Official Statement by the Belarusian TV and Radio Company

Original: https://telegra.ph/Oficialnyj-kommentarij-Belteleradiokompanii-06-30

The Belarusian TV and Radio Company welcomes with a smile and satisfaction the long-awaited withdrawal of cooperation with the European Broadcasting Union, an organization that did not, does not and will not have its own opinion. For years, at the EBU summits, we were surprised that the people gathered there were not interested in anything but gender equality issues from Russia, and the voting processes for their leaders reminded us of Leonid Brezhnev's election in the Soviet Union. Even the Communist Party in the USSR had never seen such unanimity. Everyone was in favor there. Of course, what this shows is that the EBU is a structure where everything is decided in the shadow. And there, it's not the EBU, as we have just witnessed.

We have many friends in the EBU and, of course, we have long known that our membership would be withdrawn. At first we wanted to pull out ourselves. It would have been beautiful, but such a farce must be brought to a climax. And we wanted to see, what are they going to charge us with? In suspense, we watched the titanic work of the EBU staff, trying to justify all the horror of Roman Protasevich's, who wasn't really dead, statement in our broadcast. And they pulled it off. They deserve a vacation!

We feel sorry for you, EBU management. The BTRC chairman spoke for a few minutes with the CEO Noel Curran. We feel sorry for him and we do not condemn him. He has a great job, he's in a great position and he has a decent salary. During the whole conversation, he was never able to make one single intelligible complaint about BTRC beyond "You are involved in this" and "Protasevich's parents believe he is being held hostage." We proved to him that we were not the first to spread the video of [Mikola] Dziadok and Protasevich. To a layman it would be obvious that we did not film these videos and it is clear to the whole world that there was no torture. Dziadok is awake, fresh and happy to write another heroic page on his biography as an anarchist protestor who set foreign embassies on fire. There is nothing to say about Protasevich at all. Roman and his girlfriend [Sofia] Sapega are living in an apartment under house arrest, walking through parks in Minsk and giving interviews everywhere. The regime's atrocities have reached unprecedented proportions!

Of course, the EBU knows that Western countries were involved in preparing a coup in Belarus. We are all aware that EBU members, that the public broadcasters of some countries, are serving the ruling elites. The reporting of broadcasters in Poland, Lithuania or the Czech Republic on Belarus reminds us of the worst stories of American television.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that, while reciting the rules and the principles of the EBU to us, they have not reacted in any way to protesters beating our reporters during opposition rallies, to the harassment and attacks on our own employees during the election, their damage caused to public property, the publication of their personal information and addresses. We don't need their protection, we survived on our own, but nevertheless. They ignored the facts we proved about the endless lies on Deutsche Welle, ARD, Lithuanian TV, the fabrication of a story about women's rallies on Norwegian TV, the stream of cheap false propaganda from one of TVP's channels, Belsat. Recently, we debunked a garbage story about the "torture" of a taxi driver by law enforcement agents, which turned out to be a figment of the sick imagination of a Belsat reporter. The "hero" of this plot simply read out a script she invented on tape. For 100 euros. This disgrace of the European Broadcasting Union is the bright face of European journalism.

We promise to continue telling the truth about what happens in this country and in the world. That there was a riot in Belarus, that the demonstrations were not peaceful, that the EBU members are lying about it. We will show how peaceful demonstrators against COVID restrictions were crushed by horses in the Netherlands and smeared on the walls by water cannons. How in France, as they cracked down on a party, people's arms were torn off. How an unarmed woman was killed at point-blank range in the United States Parliament and she was declared a domestic terrorist. How opposition channels are shut down and journalists are killed in Ukraine. How they put opposition "spy" journalists in prison in Poland and the ruling party steals the money allocated to help Belarusian immigrants.

We will also save many millions of euros and we will make the dream of the Belarusian people come true. No more Eurovision! And to the many agencies that are coming to us, offering to take the place of the EBU, welcome!

– An independent broadcaster, the Belarusian TV and Radio Company.