No democratization expected while freedom is destroyed

“We cannot expect any major moves towards democratization until the policy of the regime towards mass media won’t be changed,” said the chairperson of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Zhana Litvina during the meeting with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs David Merkel.

The meeting of the representative of the US Department of State with representatives of political parties, civil society, former political prisoners lasted for about two hours.

As Zhana Litvina told to the BAJ press-service, one of priority topics of the meeting was the election campaign to the “chamber of representatives”.

“A thesis was announced that unfortunately Belarusian mass media today cannot fulfill their constitutional function, to collect and get through information to voters,” the BAJ chair concluded. “The situation won’t change crucially until the state-run press exists which is forces to carry out a propagandistic function, while the policy of economic discrimination is carried out against the independent press”.

David Merkel was informed about the problems of independent media with dissemination and publishing inside the country. Besides, he was updated on the intermediate results of monitoring of the election campaign covering in mass media. As we have informed, these results show that the issue of elections is not a priority for state-run media, while main subjects of the electoral process in their articles are the CEC and the president.