[A-DX] Offener Brief von Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: "Why RFE/RL Matters"

Martin Prochazka via groups.io
Dienstag, 25. März 2025, 12:43 Uhr

Liebe Liste!

Der Europa-Redakteur von Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Rikard 
Jozwiak, hat sich in einem offenen Brief unter dem Titel "Why RFE/RL 
Matters" zur aktuellen lage des Senders geäußert 
(https://www.rferl.org/a/rferl-usagm-trump-eastern-europe-kari-lake/33357663.html) 


Er beschreibt unter "Radio Free Europe And Me" auch noch sehr 
persönlich, wie seine Familie im kommunistischen Polen westliche Sender 
hörte und schließlich in den Westen flüchtete.

Meine eigenen Beobachtungen: Momentan sendet RFE/RL zumindest online 
weiter und meine abonnierten Podcasts werden weiterhin geliefert. 
Allerdings wurden offenbar einige Sendungen gestrichen, bei denen freie 
Mitarbeiter gebraucht wurden, etwa das exzellente russsichsprachige 
Nachrichtenjournal "Vremja Svobode". (Mein Herz blutet, das ist wirklich 
ein gewaltiger Verlust, gerade jetzt!) Die Internetseite wird mehrmals 
pro Tag aktualisiert, nicht nur mit Nachrichten und Agenturmeldungen, 
sondern auch mit Hintergrundbeiträgen.

Im aktuellen Spiegel ist ein Beitrag, in dem es heißt, der Sender habe 
noch bis Ende März Geld. Man versucht jedenfalls das Ende 
hinauszuziehen, bis entweder die Klagen vor Gericht oder die Pläne der 
EU zur Finanzierung des Senders eine Perspektive eröffnen.

Bei der Voice of America sieht es deutlich schlechter aus. Der 
russischsprachige  TV-Sender "Настоящее время" der VoA sendet statt den 
Nachrichtensendungen nur noch Wiederholungen von Dokumentationen vom 
Band. Die Website wird allerdings noch täglich aktualisiert, auch mit 
längeren Beiträgen und Analysen, zum Beispiel heute über die Inflation 
in Russland 
(https://www.currenttime.tv/a/inflyatsiya-v-rossii/33355338.html) oder 
gestern über die düsteren demographischen Perspektiven der Ukraine 
(https://www.currenttime.tv/a/kak-voyna-izmenila-demografiyu-ukrainy/33354244.html 
Wer den Browser Google Chrome verwendet, kann sich die Beiträge auf 
Knopfdruck übersetzen lassen).

Liebe Grüße an Euch alle!

Martin

The Briefing: Radio Free Europe And Me

Readers of the Wider Europe newsletter have likely noticed the uncertain 
times facing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) at the moment. On 
March 15, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order 
drastically reducing the size of RFE/RL's overseer, the United States 
Agency for Global Media (USAGM). That was followed by a letter from Kari 
Lake, a senior adviser to the USAGM CEO, notifying that the 
Congress-approved grant that funds us has been terminated.

Despite this, we are still operating. The radio has sued both USAGM and 
Kari Lake over these moves, and there has been talk of possible funding 
from the EU.

Given the circumstances, I’m going to break from the usual format and 
share a story I’ve never written down before -- about what RFE/RL means 
for me.

Behind The Iron Curtain
My father was born in Poznan, in western Poland, in 1939, just before 
the Nazi German invasion. With his father serving in the Polish army and 
later taken as a prisoner of war and his mother imprisoned for resisting 
the Nazi regime, my father spent most of the war in the care of his 
older brother and a Swedish Red Cross nurse -- a connection that proves 
significant later on.

After the war, my grandparents and their young son -- my father -- moved 
to the northern Polish port city of Gdansk in search of better job 
prospects. At this point in time, Sweden had one of Europe’s biggest 
merchant fleets and, against the grim backdrop of war-ravaged Poland, 
their gleaming ships in the harbor made quite an impression on my father.

Like many people stuck behind the Iron Curtain, my father listened to 
“the voices” -- that was what people called radio broadcasts from the 
BBC World Service, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe. People 
listened secretly, of course, holding a transistor radio up to their 
ears in bed at night. They were dark times, with censorship and 
crackdowns, but for my father those broadcasts were a godsend. They 
informed and they inspired, and, in my father’s case, convinced him to 
flee -- to the West, to Sweden.

Crossing The Icy Sea
His first attempt, when he was 17, was to try to walk from Poland across 
the ice-covered Baltic Sea to reach the Danish island of Bornholm. The 
plan was then to continue to Sweden. Winters were much harsher in those 
days and ice really did cover large parts of the Baltic, but it was 
still a foolhardy plan. Icebreaker ships made crossing on foot almost 
impossible and he was forced to return -- beaten but not discouraged.

The next year, he tried again, this time attempting to canoe across the 
sea with a friend. The teenage boys were caught by a Polish ship and 
turned over to the authorities. Instead of Scandinavia, they ended up in 
a prison cell back in Poland. Interrogated and beaten, they admitted to 
being CIA spies and got sentenced to 10 years.

Luckily, in the late 1950s, there were liberal reforms under way in 
Poland, and they were released after a year. With my father's dream of a 
life in the West now on hold, he got an education and met my mother. 
They married and both secured jobs in what were then the Lenin shipyards 
in Gdansk. Through all that time, he still listened to "the voices," the 
jazz, the rock 'n' roll that managed to escape the jammers.

Third Time Lucky
My parents' dreams of a new life abroad resurfaced, and, in 1971, they 
went to Yugoslavia, one of the few countries they could travel to at the 
time. On a beach in Pula, in today's Croatia, they saw a German couple 
that reminded them of themselves. The man was dark-haired like my 
father; the woman was blonde like my mother.

With nothing to lose, they walked up to them and asked if they were from 
West Germany, which they were. They then made a request so bold I still 
can’t quite believe how they had the audacity: they asked the German 
couple if they could take on their identities. And, astonishingly, the 
Germans said yes. (Apparently helping “easterners” in such a way was not 
uncommon during the Cold War.)

So, with the couple's IDs and also their car, they drove over the border 
to Italy. The German couple then went to the closest consulate saying 
that they had been mugged. After a year as political refugees in Italy, 
they were allowed to go to Sweden to seek residency and later citizenship.

Because of the war, my father grew up hating Germans -- so it was a 
sweet irony that the act of supreme generosity that gave him his freedom 
came from a German. They stayed in touch, sending the German couple a 
card every Christmas.

Closing The Circle
I was born in Sweden in the 1980s, in the peace and prosperity my 
parents could only dream of when they were young. Like many others from 
my generation, I studied abroad, spoke a few European languages, and 
traveled freely and widely across the continent, believing in the idea 
of a “common European space.” So it made a certain sense when I ended up 
in Brussels.

When I got an offer in early 2011 to try out as a freelance Brussels 
reporter for RFE/RL, I knew it was no ordinary job offer. After being 
brought up on tales of RFE/RL’s significance, I felt like I was closing 
a family circle.

When I started, in early 2011, the big news was the fraudulent 
presidential election in Belarus that had taken place in December the 
previous year and the subsequent crackdown of demonstrators taking to 
the streets. The EU was imposing sanctions on Aleksandr Lukashenko’s 
regime, and I threw myself into reporting the story from Brussels. I've 
been reporting about the EU and NATO ever since.

Some things never change. Today (March 25), Lukashenko is being 
inaugurated for his seventh term and he is still facing EU sanctions. 
Under his repressive rule, there are an estimated 1,500 political 
prisoners in the country. One of them is my colleague, RFE/RL journalist 
Ihar Losik, who has been behind bars since 2020. Another colleague, 
Andrey Kuznechyk,was released earlier this year from a Belarusian prison.

When I think of Ihar and Andrey -- along with Vladyslav Yesypenko, an 
RFE/RL contributor who is jailed in Russia-occupied Crimea -- I can't 
help thinking of my father’s story and everything he did to live a free 
life.

We reach some 50 million people each week in places where media freedom 
doesn’t exist, is severely tested, or in environments flooded with 
disinformation. RFE/RL still matters, just as it did for my parents back 
in communist Poland. Just as it does for Andrey, Ihar, and Vladyslav -- 
and all the people they reached.

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @..., or on e-mail at 
jozwiakr@...

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak