Mrs. Benita Valdner has to resign

The leadership of the Belarusan Popular Front “Adradzennie” and the BPF Party call the attention to the unscrupulous position by the European Commissar for Foreign Relations and Neighborhood Policy Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Valdner.

The decision to organize the broadcasting to Belarus in the language of the occupants (i.e. in Russian language) witnesses the lack of respect with regard to the Belarusan people as a European nation as well as witnesses the lack of the obligation to hold to the positions accepted by the European Union in the policy.

The Belarusan people had restored the independence of Belarus in 1991 by democratic method. The Belarusan people had acknowledged the Belarusan language the unique state language of the Republic of Belarus. Two thirds of the Belarusan Parliament had voted this decision.

The same status of the state Belarusan language had been confirmed by the Belarusan Parliament in the new democratic Constitution of the Republic of Belarus adopted in 1994. Europe, the member states of the European Union had recognized this democratic Constitution and the independence of our country.

Then in 1996 the leader of the executive power in Belarus and the henchman of the Russian KGB A. Lukashenka had abrogated the Constitution of 1994 by undemocratic method, carried on an occupation coup d’etat and administered his constitution illegally. Lukashenka had formally introduced into the constitution of 1996 the Soviet “bilingual principle” which had become (like during the Soviet epoque) the method of the prohibition of the Belarusan language and the russification in the Belarusan state.

Europe and the European Union didn’t recognize the legality of Lukashenka’s constitution. And what it is now? Mrs. Benita Valdner did recognize it (so that means) and try to carry on the russification policy of Lukashenka in the European Union. This is the European Commissar! This is a policy!

The conditions of the next tender on the broadcasting to Belarus have been formulated stubbornly by Mrs. Benita Valdner for the second time with the priority given to the “Deutsche Welle” (then to the BBC and to a French company). This decision has been taken although there are already technical possibilities and experience of the Belarusan broadcasting in Poland and Lithuania (but the companies of these countries have been not admitted to the participation in the tender).
There are standards in the state policy of financing. If a state functionary gives a priority (helps) to the big business of the mass-media and contradicts to the benefit of the project – this affair smells of the corruption (recently a similar episode has taken place in Poland – the so-called “affair of Mr. Rywin”).

But the question of the tendentious financing of the tender is a question of the European Union. Let us come back to the russification. The Russian language in modern Belarus is the language of the occupation dictatorial Lukashenka regime. The russification is the essence of the antidemocratic regime in Belarus. The Russian Soviet communist occupants had shot hundreds of Belarusan writers for the Belarusan language, they have killed thousands of the Belarusans for our language. Now the regime does persecute the Belarusan young people for the Belarusan language. And the young people defend our language. Now young Belarusans must struggle also against the russification from the Occident.

Mrs. Benita Valdner evidently doesn’t correspond to the level of her post in the European Union. It would be better to her to resign from this complicated post in order not to make problems in Eastern Europe.

ZIANON PAZNIAK
Chairman of the Belarusan Popular
Front “Adradzennie”
MP of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus
of the 12th convocation

September 16, 2005
New York

16/9/2005 › English