Belarusian MFA Ignores Journalist’s Request for Accreditation. Court Refuses to Hear Complaint

On Sep­tem­ber 12, 2019, Viteb­sk jour­nal­ist Pavel Lev­in­au applied to the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs for tem­po­rary accred­i­ta­tion as a jour­nal­ist of the Viteb­sk Couri­er, a pub­li­ca­tion reg­is­tered in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion.

Lev­in­au request­ed accred­i­ta­tion from Sep­tem­ber 23 to Novem­ber 23, 2019. The Min­istry had 20 days to make the deci­sion.  How­ev­er, Lev­in­au has not received either pos­i­tive, or neg­a­tive deci­sion.

He tried to chal­lenge the MFA’s inac­tion in court. How­ev­er, nei­ther Lenin­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk, nor Min­sk city court (Feb­ru­ary 20) set the mat­ter for hear­ings. 

The judi­cial author­i­ties con­tin­ue to insist: courts have no juris­dic­tion over the MFA’s activ­i­ties relat­ed to accred­i­ta­tion of for­eign media jour­nal­ists.

BAJ took part in the process and insists that the Min­istry has vio­lat­ed the rights of a jour­nal­ist.

The cas­es of MFA deny­ing accred­i­ta­tion to jour­nal­ists are sys­temic in nature. Bel­sat TV chan­nel (Poland) has unsuc­cess­ful­ly applied for accred­i­ta­tion of its jour­nal­ists almost every year, while Radio Racy­ja (Poland) reporter  Vik­tar Parfio­nen­ka has been denied accred­i­ta­tion 11 times.

For BAJ state­ment on the case of Paval  Lev­in­au click HERE (Russ­ian only).