in Belgium, a new Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Russian time…
It’s summer. Vacation time, sun, beach, sea, swimming. Men, women and children take advantage of these few weeks when time seems to stand still. The rhythm finally slows down, far from the daily routine. Not for everyone, however. On July 15, the president of the MR (Reform Movement, French-speaking liberals) Georges-Louis Bouchez created a surprise by appointing Hadja Lahbib as Sophie Wilmès’s replacement as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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Hadja Lahbib is not unknown to the general Belgian public, far from it, since she presented the television news for twenty years on the French-speaking public television channel RTBF. On the other hand, she has no political experience. But what has earned her the most critical spotlight, barely two weeks after her swearing in, is a reporting project for which she traveled to Crimea in July 2021, at the invitation of the cultural association Les saisons russes, which partially financed his trip. However, this event sponsored by Gazprom, and the organization also participated in the daughter of Vladimir Putin, is above all Russian propaganda. And to make matters worse, Hadja Lahbib went to Crimea with a visa issued by Russia.
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The report was ultimately never made. On the other hand, it was given rise to a radiophonic subject which ends with the announcement of its next broadcast, a sign that it was indeed planned, including after the return of Hadja Lahbib, that this report be produced and broadcast . The radio subject matter, meanwhile, can easily be described as Russian-indulgent, and the issue of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 is completely glossed over.
Casting error
However, the international community has never recognized this annexation and continues to consider Ukrainian Crimea as territory. And for its part, Ukrainian legislation provides for a three-year sanction of prohibition of access to Ukrainian territory for those who transit through Russia to go to Crimea.
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In short, the diplomatic crisis is not far away, and if it can finally be interrupted, it will be thanks to the commitment of the very fresh Minister Lahbib to “ further support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s military aggression “. She also took advantage of Ukrainian State Day to tell her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba “ our unwavering solidarity, our firm positions on the situation and our commitment to maintain our support “. For now, the ball is in kyiv’s court, don’t wait for the official position.
But if some obviously have a good game of criticizing what they complete as a “parachuting” or even a distressing casting error, certain questions seem to have to be clarified as to the role of RTBF in what is obviously at all minus one big clumsiness.
Responsibility of RTBF
Because it is hardly conceivable that a journalist working for the public channel acts alone, without consultation with its editorial staff, all the more so if it is a report intended to be broadcast on the said public channel. The documentary in question ultimately never saw the light of day, for lack of sufficient guarantees of independence, we learn laconically from RTBF. But why ? What happened behind the scenes, which justifies that RTBF was able to send or let one of its journalists go to Crimea in such conditions? Shouldn’t the journalist’s trip have been conditional on the prior obtaining of these guarantees of independence?
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It was to obtain more information on this aborted reporting project that the Flemish nationalist deputy Peter De Roover, leader of the N-VA group (Flemish nationalists) in the Chamber, sent an email to the general administrator of the RTBF , Jean-Paul Philippot: “ It is essential that we can determine who invited whom, under what conditions, including financially, comment on the contacts that took place and what other relevant contacts, if any, were established. »
The answer looks very much like a pirouette, since RTBF replied that ” RTBF is an autonomous public company of the French Community and does not come under the Federal State “. Certainly. But Hadja Lahbib, meanwhile, is a federal minister, and it is in this capacity that the MP is concerned about his past journalistic activities. Instead, the public channel would therefore gain by providing the required insights into what goes far beyond the individual responsibility of a journalist to engage, in reality, RTBF itself.