What Belarus and Brussels Discuss in Human Rights

“The meet­ing of Belarus and EU rep­re­sen­ta­tives last­ed all day; rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il soci­ety were able to speak at one ses­sion which last­ed two hours,” says Andrei Bas­tunets.

At the ses­sion, three issues were raised: free­dom of speech, free­dom of assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tions, defense of vul­ner­a­ble groups of pop­u­la­tion and gen­der equal­i­ty.

“We dis­cussed changes that have or have not tak­en place since the last coor­di­na­tion meet­ing between Belarus and the EU in April. EU rep­re­sen­ta­tives were well famil­iar with the fig­ures of BAJ mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice. I spoke about two lev­els of prob­lems we are fac­ing now. The first one is deten­tions of jour­nal­ists, fines for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media. Indeed, jour­nal­ists have not been detained any longer after the protest actions [in March].  How­ev­er, the court rul­ings have not been reviewed; cas­sa­tion appeals have been dis­missed even in the most obvi­ous cas­es, like Ali­ak­san­dr Barazenka’s arrest. Although the process of deten­tion was record­ed live – how he was record­ing, how he intro­duced, how he was accom­pa­nied to the police van – the judges found it bet­ter to ignore it as evi­dence.

Cer­tain­ly, I told about the new admin­is­tra­tive case against Ali­ak­san­dr – this time about vio­la­tion of trade­mark copy­right. I do not know how this “vio­la­tion” is going to be proved in court, as the jour­nal­ist does not use the trade­mark any­how in the points that are incrim­i­nat­ed to him. How­ev­er, after the March events I do not feel opti­mistic about how the case will be han­dled.

I again under­lined the absur­di­ty of the sit­u­a­tion when Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are called to be for­eign ones and required to apply for accred­i­ta­tion – mean­while they can­not get it accord­ing to law at all as accred­i­ta­tion is grant­ed only to jour­nal­ists of mass media, and not to free­lancers. Arti­cle 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code had not been applied for almost a year – from April 2016 to March 2017. But then the author­i­ties resumed the ear­li­er prac­tice. More­over, they expand­ed it. Now the arti­cle is applied against blog­gers who post their video on social nets. Such inci­dents took place in Orsha and in Homel.

I could not help men­tion­ing the crim­i­nal case against the Belaru­sian colum­nists for Russ­ian out­lets like Reg­num. They have been in prison for over 7 months, the case has not moved from the dead point. Though I do not share their point of view, even oppose it, I thing that restric­tion of free­dom for speak­ing out one’s view, be it unpleas­ant or shock­ing, — if it does not have incite­ment for vio­lence – this is a dis­pro­por­tion­ate mea­sure.

All these prob­lems lie on the sur­face. They are easy to solve, it requires only polit­i­cal will. Which is proved by the sit­u­a­tion with sub­scrip­tion in Bel­posh­ta and Sayuz­druk when the news­pa­pers who had been denied ser­vice for “dis­putes of econ­o­my sub­jects”, but the dis­putes turned out to be eas­i­ly sol­u­ble.”

“Of course, fun­da­men­tal prob­lems – leg­is­la­tion in the sphere of free­dom of expres­sion and the government’s view of the role and tasks of the media – can­not be solved that eas­i­ly. But the way starts with the first step. And solv­ing these first-lev­el prob­lems, which I men­tioned above, can indi­cate that the dia­logue between Belarus and the EU is main­tained not for its own sake, but for the move­ment towards demo­c­ra­t­ic inde­pen­dent state based on the rule of law.”

Accord­ing to the EU Exter­nal Action press release, the EU del­e­ga­tion was led by Thomas Mayr-Hart­ing, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Europe and Cen­tral Asia of the Euro­pean Exter­nal Action Ser­vice (EEAS) and includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the EEAS and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. The Belaru­sian del­e­ga­tion was led by Oleg Kravchenko, Deputy For­eign Min­is­ter of the Repub­lic of Belarus and includ­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs and Min­istry of Jus­tice. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Euro­pean Union Mem­ber States observed the talks. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety and non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in parts of the dia­logue.

The next meet­ing with­in the Human Rights Dia­logue is expect­ed in 2018.