Gigin on blocking of Belarusian channels: YouTube is organizing an information blockade

The removal of Belarusian media (BELTA, STV, and ONT channels) from international platforms once again raises questions about freedom of speech and equal access to a global audience. Such steps are increasingly viewed not as isolated decisions, but as part of a larger Western information war, according to Vadim Gigin, member of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus and Director General of the National Library.

"The removal of a Belarusian media channel from YouTube is a clearly unfriendly move, and one made in such a brazen, arrogant, and provocative manner, generally common in the collective West. And this isn't the first time we've encountered this. They behaved similarly in the West in 2020 and 2022. Systematic efforts are underway to prevent our point of view from entering the wider information space, the global information space," noted Vadim Gigin. "And we saw this before 2020. Information from Belarus was presented in a distorted light. Our journalists were often prevented from fully working in Western countries. Contacts between representatives of the Belarusian and Western publics were restricted. This is a unified approach to creating an information blockade, or at least an imitation of an information blockade."