Human rights groups to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Belarus: it’s time to stop internet shutdowns, website blocking, anti-extremism laws

“Inter­net free­dom abus­es high­light­ed in this sub­mis­sion are an arm in the sophis­ti­cat­ed machin­ery built by the author­i­ties through­out the years of Lukashenko’s rule to muz­zle peace­ful dis­sent,” said Gul­nara Akhun­do­va, Head of Glob­al Response Depart­ment at Inter­na­tion­al Media Sup­port. “In char­ac­ter with the phys­i­cal bru­tal­i­ty dis­played against pro­test­ers in recent months, this assault on the dig­i­tal rights of Belaru­sians is undoubt­ed­ly a part of the grand scheme to silence their crit­i­cal voice.” 

The joint sub­mis­sion to the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur is part of exten­sive advo­ca­cy efforts to expose and con­demn the ongo­ing human rights abus­es active­ly per­pe­trat­ed by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, 194 days since the August 9, 2020 elec­tions — a dark day for democ­ra­cy that has been deemed nei­ther free nor fair by mul­ti­ple actors.

“While nation­al laws and judi­cia­ry have proved their inef­fec­tive­ness in main­tain­ing jus­tice in Belarus, we are rely­ing on inter­na­tion­al law and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” said Alex­ey Kozliuk, a co-founder of Human Con­stan­ta. “We reit­er­ate that pri­vate IT-com­pa­nies also have human rights respon­si­bil­i­ties and uneth­i­cal busi­ness prac­tices should not be tol­er­at­ed.”

“Author­i­ties in Belarus have a blue­print in place to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly deny peo­ple their rights to free expres­sion and assem­bly, and access to infor­ma­tion,” said Natalia Krapi­va, Tech Legal Coun­sel at Access Now. “The gov­ern­ment of Belarus, tech com­pa­nies, and oth­er Mem­ber States all have a role to play in rein­stat­ing and uphold­ing fun­da­men­tal rights. Today, we’ve laid out these mea­sures for the U.N. Spe­cial Rap­por­teur.”

The sub­mis­sion includes six tai­lored rec­om­men­da­tions for the Spe­cial Rapporteur’s con­sid­er­a­tion, specif­i­cal­ly request­ing the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, tech com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the coun­try, and oth­er Mem­ber States to take the fol­low­ing actions:

Belaru­sian Author­i­ties 

1. Imme­di­ate­ly stop and refrain from all future inter­fer­ence with the access to the inter­net, includ­ing mobile inter­net and spe­cif­ic web­sites, and pro­vide infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the orders and imple­men­ta­tion of inter­net shut­downs; and

2. Bring nation­al laws and their enforce­ment in com­pli­ance with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in order to pre­vent arbi­trary lim­i­ta­tions on the rights to free­dom of expres­sion, peace­ful assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion, and revoke “anti-extrem­ism” laws in their cur­rent form.

Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies

1. Imme­di­ate­ly stop facil­i­tat­ing inter­net shut­downs and cen­sor­ship in Belarus and com­ply with UNGP and OECD Guide­lines, includ­ing through con­test­ing the legal­i­ty of gov­ern­ment orders, pre­serv­ing and pro­vid­ing evi­dence, and pro­vid­ing effec­tive reme­dies for past dis­rup­tions; and

2. Join civ­il soci­ety and peer com­pa­nies to push back against gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship and repres­sion.

Oth­er Mem­ber States

1. Imme­di­ate­ly stop pro­vid­ing cen­sor­ship tech­nolo­gies to the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment; and

2. Ensure that com­pa­nies in their juris­dic­tions that facil­i­tate and aid cen­sor­ship, shut­downs, and oth­er abus­es abroad are held account­able.  

The sub­mis­sion builds on pre­vi­ous advo­ca­cy out­puts, includ­ing the Urgent appeal con­cern­ing inter­net ser­vice dis­rup­tions in Belarus in the con­textof the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 9 August 2020 to U.N. Spe­cial Rap­por­teurs, and the Novem­ber, 2020 Sub­mis­sion pur­suant to Human Rights Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion 45/1 to the U.N. Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus.