On 30 July, 2007, at 19.35, the video film OF ATN “Belovezhskoye Safari” was shown on the first channel of Belorusian government television. This video film is the aspect of Aleksandr Zimovsky’s project the “National Parks of Belarus”.
For the almost the whole half-hour, viewers (among which there were children!) became acquainted with the industry of slaughtering wild animals for entertainment.
And the most terrible, is that all this occurred not in some series about hunting, but in the world famous national park Belovezhskaya Forest/Białowieża Forest. The creators of the film (author of scenario Denis Kur’yan) said in detail, and without being troubled, how to kill deer and about wild Kabanov foreign “money-bags” – hunters in the state nature-conservation establishment “Belovezhskaya Forest”. Lovers of “sharp” sensations obtained the excellent possibility to take pleasure in the scene of attacking injured animals with hunting dogs. But the most secret place in the national park “Belovezhskaya Forest”, the subject of the film, was not a forbidden zone with wild nature, but instead, the depository of hunting weapon for the local and foreign “hunters”.
In this way, Belarus proved to be “more advanced than the whole of Europe”. That which western civilization refused many decades ago (the murder of wild animals in its national parks), in Belarus is advertised without constraint and propagandized to the entire country. Including frank scenes of torture and brutal treatment of wild animals, that teach children violence and murder of our smaller brothers. In Europe, the demonstration of such scenes would immediately create a national scandal and judicial actions against those who allowed abuse of animals, while in Belarus on the main state television channel, this is elevated into the rank of state policy. We, citizens of Belarus, must stop in the national MEDIA the advertisement of the murder of animals in the separately guarded natural territories. National MEDIA are not place for the advertisement of hunting for trophies, which is in the contemporary world itself amoral and an ecologically harmful occupation. All the more, when this hunting occurs with the disturbance of the principles of ethics, morals and ideology in the separately guarded natural territories. The workers of the nature-conservation establishment, those who must first of all defend the moral, ecological and juridical principles of the protection of wild animals, in reality are executors and propagandists of the vicious ideology of commercial hunting.
We are required to end the demonstration of this and other similar films, which popularize the vicious ideology of potrebitel’stva in the state nature-conservation establishments!
Instead of contributing to ecological education, to the solution of the problems of the ecologically inadmissible and scientifically unjustified conducting of economic activity in the forbidden natural territories, the government television advertises commercial huntings in the national park. Disgrace!
We request all conscious citizens of Belarus and international friends to support our initiative and to direct your letters of protest toward the Belorussian television:
Agency of television news (ATN), Belteleradiokompaniya, ul. Makayenka, 9 MINSK 220807, Republic of Belarus Tel: 375 263 82 58 Fax: 375 263 15 81.
e-mail: atn@tvr.by
This is necessary in order to end the advertisement of the murder of animals in the guarded natural territories. An example text of a letter (in the Russian and the Belorussian languages), which you can edit at your discretion, can be copied from here (http://bp21.org.by/ru/docs/antihunt.doc).
Inez Zenina, biologist, g.Turov, the Gomel region
Georgiy kozul’ko, k.b.n., the coordinator of project “BP-2Y century”, The belovezhskaya forest