E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #3(53) (August – October 2017)

“The Min­istry has to do every­thing pos­si­ble, in order to ensure the infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty in the cur­rent age of Inter­net and quick dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion.”

Vasil Zharko, Deputy Prime-Minister’s of Belarus address to the new­ly appoint­ed Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion
 

“We con­demn this new wave of tri­als, which has the sole aim of intim­i­dat­ing jour­nal­ists and forc­ing them to sub­mit to gov­ern­ment pres­sure, we urge the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment to end the sys­tem­at­ic judi­cial harass­ment of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists.”

Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk

CONTENTS

Situation in Mass Media Field in August – October 2017 (review)

Main Events in Mass Media Field in August – October 2017

SITUATION IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN AUGUST – OCTOBER 2017 (REVIEW)

The approach­ing East­ern part­ner­ship sum­mit in Brus­sels, sched­uled for Novem­ber 24, 2017, didn’t exert any influ­ence on the sit­u­a­tion with mass media in Belarus, despite the fact that the Belaru­sian pres­i­dent was invit­ed for the first time to take part in the event. More­over, the harass­ment against free­lance jour­nal­ists for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media increased with­in the peri­od under review. The num­ber of fines, which were imposed on jour­nal­ists for the alleged ‘vio­la­tion of pro­ce­dures on pro­duc­tion and/or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts’ totaled 50 since the year start that exceed­ed the total num­ber of fines in 2014–2016.

Three Belaru­sian colum­nists were arrest­ed in Decem­ber 2016. They had pub­lished their mate­ri­als on the Russ­ian Web-sites and got accused of incite­ment of eth­nic hatred (the so-called ‘Reg­num’ writ­ers’ case). The case was sent to court at the end of Octo­ber 2017.

A new Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus, Ali­ak­san­dr Kar­liuke­vich was appoint­ed to the post of the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus in Octo­ber 2017. He replaced Liliya Ananich, who had worked at the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion on dif­fer­ent posi­tions since the moment, when the state reg­u­la­to­ry body was cre­at­ed in the media field.

The new­ly appoint­ed Min­is­ter used to be Deputy Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion and the head of the state-owned ‘Zvi­az­da’ pub­lish­ing house in the past. Fol­low­ing his appoint­ment to the post, the new Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion announced the prepa­ra­tion of a new ver­sion of ‘Mass Media law’ that will report­ed­ly affect the Inter­net and the social media, first of all.

MAIN EVENTS IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN AUGUST – OCTOBER 2017

The increased harrassment against freelance journalists for cooperation with foreign Mass Media

The per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion was on the rise in July – Octo­ber 2017. The courts penal­ized them 26 times on the alleged admin­is­tra­tive charges with­in the peri­od under review. In par­tic­u­lar, a free­lance jour­nal­ist Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki from Homiel was fined 7 times with­in the report­ing peri­od and 10 times since the begin­ning of the year.

All in all, the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were fined 50 times in the peri­od since the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary till the end of Octo­ber 2017. Thus, the over­all sum of fines exceed­ed the total num­ber of fines with­in the pre­vi­ous three years.

The inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists are charged on the basis of police reports for the arbi­trary vio­la­tion of arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es that envis­ages legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for the ille­gal pro­duc­tion and/or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts. The arti­cle has been repeat­ed­ly applied in judi­cial prac­tice since May 2014. Jour­nal­ists were fined 48 times on its grounds till 2017. In all the cas­es, it wasn’t the con­tent of mate­ri­als, but the mere fact of their appear­ance in the for­eign media that was used as the ground for bring­ing the jour­nal­ists to legal account­abil­i­ty. The jour­nal­ists, con­tribut­ing to the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel, have been pros­e­cut­ed in the major­i­ty of cas­es. It’s worth men­tion­ing that ‘Bel­sat’ is a con­stituent part of the Pol­ish TV Com­pa­ny — Telewiz­ja Pol­s­ka S.A. How­ev­er it is rep­re­sent­ed as an inde­pen­dent TV-chan­nel in Belarus. http://belsat.eu/ru/about/ .

The seizure of expensive technical equipment from ‘Belsat’ on court decision

On Octo­ber 10, 2017, the Pier­shamays­ki City Dis­trict Court in Min­sk found a jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Barazen­ka guilty of vio­lat­ing the copy­right on the trade­mark of ‘Bel­sat TV’ and con­fis­cat­ed all tech­ni­cal equip­ment  that had been tak­en from the media work­er at the moment of his arrest. A.Barazenka was detained dur­ing a live broad­cast from a civic protest action on March 25, 2017 and sen­tenced to 15 days of arrest on March 27, 2017. While the jour­nal­ist was in cus­tody, the unknown peo­ple glued self-made ‘Bel­sat’ stick­ers on his video equip­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, it was seized from him upon the court deci­sion. 

More­over, the court took a deci­sion to con­fis­cate the expen­sive tech­ni­cal equip­ment, which was seized dur­ing the search­es at the offices of ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel on March 31, 2017. The search­es were con­duct­ed with­in the same case on copy­right pro­tec­tion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists stat­ed that the court deci­sion on the case was aimed at oppress­ing free­dom of speech in the coun­try and looked like a part of the well-planned harass­ment cam­paign in rela­tion to the jour­nal­ists, coop­er­at­ing with the TV chan­nel.

The dis­pute over the ‘Bel­sat TV’ trade­mark lasts for almost five years. The ‘BEL­SAT­plus’ com­pa­ny own­er from Belarus is con­vinced that the TV chan­nel vio­lates his busi­ness inter­ests. Ini­tial­ly, the Supreme Court of Belarus reject­ed his claim for trade­mark pro­tec­tion. How­ev­er, after the start of the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion in 2014, the Pre­sid­i­um of the Supreme Court over­turned the rul­ing and sent the case back for retri­al.

The new­ly appoint­ed group of judges sup­port­ed the claim and pro­hib­it­ed the Pol­ish tele­vi­sion, which includes the ‘Bel­sat’ tele­vi­sion chan­nel, to use the trade­mark «Bel­sat TV» when broad­cast­ing on the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus and on the Web-page.

Criminal case against ‘Regnum’ correspondents brought to court

The Belaru­sian authors of ‘Reg­num’ news agency (Rus­sia) and a num­ber of oth­er Russ­ian on-line news resources Dzmit­ry Alimkin, Yury Paulavi­ets, and Siarhei Shypten­ka were charged with incit­ing eth­nic hatred (arti­cle 130, part 3 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code) in August 2017. The case was brought to court in Octo­ber 2017.

D. Alimkin, Y. Paulavets, and S. Shypten­ka were detained in Belarus in Decem­ber 2016. Since then, they have been kept in cus­tody.

They are threat­ened with up to 12 years of impris­on­ment for arti­cles about the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus, placed under pseu­do­nyms on some Russ­ian infor­ma­tion resources.

The Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions have appealed to the judi­cial author­i­ties with a request to ensure the open tri­al on the case in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fair tri­al as well as inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in the field of free­dom of speech and expres­sion of opin­ions.

A new Minister of information reported about preparations of amendments into the Mass Media law

A new Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus was appoint­ed on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2017. Ali­ak­san­dr Kar­liuke­vich suc­ceed­ed the pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter Liliya Ananich on the post. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sor, Ali­ak­san­dr Kar­liuke­vich has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in jour­nal­is­tic and edi­to­r­i­al work.

Before join­ing the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion on the posi­tion of Deputy Min­is­ter in 2016, he head­ed the state-owned ‘Zvi­az­da’ pub­lish­ing house.

The new­ly appoint­ed Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Ali­ak­san­dr Kar­liuke­vich not­ed in his first pub­lic speech on his post dur­ing ‘The Edi­tors’ Club’ pro­gram on ‘Belarus 1’ TV chan­nel that a range of amend­ments are about to be intro­duced into the Belarus Mass Media law. Report­ed­ly, the amend­ments will affect the Inter­net and the social media, first of all.