Official media propagandists not allowed to Lithuania

The Embassy of Lithuania did not issue visas to representatives of the Belarusian official media.

They said they were invited to a conference on safety of journalists in the OSCE region held in Vilnius on June 7 and 8.

In this connection, BelTA news agency has released an indignant statement on behalf of the Belarusian Union of Journalists (BUJ), “Narodnaya Volya” newspaper writes.

The statement says that representatives of the official Belarusian Union of Journalists received an invitation to the conference signed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Evaldas Ignatavicius. Though the Belarusian journalists had an official invitation to the even from the Lithuanian MFA, the Embassy of Lithuania denied visas to BUJ representatives referring to the sanctions of the EU Council.

“This is an unprecedented step. It shows negative trends in the understanding of contemporary development of the society, which manifest themselves inside the European bureaucracy. Obviously, this decision is due to the unwillingness to encourage contacts between public organizations of Belarus and the EU member states, the fear to hear an alternative point of view about what is happening in our country,” the Belarusian Union of Journalists thinks.

“The Belarusian Union of Journalists has reliable information that the EU conceals from the European public the fact that Belarusian journalists have been included into the EU travel ban list,” the statement says. “The Belarusian Union of Journalists as well as other civil organizations of Belarus receives invitations to different events on the EU territory on a regular basis. This time, however, Belarus could not attend the event due to the restrictive sanctions imposed by the EU.”

The BUJ statement does not say why the people from the EU blacklist tried to break through to the Vilnius conference and why journalists who do not have problems with the EU were not included in the Belarusian delegation.