the early 1990s, but all this has been cut down in the past 15 years. The entrepreneurial class as well as many of the former oppositionists understood that this had come to stay and that they should adapt to this. They have adapted so much that I often hear from my fellow countrymen: ‘To hell with it! Let it be at least like this, but we don’t need any changes again.’”
And the opposition?
“There is no brilliant and charismatic leader. Opposition politicians have already lost all that they could lose: local and presidential elections, referendums. This opposition is, by all accounts, not dangerous. And Lukashenko said more than once that he must thank God for this kind of opposition. This is right. There used to be charismatic leaders, but they are gone now. In all probability, they were killed in the late 1990s. So there are two factors: people have got accustomed to this system and see nobody to lead them.”
Do you maintain a feedback with your audiences?
“They write to us very much. We are discussed in the Web. Even state-run television could not take it any more: they had ignored us for two years and then, so to speak, swooped on and lampooned us in their usual spirit. We are trying now to attract viewers to participating in our programs. Twice a week, our presenters invite all viewers to a Skype video chat, where everybody can ask a question and express an opinion which we then use in our programs, especially in Sunday’s Week in Focus. We video- and audiotape these questions and then put them to experts.”
What qualities do you think a journalist should possess first of all?
“News coverage is, above all, discipline. Each of our people is aware that they are doing a unique filming, and if the video comes in after 19.00, it will not be shown in the 8 o’clock news bulletin. So the most important thing is discipline, responsibility, orderliness, and, of course, courage. But you can’t teach this…”
Where do these boys and girls take courage from?
“Many are fed up with being afraid. For young people travel around and see the way their counterparts live and work in other countries. We send our journalists to study in Poland, Sweden, and the US. My colleagues are of the same opinion: it’s high time we stopped being afraid. This is why they are doing this.”
Do you ever visit Belarus?
“No, I have not been there for eight years. I worked as a newspaper editor and I faced imprisonment for exposing election rigging. I was forced to leave.”
Freedom is the toughest test. What will then happen to the channel? It may just disappear…
“I often think of this…When the situation changes, we will have to overhaul state-run television. Ideally, it should be public TV, like the BBC. Practice shows that this often fails in transition-period countries, including Poland. But it should be so in the ideal. I also think that our channel’s mission is not only to broadcast information but also to bring up, pardon the exalted style, a generation of independent journalists. Because where can they come from now? A test by freedom… Now the situation is clear. There are they and there are us. They want to hide or to twist information, while we are trying to take an unbiased approach. Naturally, we are fond of democratic changes and the people who are doing their best to bring them about. And what will there be when they come to power? I hope that when the opposition comes to power, it will learn very well the lessons of what is going on in the neighboring countries and will not try to control television. Otherwise, nothing will change in the country.”
And what do you think of your own future?
“I am an economist, not a journalist, by education. But fate decreed that I go through all the media: newspapers, radio, and television. Many are trying to leave Belarus by hook or by crook, above all, for EU countries, and to seize any opportunity to stay behind there. But if my country needed my experience, I would come back without a minute’s hesitation. I would be doing something useful in there – on television, of course. I would like to return, but who knows how things will go?”
