E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #3(43) (July – September 2015)

“It is at least irre­spon­si­ble to talk about the absence of free­dom of speech in Belarus nowa­days”

Liliya Ananich, Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus

                “The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment… expects the author­i­ties to stop the harass­ment of inde­pen­dent         media             for polit­i­cal rea­sons; urges a stop to the prac­tice of admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion and the arbi­trary use of Arti­cle 22.9, Part 2, of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code against free­lance  jour­nal­ists for work­ing with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion, which restrict the right to free­dom of expres­sion and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion…”

            Euro­pean Par­lia­ment res­o­lu­tion on the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus (2015/2834(RSP)) 

SITUATION IN BELARUSIAN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JULY – SEPTEMBER 2015 (review)

The begin­ning of the 3^rd quar­ter of 2015 was char­ac­ter­ized by the strength­ened pres­sure on mass media on the part of offi­cial author­i­ties. The pres­sure some­what decreased since the end of August 2015. Appar­ent­ly, it was con­nect­ed with the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and the inten­tion of Belaru­sian offi­cial author­i­ties to get pos­i­tive reac­tion on the polit­i­cal event from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Still, the sit­u­a­tion in the field of free­dom of expres­sion remained to be unfa­vor­able sub­ject to the over­all gov­ern­men­tal con­trol over the nation­al infor­ma­tion space.

The sit­u­a­tion with dis­tri­b­u­tion of non-state social and polit­i­cal peri­od­i­cal edi­tions dete­ri­o­rat­ed in the recent months. On the one hand, a new require­ment of state reg­is­tra­tion for the press dis­trib­u­tors came into force. On the oth­er hand, the ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ state-owned monop­o­list press dis­trib­u­tors con­tin­ued to dis­crim­i­nate inde­pen­dent edi­tions in the coun­try. 

The pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion dra­mat­i­cal­ly inten­si­fied at the begin­ning of sum­mer 2015. How­ev­er, the trend some­what declined clos­er to Sep­tem­ber 2015. How­ev­er, nobody knows how the sit­u­a­tion is going to devel­op after the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the coun­try.

There were reg­is­tered sev­er­al cas­es of deten­tion of jour­nal­ists on duty with­in the peri­od under review.

MAIN EVENTS IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JULY – SEPTEMBER 2015

Problems with distribution of independent newspapers

The ‘Bel­sayuz­druk’ nation­al uni­tary enter­prise refused to dis­trib­ute the ‘Novy Chas’ inde­pen­dent news­pa­per through its news stalls since the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber 2015. The state monop­o­list enter­prise in the field of retail press dis­tri­b­u­tion not­ed it couldn’t be done ‘for tech­ni­cal rea­sons’.

The ‘Bel­posh­ta’ state monop­o­list enter­prise in the field of press dis­tri­b­u­tion by sub­scrip­tion in Belarus refused to include the ‘Barysauskiya Naviny’ news­pa­per into its sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logue at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2015. Among oth­er, the ‘Bel­posh­ta’ offi­cials not­ed that it was their right, not respon­si­bil­i­ty to include peri­od­i­cals into the cat­a­logue. The news­pa­per pub­lish­er received sim­i­lar expla­na­tions from the ‘Min­sk­ablsayuz­druk’ state uni­tary enter­prise that had refused to dis­trib­ute the news­pa­per through its kiosks.

Sim­i­lar neg­a­tive replies from ‘Sayuz­druk’ and ‘Bel­posh­ta’ state enter­pris­es had been received ear­li­er by ‘Gaze­ta Slonim­skaya’ (Slonim, Hrod­na region), ‘Intex-press’, ‘Intex-press plus’ (Baranavichy, Brest region), and ‘SNPlus. Svo­bod­nye novosti plus’ week­ly.

The prob­lems with dis­tri­b­u­tion of inde­pen­dent print media appeared on the eve of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign 2006 almost 10 years ago. The ‘Bel­posh­ta’ nation­al uni­tary enter­prise and the ‘Sayuz­druk’ enter­pris­es refused to include into sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logues and sell through the net­work of news stalls around 20 inde­pen­dent social and polit­i­cal news­pa­pers respec­tive­ly. It was due to the tem­po­rary warm­ing peri­od in rela­tions between the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment and the EU that ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ enter­pris­es resumed coop­er­a­tion with ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volia’ and ‘Nasha Niva’ news­pa­pers in 2008. Suf­fer­ing from eco­nom­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion, quite a few of these news­pa­pers were forced to leave the media mar­ket. 9 non-gov­ern­men­tal social and polit­i­cal peri­od­i­cal edi­tions con­tin­ue to face prob­lems with dis­tri­b­u­tion through ‘Bel­postha’ and/or ‘Sayuz­druk’ at the present moment. (It is near­ly a half of reg­is­tered inde­pen­dent print mass media in Belarus.)

The sit­u­a­tion is aggra­vat­ed by the fact that since July 2015 all print and TV-radio broad­cast­ing media dis­trib­u­tors have been oblig­ed to reg­is­ter this activ­i­ty at the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus. (The require­ment doesn’t con­cern the edi­to­r­i­al sub­scrip­tion.).

Sev­er­al inde­pen­dent peri­od­i­cals that used to sell the major part of their print-runs through dif­fer­ent trade com­pa­nies and entre­pre­neurs have faced the reduc­tion of their sales points, since a sig­nif­i­cant part of press dis­trib­u­tors didn’t agree to apply to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus for the spe­cial per­mit.

Prosecution of freelance journalists

7 jour­nal­ists were pros­e­cut­ed under admin­is­tra­tive law for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion in July and August 2015. The media work­ers were fined 25 – 50 base amounts (around 250 – 500 EUR in equiv­a­lent) each.

On July 9, 2015, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists sent appeals to the Supreme Court, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, and the KGB of Belarus. The BAJ lead­er­ship drew the pub­lic offi­cials’ atten­tion to the ille­gal­i­ty and ground­less­ness of harass­ment of jour­nal­ists for ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts’ (arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es). How­ev­er, the gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials failed to give con­crete answers and eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion.

The Pres­i­dent of Belarus Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka made a promise to look into the prob­lem dur­ing his inter­view to jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent mass media at the begin­ning of August 2015. None of new cas­es against free­lance jour­nal­ists were filed after­wards. How­ev­er, the tri­als in process were con­tin­ued, and the cor­re­spond­ing free­lance reporters were sub­ject­ed to admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty.

All in all, 28 jour­nal­ists were fined for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media in 2015. The over­all sum of fines exceed­ed 146 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles (approx. EUR 8,000 in equiv­a­lent). The free­lance jour­nal­ists were pros­e­cut­ed for vio­lat­ing the mass media leg­is­la­tion (arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offences) on the grounds of the mere appear­ance of their mate­ri­als in the for­eign media.

Detentions of journalists

There were reg­is­tered sev­er­al cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tion of jour­nal­ists in July – Sep­tem­ber 2015.

Thus, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Natal­lia Kry­vashei were detained in Rechyt­sa dis­trict (Homiel region) on July 16, 2015. They were prepar­ing a video report about the out­break of an unknown swine dis­ease in the area.

The same jour­nal­ists were detained at the Cen­tral City Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs in Homiel on July 29, 2015.They were going to cov­er a pick­et of local res­i­dents there.

Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, a free­lance cor­re­spon­dence of ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’ news­pa­per was detained in Min­sk on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015. She was report­ing from the deceived share­hold­ers’ pick­et at the Inde­pen­dence Palace. (The peo­ple invest­ed their sav­ings in the con­struc­tion of real estate, but didn’t get it.)

All the jour­nal­ists were released with­out any police records with­in three hours, since the moment of their deten­tion.

It is worth men­tion­ing that the num­ber of short-term deten­tions of jour­nal­ists decreased in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous years (11 arbi­trary deten­tions with­in 9 months of 2015 to be com­pared to 29 arbi­trary deten­tions in 2014).

STATISTICS, INDEXES, RATING LISTS

The Free­dom House human rights defense orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished its ‘Free­dom of the Press 2015’ annu­al report in Sep­tem­ber 2015. Belarus was placed among 10 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, where the sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of the press was the worst in the world. Apart from Belarus, the list includ­ed Iran, Cuba, the Crimea (as a ter­ri­to­ry), North Korea, Syr­ia, Turk­menistan, Uzbek­istan, Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea, and Eritrea. Accord­ing to the researchers, “in these set­tings, inde­pen­dent media are either nonex­is­tent or bare­ly able to oper­ate, the press acts as a mouth­piece for the regime, cit­i­zens’ access to unbi­ased infor­ma­tion is severe­ly lim­it­ed, and dis­sent is crushed through impris­on­ment, tor­ture, and oth­er forms of repres­sion.”

The ‘worst of the worst’ posi­tion of Belarus on the glob­al press free­dom map has been explained by the con­tin­ued pres­sure upon jour­nal­ists, includ­ing the tri­als against free­lance reporters for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media and the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in rela­tion to a jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin, the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of media-relat­ed leg­is­la­tion, the block­ing of access to a num­ber of inde­pen­dent Web-resources with­in the year, the state monop­oly on TV and radio broad­cast­ing as well as the bud­get fund­ing of state mass media in the coun­try.