BAJ Protests Against Search at Belsat And New Criminal Case — Statement by BAJ Board

The search that last­ed for about 4 hours and left the office in com­plete mess led to the seizure of two sys­tem units, three lap­tops and all data stor­age devices.

Accord­ing to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, the search was con­duct­ed as part of the crim­i­nal case on account of dis­sem­i­na­tion of defam­a­to­ry infor­ma­tion on the chan­nel’s web­site. Jour­nal­ists believe that the ground for the pros­e­cu­tion was the mis­take made by the chan­nel in 2018, when their web­site pub­lished an arti­cle on cor­rup­tion, erro­neous­ly refer­ring to the chair­man of the State Foren­sic Exam­i­na­tions Com­mit­tee Andrei Shved.

Lat­er, the TV chan­nel pub­lished a retrac­tion and an apol­o­gy. How­ev­er, a crim­i­nal case on the account of slan­der was start­ed.

The opin­ion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has remained unchanged for such cat­e­go­ry of cas­es since 2002.

The orga­ni­za­tion stands for the decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of sev­en defama­tion arti­cles in the Crim­i­nal Code: slan­der, insult, defama­tion of the Pres­i­dent, insult of the Pres­i­dent, insult of a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus, and insult of a judge.

The use of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for pro­tec­tion of hon­or and dig­ni­ty is dis­pro­por­tion­ate. Search­es of jour­nal­ists’ homes and media offices inter­fere with the free­doms negat­ing the right of jour­nal­ists to pro­tect their sources of infor­ma­tion. In recent months, it has become almost the norm for the enforce­ment forces. In our opin­ion, such cas­es are to be heard exclu­sive­ly with­in the civ­il law process.

Inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions reg­u­lar­ly rec­om­mend to the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment to remove the above men­tioned arti­cles from the Crim­i­nal Code. Most recent­ly, such rec­om­men­da­tions were giv­en fol­low­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of Belarus report on the imple­men­ta­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights by the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee in 2018.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists urges the gov­ern­ment of Belarus:

- to imple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions in the field of free­dom of expres­sion and decrim­i­nal­ize defama­tion;

- to stop pros­e­cut­ing the media under defam­a­to­ry arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code;

- to stop the crim­i­nal case of slan­der and return the seized equip­ment to the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Bel­sat TV Chan­nel.

The Board of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Min­sk Police Raid and Search BELSAT Office on Slan­der Charges. The office has been crushed