NTV camera operator: “KGB officers took us to the forest, questioned, and seized castes”
- 18.08.2009, 14:13
The Russian journalists were not sent to the airport before the deportation, but were taken to the border, to Orsha town.
It became known on August 14 that journalists of Russian TV channel, shooting a report about the disappeared politicians, were deported from Belarus. Aleksey Malkov and Yury Babenko were detained at the hotel of the International Education Center (IBB) on August 14. As we have informed, the film crew was taken to a Minsk airport on August 15 and made to leave Belarus. But, as it turned out, the Russian journalists were deported by train.
Yury Babenko, a camera operator of programme “ChP. Rasseldovanie” of NTV channel, told Euroradio the details of how correspondent Aleksey Malkov and he had been deported from Belarus.
– Tell what really happened.
– Almost everything I have read on the Internet is true. But not all.
– What is untrue and what information is not correct enough?
– It is untrue that we were taken to the airport. They took us to the border, in Orsha town. They drove us to the train, passed from hand to hand, confiscated SIM-cards. We couldn’t make a telephone call until we arrived in Moscow.
– How did you get acquitted with the Belarusian secret services? Was it a surprise?
– We noticed them in the morning, the KGB were watching us since morning. We returned to the hotel at 3 p.m., had dinner and went out for a smoke at 6 p.m. – smoking is forbidden in the hotel. We noticed that the situation has become more complicated, some vans appeared in the street. One of the hotel’s walls is made of glass. We lived on the second storey. We saw through this wall that about 8 people in militia uniform and 10 people in mufti were moving to us. So, their visit wasn’t unexpected. We got in a van and were driven out of the city, I don’t know why, and then to Orsha. We took a train there.
– Were you afraid when you see that they were driving you not to the KGB but to forest? Especially, taking into consideration the theme of your report – disappearances in Belarus?
– What do you think?!
– Did you ask them why you were driving in an unknown direction?
– They answered: “To talk in a cosy place.”
– What did you talk about?
– The official version is that we stayed in Belarus without accreditation.
– Did they say you shouldn’t have interfered with politics and touched this theme?
– They asked what materials we had shot, who had we spoken with. They asked about concrete themes of the conversation. I said I hadn’t heard and known anything.
– Under the Belarusian law, this violation provides a ban to enter Belarus for five years. Did they threat you with this punishment?
– No, they didn’t mention this. They gave us back most of our equipment except for cassettes with the footage and SIM-cards.
– So, you won’t make a film about the disappeared in Belarus?
– The film will probably be made. It depends on our chiefs. We were promised the cassettes would be returned to us.
– Why did you decide to work in Belarus without the necessary accreditation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
– It’s not in my competence, I can’t answer.
– Do you know, why NTV decided to turn attention to the theme of the disappeared in Belarus only now – for the first time in 10 years?
– I can’t answer. I’m just a camera operator, I have a task and I fulfil it.
– If offered to go to Minsk again, would you agree?
– Why should I deny this offer – the beautiful country, the beautiful city.
– Polite secret services...
– Yeah, polite... Very polite.