E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #2(58) (January – June 2019)

The 2nd Euro­pean Games were held in the cap­i­tal city of Min­sk on June 21–30, 2019. 
 
On the eve of the inter­na­tion­al sport event, a human rights orga­ni­za­tion Human Rights Watch called upon the Olympic offi­cials to guar­an­tee safe­ty of jour­nal­ists in Min­sk: “Belaru­sian author­i­ties have car­ried out con­cert­ed attacks on media free­dom over the past two years that direct­ly affect the cli­mate in which news media will cov­er the coun­try before, dur­ing, and after the upcom­ing Euro­pean Games, Human Rights Watch said today. The Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees (EOC) should ensure that all jour­nal­ists, for­eign and local, cov­er­ing the 2019 Euro­pean Games in Belarus can oper­ate free from harass­ment.” 

Despite the fears of human rights activists and jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions, none of seri­ous con­flicts relat­ed to the imple­men­ta­tion of jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties occured dur­ing the Euro­pean Games. More­over, the pres­sure on free­lance jour­nal­ists had decreased by the begin­ning of the inter­na­tion­al sport event. In par­tic­u­lar, such jour­nal­ists were fined 38 times on court deci­sions for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out press cre­den­tials with­in the peri­od since Jan­u­ary till the end of May 2019. How­ev­er, none of such cas­es have been reg­is­tered since May 31, 2019. 

Nev­er­the­less, the total sum of fines, imposed on jour­nal­ists on arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of the Belaru­sian Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es totaled 35827.5 BYN that equals around USD 18,000. 

Para­graph 2 of arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es envis­ages legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for the ille­gal pro­duc­tion and/or dis­sem­i­na­tion of media prod­ucts. Accord­ing to BAJ, jour­nal­ists can­not be pre­sent­ed the charges, since edi­to­ri­als pro­duce mass media pro­duc­tion and press dis­trib­u­tors dis­sem­i­nate it. More­over, the charges vio­late inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions of Belarus in the field of free­dom of expres­sion.

In most cas­es, the offi­cial author­i­ties pros­e­cute the jour­nal­ists, coop­er­at­ing with Bel­sat TV chan­nel. Being an inte­gral part of Pol­ish TV, the TV broad­cast­er is pro­mot­ed as the first inde­pen­dent TV chan­nel of Belarus.

The prob­lem of pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists on admin­is­tra­tive charges has been includ­ed into the agen­da of the Dia­logue on Human Rights between the EU and Belarus since sev­er­al years. 

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers on dif­fer­ent grounds was among the main prob­lems in the field of free­dom of expres­sion in Belarus in the first half-year 2019. 

CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF JOURNALISTS AND BLOGGERS

The guilty verdict in relation to TUT.BY Chief Editor Maryna Zolatava and completion of ‘BelTA case’

On March 4, 2019, the Zavod­s­ki City Dis­trict court of Min­sk found the edi­tor-in-chief of the lead­ing Belaru­sian Inter­net por­tal TUT.BY Mary­na Zola­to­va guilty of inac­tion as an offi­cial (Arti­cle 425 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus) and sen­tenced her to a fine of 7 650 Belaru­sian rubles (about $ 3,800 at the rate of the Nation­al Bank of Belarus). More­over, the court urged her to cov­er the pro­ce­dur­al costs of BelTA, con­nect­ed with the lit­i­ga­tion, in the amount of 6 000 Belaru­sian rubles (about $3,000).  

M. Zolatava’s con­vic­tion com­plet­ed the so-called ‘BelTA case’, which had been filed in the sum­mer of 2018.

The case ini­ti­a­tion was caused by the unsanc­tioned use of pass­words to the news string of BelTA state news agency by some jour­nal­ists. (The BelTA mate­ri­als could be accessed on the Web-site of the agency free of charge at that. The per­se­cut­ed mass media pub­lished the mate­ri­als in ques­tion with due con­sid­er­a­tion of BelTA rules. The pass­words to the News String weren’t changed by BelTA for years.)

The edi­to­r­i­al offices of Bela­PAN News Agency, TUT.BY Web-por­tal and a num­ber of oth­er media as well as pri­vate apart­ments of some jour­nal­ists, employed by the media, were sub­ject­ed to search­es on August 7–9, 2018. 

Pro­fes­sion­al tech­ni­cal equip­ment and infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers were seized dur­ing the search­es. Around 20 jour­nal­ists were detained and inter­ro­gat­ed by legal inves­ti­ga­tors. Eight of them were sent to cus­tody for the peri­od of up to three days. Crim­i­nal cas­es were filed in rela­tion to 15 jour­nal­ists on the charges, envis­aged by arti­cle 349 part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘the unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion, com­mit­ted out of mer­ce­nary or oth­er per­son­al inter­est.)

The legal inves­ti­ga­tors’ actions evoked protests on the part of human rights defend­ers, jour­nal­ist orga­ni­za­tions and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies, includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Union, and OSCE.

The crim­i­nal cas­es against 14 jour­nal­ists were ter­mi­nat­ed at the end of 2018. The media work­ers were brought to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty in the form of large fines and actu­al com­pul­sion to pay com­pen­sa­tion to BelTA and the “SB. Belarus today” news­pa­per, pub­lished by the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion.

The TUT.BY Chief Edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va appeared to be the only con­vict­ed per­son on the ‘BelTA case’, who was brought to crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty. 

“Con­vic­tion & fin­ing of Mari­na Zolo­to­va, edi­tor of TUT.BY, along with dis­pro­por­tion­ate mea­sures of law enforce­ment against Bela­PAN & TUT.BY agen­cies in 2018, may exert chill­ing effect on inde­pen­dent media in Belarus”, not­ed Harlem Désir, OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media.

“The way the author­i­ties per­sist­ed with this case, which was out of all pro­por­tion from the out­set, shows their deter­mi­na­tion to under­mine the state media’s rivals”, not­ed ‘Reporters with­out bor­ders’ react­ing to the court ver­dict in rela­tion to M. Zolata­va.

The Chair­per­son of the Supreme Court of Belarus Valiantsin Sukala not­ed that the increased pub­lic atten­tion to the tri­al against Zolata­va, includ­ing the pres­ence of diplo­mats and reporters, could be regard­ed as indi­rect pres­sure on the court.

The case of blogger Andrei Pauk

On March 20, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus used its offi­cial Telegram chan­nel to announce the ini­ti­a­tion of a crim­i­nal case under arti­cle 340 part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus on the fact of a delib­er­ate­ly false report of min­ing a dis­trict exec­u­tive com­mit­tee in the urban set­tle­ment of Akt­siabrs­ki. A local blog­ger Andrei Pauk was pre­sent­ed as the sus­pect in the case, since his mobile phone num­ber was indi­cat­ed in the mes­sage about the min­ing.

A.Pauk was detained on March 20, 2019. His house was searched and his com­put­er and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment were seized. Accord­ing to legal inves­ti­ga­tors, A. Pauk sent an email to the Homiel Region­al Branch of the Min­istry of Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tions with a mes­sage about the min­ing of the Akt­siabrs­ki Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, which is the local gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ty. A.Pauk was released after the inter­ro­ga­tion pro­ce­dure. The crim­i­nal case in rela­tion to him was ter­mi­nat­ed and all tech­ni­cal equip­ment was returned to him one month lat­er.

The sto­ry with false min­ing repeat­ed in May 2019. An e‑mail mes­sage about the ‘min­ing’ of the court build­ing in the city of Mazyr was received by the Min­istry of Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tions. A.Pauk was con­sid­ered as the sus­pect on the case, since his mobile phone num­ber was men­tioned in the mes­sage. 

 A.Pauk appealed to the Office of Legal Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee and the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al with a request to find the per­son, who makes use of his per­son­al data to dis­sem­i­nate false mes­sages about the ‘min­ing’ of gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions. 

Andrei Pauk is a famous Belaru­sian video blog­ger. He runs the ‘Rud­abel­skaya Pakazukha’ blog in the social media, where he crit­i­cizes the local author­i­ties. 

Search on Libel Case in Con­nec­tion with Pub­li­ca­tion on the Web-site of ‘Bel­sat’

On April 9, 2019, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Min­sk Legal Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment con­duct­ed a search in the premis­es, which are used for their work by the Belaru­sian team of ‘Bel­sat’ satel­lite TV chan­nel. Accord­ing to the Legal Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, the search was car­ried out in the frame­work of a crim­i­nal case, filed on the fact of libel (part 2 of arti­cle 188 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus) on the web­site of ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel. The ‘Bel­sat’ man­age­ment explained that the rea­son for the ini­ti­a­tion of the case was a tech­ni­cal error in a Web-arti­cle on the alleged cor­rup­tion in 2018. Andrei Shved, the chair­man of the State Com­mit­tee of Judi­cial Exper­tise, was mis­tak­en­ly men­tioned there.

“We quick­ly set the record straight, pub­lished a refu­ta­tion and offered our apolo­gies to Gen­er­al Andrei Shved whom the mis­take con­cerned. The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee ran a check and found no grounds for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion found. How­ev­er, in Jan­u­ary 2018, the Prosecutor’s Office launched a crim­i­nal case over the same sit­u­a­tion”, not­ed the ‘Bel­sat’ man­age­ment.

Fol­low­ing the four-hour-long search, the legal inves­ti­ga­tors seized around 10 infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers, includ­ing three lap­tops and two hard dri­ves. 

The Legal Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee returned the pre­vi­ous­ly seized tech­ni­cal equip­ment and infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers to the ‘Bel­sat’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives two days lat­er, on April 11, 2019.  

Criminal Conviction of Blogger Siarhei Piatrukhin 

The Lenin­s­ki City Disc­trict Court of Brest found a blog­ger Siarhei Pia­trukhin guilty under Art. 188, part 2 (“Slan­der”) and arti­cle 189, part 2 (“Insult”) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus on April 18, 2019.

Four offi­cers of the Lenin­sky City Dis­trict Police Depart­ment of Brest were regard­ed as vic­tims in the case. The court imposed a fine on S. Pia­trukhin in the amount of 360 basic units (9 180 BYN that equals approx. USD 4,600). Also, the judge urged the blog­ger to cov­er moral dam­ages to the police offi­cers Siarhei Ihnat­siuk, Dzmit­ry Yaku­she­vich, Ihar Haliantsich, and Siarhei Tokun in the total sum of 7 500 BYN that equals approx. USD 3,750. More­over, the blog­ger was oblig­ed to cov­er the fees, which had been paid by the vic­tims to their attor­neys and the court in the amount of 1 000 BYN. 

The crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion against the blog­ger was rea­soned by the video footage, which had been pro­duced in March 2018 and pre­sent­ed on YouTube. S. Pia­trukhin stat­ed in the videos that a num­ber of offi­cers from Lenin­s­ki City Dis­trict Police Depart­ment had rela­tion to a phys­i­cal attack on a cit­i­zen P. Kamin­s­ki, who appealed to law-enforce­ment bod­ies with a demand to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent and told the blog­ger about it. 

14 Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions issued a demand before the tri­al start to ter­mi­nate the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in rela­tion to S.Piatrukhin. Accord­ing to them, the per­se­cu­tion was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and asso­ci­at­ed exclu­sive­ly with imple­men­ta­tion of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and inter­na­tion­al norms in the field of human rights and lib­er­ties, includ­ing the free­dom of expres­sion as well as the free­dom to col­lect and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion. On July 5, 2019, the Judi­cial Pan­el on Crim­i­nal Cas­es at Brest Region­al Court upheld the deci­sion of the first instance court with­out changes.

RATING LISTS, INDEXES, STATISTICS 

Belarus held the 153rd posi­tion among 180 states of the world in the annu­al 2019 World Press Free­dom Index, pub­lished by the inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion ‘Reporters with­out Bor­ders’ in April 2019. This year, the coun­try man­aged to climb two posi­tions high­er in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous year. 

“Belarus’s posi­tion in the 2019 World Press free­dom Index seems to sug­gest an improve­ment but, in real­i­ty, it reflects the fact that the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened dra­mat­i­cal­ly in so many oth­er coun­tries, as well as the fact that the record num­ber of arrests in Belarus in 2017 was not repeat­ed in 2018.”
  
As before, the inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Free­dom House con­tin­ued to clas­si­fy the Repub­lic of Belarus as a non-free, but not the worst case coun­try in its annu­al Free­dom in the World 2019 rat­ing list. How­ev­er, accord­ing to the Free­dom House experts’ con­clu­sions, the degree of mass media free­dom in Belarus shrank to the min­i­mum lev­el in 2018. 

“The score declined from 1 to 0 due to a crack­down on jour­nal­ists that includ­ed new restric­tions on online media, a crim­i­nal case against jour­nal­ists accused of ille­gal­ly obtain­ing con­tent from the state news agency, and the fre­quent deten­tion and issu­ing of fines against reporters in con­nec­tion with their work”.