French TV Crew Failed to Cross Belarusian Border :: Charter'97 :: News

Last week at the border crossing “Warsaw Bridge” “the TV crew of French TV channel ARTE encountered unexpected obstacles for entering Brest. On Thursday at about midday foreign TV crew wanted to cross the Polish-Belarusian border, but without clearly explained reasons they were not let in by the Belarusian side. Probably, it was a repercussion of the story with the filming crew of French TV channel TF1, detained on November 10 in Minsk by people in mufti and then deprived accreditation by the Belarusian FM.

The TV crew of the ARTE channel headed for Brest consisted of its head, a cameraman and a sound operator. They had all documents necessary for work in Belarus, including accreditation of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus. As we have found out from the phone conversation with the TV crew, the agony of suspense lasted for several hours, after that they were demanded to tell to whom exactly are they going, but no specifically legal reasons for their detention were provided.

“We have never seen such a reception anywhere in Europe. No one has asked us the purpose of the visit, “names, secret addresses, paroles”, ironically commented the members of the crew.

After having been waiting from the middle of the day till 8 p.m., our colleagues understood that further waiting is pointless, and went back to Poland, as they were to work in neignbouring Ukraine on Saturday, according to their plan.