Pavel Selin: “One cannot live like this. Everything could be changed”

Recently Minsk was visited by the former head of the NTV news office in Belarus Pavel Selin. 5 years ago Selin was expelled from the country for his courageous covering of funerals of the People’s writer Vasil Bykau.

The journalist was prohibited to enter Belarus for 5 years. Today Pavel answers questions of the Charter’97 press-centre.

- Pavel, why have you decided to visit Belarus?

- Before my coming to Belarus I was asked, why I go here. Is it a matter of a principle, or to visit our friends? I answered that I am going to visit my friends out of principle. I was tolerating for 5 years, I was waiting like a law-abiding citizen for this ban for entering Belarus to expire. Firstly, I would like to meet my friends, and thanks God I have exceptionally many friends in Minsk. I have finally understood that any county is not just a territory. It is people in the first place. And I certainly was going to meet with people whom I hadn’t seen for so long.

- And what are your impressions about the country and people after the 5 years when you were absent?

- When I passed the station “Chyrvony stsyah” (near Minsk), I understood that not much has changed. Minsk is the same, everything is the same, and everybody is the same. I was, I am and will remain Belarus’ fan, but a real Belarus, as it is. It means very warm-hearted people, beauty of the nature, which has sunk into my heart. I really love this nature.

Certainly I strongly hoped that over the 5 years something cardinal would happen in Belarus. I hoped that the name of the Belarusian president would change over these years. It’s sad that this hasn’t happened. There are lots of wonderful people who could become Belarusian president. There is much to do still.

I greatly want brothers Belarusians to define their fate themselves; to live under a regime they choose themselves. But I have seen that today Belarusians are hammered in their heads that Lukashenka is forever. And it is not forever; you can and must live the way you want. I was disappointed that many good friends of mine in Belarus live with an impression that nothing could be done. It’s not true. Everything can be changed.

- In what way Minsk is different from Moscow, to your mind?

- I must say from the start that prices are almost the same. It is a well-known legend that everything is cheaper in Belarus. Maybe just a little. Shop assistants are as rude as before, there are less cars and people, there is more space, there are no traffic jam like in Moscow, and the pace of living is slower. As Dovlatov said: any dictatorship is distinguished from democracy by cleanness and discipline. But all the same, Minsk does not differ much from Moscow: there are blasts already, and some own terrorists have emerged.

- If you were to work today in Belarus as an NTV correspondent, how would you work?

- I would work the same. Everybody is whiting the way he breathes. The way you live, so you write. Anyway, it’s a matter of a principle. It is as in childhood: it’s beneath one’s dignity to say what you do not think. It is simply not like men do.