Iryna Khalip: Don’t forget to wash dust out of your eyes

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic met a politically imprisoned journalist Iryna Khalip.

Dunja Mijatovic is currently paying a visit to Minsk, where she will meet the representatives of official authorities as well as independent journalists.

“Dunja changed her schedule for me, remembering that, according to the verdict, I must be home at 10 p.m. I told her about the conditions of my serving the punishment and of the new trial coming up”, - Iryna Khalip told to the charter97.org web-site.

The journalists perceived the very visit by the OSCE Representative ambiguously:

“Dunja Mijatovic – is one of the few official OSCE representatives, who have visited Belarus after 19 December 2010. It is hard to tell if this visit will bring anything, but I doubt. The Belarusian authorities have a tradition – to meet Europeans cordially, assure them that we have democracy here, the freedom of speech and respect to human rights. A visitor has to neatly wash this dust out of his/her eyes, and then leave in 2-3 days. But the authorties are happy that they have managed to lie to someone another time, and the international organization is happy that its official representative has been to a dictatorship’s stronghold. Evertyone is happy, but nothing changes in reality.

Dunja Mijatovic’s previous visit to Minsk preceded quite sad events. She came in the autumn of 2010, then she was also told how well journalists live in Belarus, how they abuse the freedom of speech, and in two months me and Natalia Radzina were where we could ‘abuse’ the freedom of speech for 24 hours a day – in a cell of the KGB jail.

Although as a person I was happy to meet Dunja, who fought for our release. Human rights and freedom are not a mere sound for her, but values, for which she has been fighting for years”, - Iryna Khalip said.