Independent Trade Union Press Annihilated :: Charter'97 :: News

The New Year for the Federation of trade unions of Belarus commenced with a dismissal of six journalists of the trade union’s mouthpiece – newspaper “Belarusky Chas” – Irina Germanovich, Alexander Dubravin, Vladimir Dzuba, Alexander Egorov, Sergei Yuriev and Ales Khmelnitsky. The journalists, stripped of their work, consider it to be another initiative of the FTU leader Leonid Kozik.

Yesterday the sacked journalists launched a press-conference, at which they disseminated appeal to the Belarusian and international public and the newspaper’s readers. The appeal contains a call to the society to “display solidarity and support to the groundlessly fired journalists of the trade union newspaper”.

The journalists recalled that following a scandalous dismissal in August 2002 of the “BC” editor-in-chief Alexander Starikevich, his duties were passed over to Irina Germanovich, who continued to pursue the policy of defending human rights of workers. When it ultimately became clear that the journalists won’t change the editorial policy anyway and will keep writing the truth, Irina Germanovich was told to file in resignation out of free will. Otherwise, they threatened to find fault with her and fire for that. The newly appointed in her place Svetlana Balashova declared that “in connection with the heavy financial condition” all journalists will work for no more than 2 hours a day with a payment of one forth of their regular salary. The people were paid miserable wages with huge delays. Finally, reads the text of appeal, ahead of the Christmas holidays the “BC” journalists were all dismissed due to the alleged staff redundancy, caused by the “poor financial situation”.

Former acting editor-in-chief of the newspaper Irina Germanovich relates the incident to the change in the general FTU strategy. Journalist Egorov assumes that under the guidance of the new editor-in-chief Svetlana Balashova the newspaper will turn into a disguise for concealing the real situation in the country from readers.

The journalists regard their dismissal as a ban on executing professional duties: finding employment in the constantly shut independent press in Belarus is next to impossible.

Realizing this, the “Narodnaya Volya” editor-in-chief Iosif Seredich, who also took part in the press-conference, offered to all the dismissed journalists job in his periodical.