E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #3(59) (July – September 2019)

Threats to journalists

A blog­ger Andrei Pauk from a dis­trict cen­ter of Akt­siabrs­ki (Homiel region) received per­son­al threats after fil­ing a law­suit against police offi­cers. He demand­ed the cov­er­age of moral dam­ages for his deten­tion on the alleged charges of fake min­ing in March 2019.

The blog­ger received per­son­al threats from unknown per­sons through the Viber mes­sen­ger on the eve of the lit­i­ga­tion in Akt­siabrs­ki Dis­trict Court on Sep­tem­ber 24, 2019: «There will be a court hear­ing tomor­row, and you will lose the case. The issue with the search was ini­ti­at­ed to make you think about your behav­ior, shut your stink­ing mouth, and find a job. Say thanks that we didn’t give you any­thing. Should you con­tin­ue to engage in sab­o­tage and defame the exist­ing gov­ern­ment, cer­tain mea­sures will be tak­en against you. You will be impris­oned and your [obscen­i­ty] wife will car­ry parcels to jail […]».

The author of the harass­ing mes­sage hasn’t been found yet.

On Octo­ber 4, 2019, an oper­a­tional offi­cer on duty from the local Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs phoned Andrei Pauk and told him that, alleged­ly, a phone call had been received from the phone num­ber, owned by Mr. Pauk. Report­ed­ly, the unknown per­son intro­duced him­self as Andrei and told Mr. Pauk’s home address, say­ing that he ‘had killed his wife Olga’. Andrei’s wife Olga had to pro­vide expla­na­tions that the phone call was a provo­ca­tion. The dis­trict police rep­re­sen­ta­tives informed the Pauks that they wouldn’t be able to find the ‘offend­er’.

Andrei Pauk and his fam­i­ly have been sub­ject­ed to psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure and intim­i­da­tion for a long time. Thus, the unknown peo­ple dis­trib­uted fake mes­sages about min­ing of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings on his behalf, indi­cat­ing his phone num­ber at that. Con­se­quent­ly, the blog­ger became a sus­pect in a crim­i­nal case on pseu­do-min­ing. He was detained by force. His apart­ment was searched and his pro­fes­sion­al tech­ni­cal equip­ment was seized.(It was par­tial­ly returned lat­er.) On August 19, 2019, a jour­nal­ist of ‘Green Por­tal’ (greenbelarus.info) Nas­ta Zakhare­vich received mes­sages with insults and veiled threats in the VKon­tak­tie social media. The Web-por­tal edi­to­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed them with the author’s pub­li­ca­tions about con­struc­tion of a bat­tery plant in Brest and the con­nect­ed protest actions of envi­ron­men­tal­ists and city res­i­dents.

On August 19, 2019, a jour­nal­ist of ‘Green Por­tal’ (greenbelarus.info) Nas­ta Zakhare­vich received mes­sages with insults and veiled threats in the VKon­tak­tie social media. The Web-por­tal edi­to­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed them with the author’s pub­li­ca­tions about con­struc­tion of a bat­tery plant in Brest and the con­nect­ed protest actions of envi­ron­men­tal­ists and city res­i­dents.

The jour­nal­ist appealed to the police with a demand to bring the author of the mes­sages to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty.  How­ev­er, the Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs of Frun­zen­s­ki City Dis­trict of Min­sk informed her that the offend­er hadn’t been iden­ti­fied.

Resumption of persecution  of freelance journalists

Fol­low­ing a three months’ break, the Belaru­sian offi­cial author­i­ties con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists, who coop­er­ate with for­eign media with­out press cre­den­tials, in Sep­tem­ber 2019. In par­tic­u­lar, the police drew up a report in rela­tion to a free­lance jour­nal­ist Darya Chultso­va in the town of Bia­lyn­ichy (Mahilou region) on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2019.

The report was ground­ed on arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of the Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es. The author­i­ties charged the jour­nal­ist for a video report in the ‘Lens’ pro­gram on Bel­sat TV, which was broad­cast on August 22, 2019. It hap­pened despite the fact that the report had the title ‘A New Chief Ide­ol­o­gist Andrei Kunt­se­vich. The Per­son Whom the Youth will Fol­low’ and nar­rat­ed about the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of local author­i­ties in a pos­i­tive way. In Octo­ber 2019, the Bia­lyn­ichy Dis­trict Court fined the jour­nal­ist in her absence 20 base amounts (510 Belaru­sian rubles that totaled approx­i­mate­ly 250 USD).

Pas­tavy City Court (Vit­sieb­sk region) fined anoth­er free­lance jour­nal­ist Dzmit­ry Mitske­vich for coop­er­a­tion with ‘Bel­sat’ with­out press cre­den­tials on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2019. The imposed fine totaled 30 base amounts (765 Belaru­sian rubles or 370 USD).

Arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es envis­ages respon­si­bil­i­ty for ille­gal pro­duc­tion and/or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is con­vinced that jour­nal­ists can­not be brought to respon­si­bil­i­ty under this arti­cle, since mass media pro­duc­tion is made by media out­lets and dis­trib­uted by dis­trib­u­tors. The Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es doesn’t envis­age any charges for activ­i­ty with­out press cre­den­tials.

Jour­nal­ists were fined 39 times under arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es to the total sum of 36592,5 Belaru­sian rubles (17850 USD) since Jan­u­ary till the end of Sep­tem­ber 2019. The free­lance media work­ers weren’t brought to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media since the end of May till mid-Sep­tem­ber at that. Appar­ent­ly, it might be con­nect­ed with the host­ing of the 2nd Euro­pean Games in Belarus.  

Rating lists,  indexes, statistics

More than 16,000 peo­ple have signed a peti­tion against the forced sub­scrip­tion to the print­ed state-owned media in Belarus. The col­lec­tion of sig­na­tures is con­duct­ed on the Web-site. The col­lec­tion of sig­na­tures is con­duct­ed on the Web-site Change.org.

The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ) has placed Belarus on the 9th posi­tion in the list of coun­tries with the strictest cen­sor­ship in the world.