Independent Journalist: Our "Demigods" Are Getting Totally Absurd

The correspondent of an independent newspaper has tried to get to the Slonim regional executive committee.

You cannot enter a Belarusian regional executive committee with a camera so easily. In morning on June 15, Slonim Newspaper correspondent Tatsiana Plakhetka (Dzeniasiuk) saw it for herself. Although Tatsiana was going to the executive committee not to fulfil a journalistic assignment, but to collect a paid up holiday ticket for her daughter in a summer children's recreation camp, the baj.by website reports.

– On the way to the office, I decided to drop to the district executive committee to collect my daughter's ticket to the rest camp, for which I paid money at the bank yesterday. The camera – a tool of trade – was in the bag, so as not to provoke unnecessary questions from the guards. However, I had miscalculated – the security guard asked me to show what was in the bag and said that they had an order not to let into the building visitors with photo, video and radio equipment. "What's to be done? – I asked. – Let's leave the camera under your responsibility, while I am collecting the paper." – No. The guard did not agree to let me in with the camera or to take it for a while. Not possible – that was all! .. Only when the head of the education department, who happened to be nearby, asked to let me in at her risk, then the guard agreed... The absurdity is going on in our Slonim, – Tatsiana and colleagues shared their impressions of visiting the local White House.

The increasing closeness and isolation of today's Belarusian authorities from those for whom these authorities should work, leave not only journalists asking questions. But they are the journalists, who remind our imperious "demigods" about their direct duty to serve the common people, and not to demand from them the opposite. Journalists more often publicly appeal to the norms of legislation, which these authorities have developed and do not fulfill.