BAJ: Stop attack on TUT.BY and other media resources

Statement

On the morn­ing of May 18 the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment burst into the homes of edi­tors and jour­nal­ists of the most pop­u­lar Belaru­sian por­tal TUT.BY, as well as AV.BY. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion blocked the web­site right away.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists con­sid­ers it a fur­ther attack on free speech. For many years, the gov­ern­ment has been using eco­nom­ic crime alle­ga­tions as a pre­text for pros­e­cu­tion and repres­sion of human rights defend­ers, media, and inde­pen­dent trade unions.

This is not the first attempt to put pres­sure on the largest and most pop­u­lar news por­tal in Belarus. In August 2018, sev­er­al TUT.BY edi­tors were pros­e­cut­ed under the so-called «BelTA case», and its chief edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va was con­vict­ed in ear­ly 2019  At the end of 2020, TUT.BY was deprived of the media sta­tus, while dif­fer­ent offi­cials repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to block access to it.

Today’s actions against the largest and most pop­u­lar news out­let in the coun­try just fol­low the tar­get­ted gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to curb the spread of uncen­sored infor­ma­tion in the coun­try. Fol­low­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020, dozens of news web­sites and media were blocked, and a num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions were forced to stop pub­lish­ing. As of the morn­ing of May 18, there are 16 jour­nal­ists and media pro­fes­sion­als behind bars, 11 of them face crim­i­nal charges.

A week ago, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media sec­tor signed a joint state­ment «Stop the witch-hunt!». Per­se­cu­tion of TUT.BY and AV.BY shows that this call has not yet been heard.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists calls on author­i­ties to imme­di­ate­ly stop the attack on TUT.BY, AV.BY, RABOTA.BY and end repres­sion against jour­nal­ists and media in Belarus.