E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #3(49). Mass Media in the Period of Elections to the Chamber of Representatives. (July – September 2016)

SITUATION IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN THE PERIOD OF ELECTION CAMPAIGN – 2016

The elec­tions to the Cham­ber of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Nation­al Assem­bly of Belarus took place on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2016.

The pres­sure on Belaru­sian mass media and jour­nal­ists some­what decreased with­in the elec­tion peri­od. Thus, there weren’t reg­is­tered any new cas­es of admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion. (It is one of the most seri­ous prob­lems, faced by Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in the recent times. Also, there weren’t reg­is­tered any cas­es of mass coun­ter­ac­tion to jour­nal­ist activ­i­ties dur­ing the elec­tions or oth­er forms of evi­dent pres­sure on non-state mass media in Belarus with­in the report­ing peri­od. Appar­ent­ly, it was con­nect­ed with the inten­tion of Belaru­sian author­i­ties to receive pos­i­tive eval­u­a­tion of the elec­tions from inter­na­tion­al struc­tures.

On the oth­er hand, sev­er­al inde­pen­dent print­ed peri­od­i­cal edi­tions weren’t per­mit­ted to enter the state monop­o­list press dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems. Also, there was con­tin­ued crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion against Eduard Palchyts, the founder of www.1863x.com Web-site. A num­ber of mate­ri­als on the Web-site were con­sid­ered to be ‘extrem­ist’ by Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

Gen­er­al­ly, the sit­u­a­tion in mass media field remained to be under strict gov­ern­men­tal con­trol.

The Elec­tion Obser­va­tion Mis­sion of OSCE Office for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Insti­tu­tions and Human Rights pub­lished its inter­im report on August 31, 2016.

Among oth­er, it is men­tioned there as fol­lows:

“While the Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees free­dom of expres­sion, pro­hibits cen­sor­ship and estab­lish­es the right to receive, store and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, the Crim­i­nal Code con­tains pro­vi­sions on defama­tion, libel and insult. Since 2014, online media out­lets have the same oblig­a­tions, except for the require­ment of state reg­is­tra­tion, and are sub­ject to the same restric­tions as tra­di­tion­al media. In case of a sus­pect­ed vio­la­tion, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion is now enti­tled to lim­it access to web­sites with­out a court deci­sion… Tele­vi­sion is wide­ly con­sid­ered as the pri­ma­ry source of infor­ma­tion. The state-owned Bel­Tel­Ra­dio Com­pa­ny (BTRC) is the largest media com­pa­ny, which dom­i­nates both the broad­cast and the print media land­scape. Pri­vate media out­lets have a lim­it­ed impact and accord­ing to many OSCE/ODIHR EOM inter­locu­tors are fre­quent­ly sub­ject to pres­sure from the author­i­ties. Jour­nal­ists require accred­i­ta­tion to work for for­eign and Belaru­sian media based abroad and they can­not work for both for­eign and nation­al media. Cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists, blog­gers and free­lancers are not con­sid­ered jour­nal­ists and they receive fines for report­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion. The lim­it­ed num­ber of inde­pen­dent broad­cast­ing media and the grow­ing Inter­net pen­e­tra­tion allow online media to increas­ing­ly serve as an alter­na­tive source of polit­i­cal and elec­tion-relat­ed infor­ma­tion”.

The mon­i­tor­ing of elec­tion cov­er­age in mass media was tra­di­tion­al­ly con­duct­ed by the OSCE/ODIHR Elec­tion Obser­va­tion Mis­sion (since August 11) and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (since July 4 till Sep­tem­ber 21, 2016).

For the first time in his­to­ry, the Belaru­sian Union of Jour­nal­ists deliv­ered its mon­i­tor­ing report on the media cov­er­age of the Par­lia­men­tary elec­tion cam­paign with­in the peri­od since August 15 till August 29, 2016. The BUJ unites the work­ers of state mass media in the coun­try.

MAIN EVENTS IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JULY – SEPTEMBER 2016

Eduard Palchys’ Case

On August 25, 2016, the Court of Cen­tral City Dis­trict of Min­sk found 9 arti­cles, pub­lished on www.1863x.com Web-site, to be extrem­ist. The ver­dict was ren­dered dur­ing a closed ses­sion of court. The Web-site founder and author Eduard Palchys wasn’t present at the tri­al. He is kept in Min­sk Deten­tion Facil­i­ty. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties accuse Mr Palchys of incit­ing racial, nation­al and reli­gious enmi­ty or strife (part 1, arti­cle 130 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) for on-line dis­tri­b­u­tion of arti­cles, which were found to be extrem­ist on August 25, 2016, as well as for the alleged dis­tri­b­u­tion of porn mate­ri­als (part 2, arti­cle 343 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code).

The Web-site www.1863х.com was cre­at­ed around 2 years ago. Its own­er admin­is­tered com­plete­ly anony­mous­ly the Web-resource under the nick­name of Jhon Sil­ver. He crit­i­cized severe­ly the so-called ‘Russ­ian world’ and Russ­ian gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties.

The crim­i­nal case against Palchys was filed in 2015. The blog­ger fled Belarus imme­di­ate­ly after­wards. He was detained in Rus­sia in Jan­u­ary 2016 and extra­dit­ed to Belarus in May 2016.

On Sep­tem­ber 5, 2016, sev­er­al Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions rec­og­nized E. Palchys to be a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Pressure on Freelance Journalists

On July 28, 2016, Loyeu Dis­trict Court (Homiel region) fined a free­lance jour­nal­ist Kanstantsin Zhuk­ous­ki from Homiel three base amounts (i.e., 63 Belaru­sian rubles that equals approx. EUR 30) for pet­ty hooli­gan­ism (arti­cle 17.1 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

The case had been filed on June 21, 2016, when the police detained K. Zhuk­ous­ki and his col­league Ali­ak­sei Atroshchanka for tak­ing video records of the local plant of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als. Accord­ing to K. Zhuk­ous­ki, the police offi­cers used force against him and injured him.

Fol­low­ing Zhukouski’s appeal to the Legal Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee, the police com­posed six reports in rela­tion to the free­lance jour­nal­ists. Four of them con­cerned K. Zhuk­ous­ki. In par­tic­u­lar, the free­lancer was accused of ‘insult­ing’ the local offi­cials from Loyeu Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, who had pre­vent­ed the jour­nal­ist from mak­ing video records before the police arrived. Also, the reporter was blamed for hooli­gan­ism, dis­obe­di­ence to the police and offend­ing the Head of Loyeu Dis­trict Police Depart­ment.

The judge Antan­i­na Muzy­chen­ka returned three police reports in rela­tion to K. Zhuk­ous­ki for revi­sion to the police depart­ment and imposed a min­i­mum fine on the free­lance reporter, ground­ed on accu­sa­tions in the fourth police report. By now, the dead­line to pros­e­cute the free­lance jour­nal­ists on the grounds of oth­er reports has passed.

There was anoth­er inci­dent with K.Zhukouski and A. Atroshchanka in Sep­tem­ber 2016. A ‘Mer­cedes’ car was fol­low­ing the free­lance reporters, while they were con­duct­ing a sur­vey about work and salaries in the dis­trict cen­tre of Narou­lia, Homiel region.

As soon as A. Atroshchanka came to the ‘Mer­cedes’ that stopped oppo­site the police, in order to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion, the car start­ed mov­ing all of a sud­den, throw­ing the jour­nal­ist to the hood.

It appeared that a Deputy Chair­per­son of Narou­lia Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee Natal­lia Koval, who is also respon­si­ble for ide­ol­o­gy, was dri­ving the car. Fol­low­ing the road acci­dent, A. Atroshchanka sub­mit­ted a cor­re­spond­ing state­ment to the police. The foren­sic exam­i­na­tion reg­is­tered minor injuries, caused to A. Atroshchanka, at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2016.

The inci­dent was unex­pect­ed­ly con­tin­ued at the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2016. K.Zhukouski was sum­moned to Narou­lia Dis­trict Police Depart­ment, where a police report against him was com­posed. The jour­nal­ist was accused of ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of mass media prod­ucts (part 2, arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

Since the begin­ning of 2016, free­lance jour­nal­ists have been charged 10 times for con­tribut­ing their mate­ri­als to for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion (part 2, arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es). All 10 tri­als took place in Homiel region. K.Zhukouski was fined 7 times at that.

None of new cas­es on arti­cle 22.9 were filed since mid-April till Octo­ber 2016.

Economic Discrimination of Independent Periodical Editions

The ‘Bel­sayuz­druk’ and ‘Bel­posh­ta’ state monop­o­list enter­pris­es with dom­i­neer­ing posi­tions on the Belaru­sian retail press dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket sent anoth­er rejec­tion note to the ‘Novy Chas’ inde­pen­dent week­ly edi­to­r­i­al, refus­ing to dis­trib­ute the peri­od­i­cal by sub­scrip­tion and through the news stalls.

It is worth remind­ing that sim­i­lar refusals had been received from ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and / or ‘Sayuz­druk’ by ‘Intex-Press’ news­pa­per (Baranavichy, Brest region), ‘Gaze­ta Slonim­skaya’ and ‘Otdushi­na’ week­lies (Slonim, Hrod­na region), as well as ‘Barysauskiya naviny’ news­pa­per (Barysau, Min­sk region).

Around 20 inde­pen­dent peri­od­i­cal edi­tions were oust­ed from the state-owned press dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems 11 years ago.https://baj.media/en/analytics/ten-years-out-sight Quite a few of them have ter­mi­nat­ed their pub­li­ca­tion since then.

At the same time, the state-owned media receive lav­ish fund­ing from the state bud­get and make use of admin­is­tra­tive pref­er­ences.

In Sep­tem­ber 2016, the jour­nal­ists of ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ found a let­ter from the Ide­ol­o­gy Depart­ment at Lida Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee ‘On Hold­ing Sub­scrip­tion Cam­paign for the 4^th Quar­ter 2016’. http://www.svaboda.org/a/prymusovaja-padpiska/28002619.html.

The lead­er­ship of Ide­ol­o­gy Depart­ment at Lida Dis­trict Com­mit­tee ‘attract­ed’ the local chief exec­u­tive offi­cers’ atten­tion to the neces­si­ty to facil­i­tate a sub­scrip­tion cam­paign for a range of state-owned news­pa­pers. The top man­agers of orga­ni­za­tions and enter­pris­es were to pre­pare a report on the con­duct­ed work and sub­mit pho­to­copies of sub­scrip­tion receipts. The num­ber of sub­scribed copies of peri­od­i­cal edi­tions couldn’t be less than a half of employ­ees, work­ing at the cor­re­spond­ing enter­pris­es. The list of rec­om­mend­ed press includ­ed the fol­low­ing state-owned nation-wide, region­al and local media: ‘Sovi­et­skaya Belorus­siya’, ‘Respub­li­ka’, ‘Zvi­az­da’, ‘Nar­o­d­naya Gaze­ta’, ‘Znamya Yunos­ti’, ‘Hrodzien­skaya Prau­da’, ‘Lid­skaya Gaze­ta’, ‘7 Days’, and ‘Sel­skaya Gaze­ta’.

RATING LISTS, INDEXES, STATISTICS

Only 32 media in Belarus are pub­lished in Belaru­sian nowa­days. The fig­ure was men­tioned by the Deputy Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus Uladz­imir Matusievich in his reply to an inquiry note, sub­mit­ted by the BAJ Press Offi­cer Barys Haret­s­ki. At the same time, 837 peri­od­i­cals are pub­lished in Russ­ian. 526 peri­od­i­cal edi­tions are pub­lished in Russ­ian and Belaru­sian.