Belarusian journalists spoke to House of Lords. Lord Bell didn’t come

A forum Censorship, State Restrictions and Democracy in Belarus took place in the House of Lords of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on October 8.

It was attended by Andrew McIntosh, Chair of the Sub-Committee on the Media of the Council of Europe; head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) Zhanna Litvina; editor-in-chief of “Novy Chas” newspaper Alyaksei Karol; some BAJ representatives; officers of some international organisations, dealing with the problems of freedom of speech – the International Federation of Journalists, the National Union of Journalists of the Great Britain and Ireland, Exiled Journalists Network, MediaWise Trust, Article 19 and others, the BAJ press service reports.

If Belarus wants to return to the European institutions and normalise the relations with the European community, it should do much more that it is doing today, lord McIntosh said when opening the meeting. Mr McIntosh assured that the Council of Europe was going to keep problems of Belarusian media in sight and highly appreciated the help of the BAJ in monitoring the situation with press in Belarus.

Zhanna Litvina expressed an opinion that a programme of the monitoring of law enforcement of the new Law on Media after its coming in force in February 2009 would be an effective mechanism of support of Belarusian journalist. She thanked A. McIntosh for his support of an idea of creating the European council for monitoring the situation with media in Belarus. “The Belarusian authorities must feel a principal position: conditions of cooperation between Europe and Belarus are freedom of speech, demonopolization, media, expansion of public sphere. Nothing has changed in Belarus so far. And nothing will change until there are some changes in the media sphere,” the BAJ head said.

Editor-in0chief of “Novy Chas” newspaper Alyaksei Karol thinks that in spite of hard conditions for independent press, it had a great impact on mind of people and that is why it often suffered from repressions.

Karol criticised harshly work of lord Bell on creation “a positive image” of Belarus, accusing him of misrepresentation of facts. “A press release, spread among foreign journalists recently, said that 102 cases of persecution of independent journalists were recorded in 2006, and only 1 case – in 2008. It is lie,” he emphasised.

A. Karol think it is necessary to develop more active information exchange between Belarusian journalist and European institutions in order for the Belarusian media to have more exclusive information from international organisations, and the European press to have more materials about state of human rights in our country. “The authorities hear and perceive your opinion. We can say that “antilord Bell” is very important for us now,” the editor of “Novy Chas” noted.

Members of international organisations proved there is a lack of information about Belarus in foreign media. In particular, representative of the International Federation of Journalists Marc Gruber has recently monitored publications about Belarus and concluded that sporting publications (in particular about the future match Belarus-England, scheduled for 15 October) were ten times more than those about the parliamentary elections. The organisers of the meeting plan to call on the British journalists, who will cover the mentioned match, to use their trip for learning the situation with human rights in Belarus, and to prepare corresponding materials for their editions.

“Of course, no organisation can say its journalist what he must do and what he mustn’t,” Marc Gruber told to the BAJ press service. But we hope journalist will understand that they can do something more besides covering the football match. This is what journalists do during the Olympic Games in Beijing.”

After the meeting Andrew McIntosh outlined the attitude of the Council of Europe towards the situation with media in Belarus at the request of the BAJ press service: “We are concerned about the problem of freedom in Belarus. The elections, held in your country recently, are of great importance for us, that is why we are disappointed when the Council of Europe wasn’t permitted to send its observers there.

A central element of the European Convention on Human Rights is free elections and democracy. Our interest in media freedom proceeds from the premise that democracy can’t exist without free media. The elections are senseless when people have no opportunities to take a conscious decision, based on the received information. This is what has happened during the latest elections in Belarus,” lord McIntosh said.

Teh meetin g on October 8 was attended by former British ambassador to Belarus Brian Bennett, Vera Rich, Belarusian journalist Volha Birukova, who has recently asked for political asylum in the United Kingdom and now is waiting for a decision of the British authorities. Lord Bell was also invited to take part in the forum, but he was absent.