BAJ protests against gross violations of journalists’ and media rights during and after the presidential elections

With the start of the elec­tion cam­paign on May 8, and until August 11, BAJ has not­ed 133 cas­es of seri­ous vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights (deten­tions, arrests, fines, and beat­ings). In addi­tion, at least 10 crim­i­nal cas­es have been start­ed against pop­u­lar blog­gers and admin­is­tra­tors of Telegram chan­nels.

The pres­sure on jour­nal­ists has grown stronger in the final stages of the elec­tions and after them. The author­i­ties pre­ven­tive­ly detained and took into cus­tody 13 jour­nal­ists before the elec­tion.

The jour­nal­ists have been sent to serve short terms in prison on trumped up charges. More­over, the police orga­nized a provo­ca­tion against Alexan­der Burak­ou Sr: they claim he pushed a woman when leav­ing the police sta­tion and charged him with dis­or­der­ly con­duct.

Right before the elec­tion — on August 7 and 9 — the police detained two groups of jour­nal­ists: for­eign reporters of the Cur­rent Time and TV Rain (the lat­ter crew was detained in a bru­tal way  — the police knocked them down and kept them with their faces on the pave­ment). They were expelled from the coun­try for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

Mean­while, BAJ knows of about 30 cas­es when jour­nal­ists of var­i­ous for­eign media applied to the MFA for a tem­po­rary accred­i­ta­tion but have not heard back with­in 20 days envis­aged by the law. That is, the gov­ern­ment has inten­tion­al­ly pre­vent­ed them from work­ing legal­ly.

On 9 August, many jour­nal­ists were forced out from the polling sta­tions, although Belarus’ leg­is­la­tion allows them to report from polling sta­tions with­out restric­tions. BAJ knows of 22 cas­es when jour­nal­ists were detained on the Elec­tion Day. Some of the deten­tions were bru­tal. The police con­tin­ues to detain jour­nal­ists dur­ing the fol­low-up protests.

BAJ knows of at least 7 jour­nal­ists who have been severe­ly beat­en and injured by police.

On August 10 Nasha Niva jour­nal­ist Natalia Lub­neuskaya was injured by a rub­ber bul­let. The jour­nal­ists present on the scene believe the police tar­get­ed them with the shoot­ing despite the fact that they were clear­ly marked with press vests and badges.

The Inter­net in Belarus is com­plete­ly or par­tial­ly down since August 9. The major­i­ty of news web­sites are blocked.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists:

- states mass vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ and media rights dur­ing the whole peri­od of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion 2020. This is a gross vio­la­tion of the free­dom of speech and trans­paren­cy of the elec­tion process;

- calls on the author­i­ties to stop vio­lat­ing the rights of jour­nal­ists and media, let alone the vio­lence against jour­nal­ists, as well as cit­i­zens who express their protest in a peace­ful way; and

- demands to iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble for vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ and media rights and hold them account­able.

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2020 (chart)