BAJ and media urge authorities to withdraw lawsuit against TUT.BY and stop pressure on media

Joint state­ment of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and media

On Sep­tem­ber 18, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion filed a law­suit to the Eco­nom­ic Court to shut down “TUT.BY” as an online pub­li­ca­tion. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion claims, the grounds for the law­suit are four warn­ings “due to vio­la­tion of arti­cles 4 and 49 of the Law on Mass Media» by TUT.BY. The warn­ings were issued by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion itself, the facts of vio­la­tion of the law were not estab­lished by court, while the dead­line for the appeal against three of the warn­ings has not yet expired, although the Min­istry claims the oppo­site in its press release.

By his order of Sep­tem­ber 29, 2020, Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Ihar Lut­s­ki sus­pend­ed pro­duc­tion of the online pub­li­ca­tion “TUT.BY” from Octo­ber 1, 2020 until Decem­ber 30, 2020.

In this regard, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and Belaru­sian media state the fol­low­ing:

Yes, the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion allows the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to sus­pend pro­duc­tion of a pub­li­ca­tion or to file a law­suit to shut it down. Par­tial­ly, this was bal­anced out by the Min­istry’s pol­i­cy to restrain from abus­ing these pow­ers in recent years. Still, on the ground of its law­suits courts ruled to close Svabo­da news­pa­per in 1997, Paho­nia news­pa­per — in 2001, and Zho­da news­pa­per in 2006. In 2011, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion filed a law­suit to close Nar­o­d­naya Volya and Nasha Niva news­pa­pers, but with­drew it fol­low­ing the response of Belaru­sian soci­ety and inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.  It is note­wor­thy that almost all law­suits to shut down mass media were linked to pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, this way or anoth­er. Mean­while, it is the free­dom of polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion that is most pro­tect­ed by inter­na­tion­al law. The pres­sure on TUT.BY and the restric­tion of access to inde­pen­dent web­sites, car­ried out by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, con­sti­tute a gross vio­la­tion of the free­dom of expres­sion guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus

Hin­drances for most pop­u­lar media in Belarus not only vio­late the free­dom of report­ing, but also restrict the right of peo­ple to receive infor­ma­tion on the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try and demon­strate dis­re­gard for its cit­i­zens. More­over, restric­tions on seri­ous media resources would inevitably lead to a sit­u­a­tion where cit­i­zens, unable to receive ver­i­fied infor­ma­tion from the media, would turn to unver­i­fied infor­ma­tion, rumors or pro­pa­gan­da (includ­ing the sources under­min­ing the infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus).

We:

- urge the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus to with­draw the law­suit to close TUT.BY online pub­li­ca­tion and can­cel the deci­sion to sus­pend it;

- demand to revoke the deci­sion to restrict access to web­sites cov­er­ing socio-polit­i­cal prob­lems in the coun­try, and to remove obsta­cles in the pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of inde­pen­dent print media;

- call to put an imme­di­ate end to the harass­ment of jour­nal­ists and the media for doing their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties and to lift all uncon­sti­tu­tion­al restric­tions on free­dom of speech in Belarus.

Octo­ber 1, 2020

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Onliner.by

Nasha Niva

Citydog.by

Bela­PAN News Agency

Euro­pean Radio for Belarus

RFE/RL

Bel­Gaze­ta

Svo­bod­nye Novosti Plus

Ejed­nevnik

Novy Chas

REFORM.by

Sal­i­dar­nasts

Asso­ci­a­tion of Region­al Press Pub­lish­ers «Unit­ed Media»

The joint state­ment is open for oth­er media To sign the state­ment, please email us at press@baj.by. The state­ment will be sent to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus and oth­er state bod­ies