E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #4(44) SPECIAL ISSUE

BRIEF BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIOIN-2015 IN BELARUS

On June 30, 2015, the Cham­ber of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Nation­al Assem­bly of Belarus appoint­ed the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to Octo­ber 11, 2015.

On Sep­tem­ber 10, 2015, the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion of Belarus for Elec­tions and Nation­al Ref­er­en­dums (fur­ther – Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion) reg­is­tered four pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, nom­i­nat­ed by col­lect­ing sig­na­tures, includ­ing the incum­bent pres­i­dent Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, Siarhei Haiduke­vich, Tat­siana Karatke­vich, and Mikalai Ulakhovich.

A part of oppo­si­tion groups ini­ti­at­ed the so-called ‘ignore cam­paign’ with a call to dis­re­gard the vot­ing. (It is worth men­tion­ing that calls to boy­cott elec­tions are banned in Belarus in line with the amend­ments to the Belarus Elec­toral Code, adopt­ed in 2013.)   

The elec­tion­eer­ing start­ed as soon as the can­di­dates got reg­is­tered. It last­ed until the so-called ‘day of silence’ on Octo­ber 10, 2015.

The pro­ce­dure of using the media dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion and hold­ing the elec­tions was approved by the CEC.

The state-owned TV-chan­nel ‘Belarus 1’ and ‘The First Nation­al Chan­nel of Belaru­sian Radio’ pro­vid­ed each can­di­date with the pos­si­bil­i­ty to deliv­er their elec­tion speech­es free of charge (twice on the radio and twice on TV).

The pres­i­den­tial can­di­date TV-debates were con­duct­ed on Octo­ber 3, 2015. But for that, the can­di­dates gained the right to pub­lish their elec­tion pro­grams in the print media, fund­ed from the state bud­get. (The select­ed media were out­lined in the spe­cial ordi­nance of Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.)

The incum­bent pres­i­dent A. Lukashen­ka didn’t make use of the free broad­cast­ing. Also, he didn’t take part in the TV-debates. Still, his pres­ence on the state TV and Radio broad­cast­ing chan­nels was pre­vail­ing. The fact was proved by ‘The Cov­er­age of the 2015 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion in the Belaru­sian Media’ mon­i­tor­ing results. (The research was con­duct­ed by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.)

Ear­ly vot­ing start­ed in Belarus on Octo­ber 3, 2015. Accord­ing to the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion reports, over 36% of elec­torate cast their votes ear­ly that made a pecu­liar record of pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in the coun­try.

The ‘Human Rights Defend­ers for Free Elec­tions’ cam­paign observers reg­is­tered numer­ous facts of coer­cion to vote ear­ly by the admin­is­tra­tions of enter­pris­es and uni­ver­si­ties.

The main part of vot­ers took part in the elec­tion on Octo­ber 11, 2015.

On Octo­ber 16, 2015, the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion announced that the incum­bent Pres­i­dent of Belarus Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka won the elec­tion.

The pre­lim­i­nary eval­u­a­tion of Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign-2015 has been pre­sent­ed in the inter­im report by the OSCE/ODIHR Elec­tion Obser­va­tion Mis­sion. Among oth­er, it con­tains infor­ma­tion about the con­di­tions for mass media activ­i­ty with­in the elec­tion peri­od.

SITUATION IN MASS MEDIA FIELD ON THE EVE OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION-2015 (BACKGROUND OF ELECTION CAMPAIGN)

The Belaru­sian mass media leg­is­la­tion as well as its appli­ca­tion prac­tice tough­ened con­sid­er­ably in the elec­tion year.

At the end of Decem­ber 2014, essen­tial amend­ments and changes were hasti­ly intro­duced into the Belarus Law ‘On Mass Media’ by the leg­isla­tive author­i­ties with­out any pub­lic dis­cus­sion. They came into force since Jan­u­ary 1, 2015. In par­tic­u­lar, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion was enti­tled with the right of extra­ju­di­cial restric­tion of access to any Web-resources, even for a sin­gle vio­la­tion of Mass Media law.

Although the ini­tial scope of infor­ma­tion that couldn’t be dis­sem­i­nat­ed in the media was vague­ly for­mu­lat­ed and gave space for broad inter­pre­ta­tion, it was still sup­ple­ment­ed by anoth­er legal norm of the kind, ban­ning the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion “that could be harm­ful to the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus”.

Refer­ring to the new­ly adopt­ed legal norm, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion took a deci­sion to restrict access to the www.kyky.org Web-site on June 18, 2015. (None of offi­cial warn­ings were issued to the Web-site edi­to­r­i­al at that.)

The Min­istry report­ed that a range of pub­li­ca­tions on the Web-resource “con­tained humil­i­at­ing expres­sions in rela­tion to the Vic­to­ry Day, offi­cial­ly cel­e­brat­ed in the Repub­lic of Belarus, as well as the cit­i­zens, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in it, dis­put­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of this event in the his­to­ry of the state, and there­by dis­tort­ed the his­tor­i­cal truth about the Great Patri­ot­ic War”.

The access to www.kyky.org was resumed in 6 days, as soon as the arguable mate­r­i­al was delet­ed from the Web-site. The block­ing of access to www.kyky.org was regard­ed by spe­cial­ists as a warn­ing to the Belaru­sian Inter­net com­mu­ni­ty.

Among oth­er, the list of amend­ments to the Belarus Law ‘On Mass Media’, hasti­ly adopt­ed in Decem­ber 2014, includ­ed a demand of oblig­a­tory reg­is­tra­tion of mass media pro­duc­tion dis­trib­u­tors. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion was enti­tled with the right to ban the press dis­tri­b­u­tion activ­i­ty at that.

The pro­vi­sion came into effect since July 1, 2015, i.e. after the appoint­ment of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Some inde­pen­dent peri­od­i­cal edi­tions that sold a con­sid­er­able part of their print-runs through trade enter­pris­es and entre­pre­neurs, suf­fered from the decrease in the num­ber of sales points, where their peri­od­i­cals could be found. The trend had the espe­cial­ly neg­a­tive impact on the peri­od­i­cals that couldn’t be dis­trib­uted through the state enter­pris­es with dom­i­neer­ing posi­tions in the press dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket (‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ enter­pris­es).

On the eve of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the edi­to­ri­als of ‘Gaze­ta Slonim­skaya’, ‘Intex-press’, ‘Intex-press Plus’, and ‘SNPlus. Svo­bod­nye novosti plus’ news­pa­pers received once again rejec­tion let­ters from ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ enter­pris­es on their requests to include them into the sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logue and sell the peri­od­i­cals through the net­work of news-stalls, respec­tive­ly.

Dur­ing the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign – 2015, sim­i­lar rejec­tion let­ters were received by the ‘Novy Chas’ and ‘Borisovskiye Novosti’ edi­to­ri­als.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued 27 offi­cial warn­ings to 26 media out­lets for the incor­rect men­tion­ing of the reg­is­ter­ing body (‘The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of RB’ instead of ‘The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Repub­lic of Belarus’) at the begin­ning of 2015. 

The insignif­i­cant rea­son for issu­ing offi­cial warn­ings, on the one hand, and the fact that the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion can file a claim to court with a demand to close down a media out­let, fol­low­ing two offi­cial warn­ings with­in a year’s course, on the oth­er hand, show that, appar­ent­ly, the min­is­te­r­i­al offi­cials warned the edi­to­ri­als with the aim of fos­ter­ing self-cen­sor­ship in the media on the eve of the elec­tion cam­paign.

The pres­sure on jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tions increased in 2015. The courts fined the media work­ers, using police reports, for break­ing the arbi­trar­i­ly inter­pret­ed arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es that envis­ages respon­si­bil­i­ty for the ille­gal pro­duc­tion and/or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts. (The first cas­es were regard­ed by courts in May 2014.) It should be not­ed that the arti­cle was used for pros­e­cu­tion of 10 jour­nal­ists in 2014 and 28 jour­nal­ists with­in the peri­od since Jan­u­ary till August 2015. 

In all the cas­es, men­tioned above, the mere fact of appear­ance of mate­ri­als in for­eign media was used for pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists. (The con­tent of mate­ri­als was dis­re­gard­ed at that.) As soon as the Pres­i­dent Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka promised to look into the prob­lem dur­ing a press con­fer­ence for jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent mass media at the begin­ning of August 2015, none of new cas­es on arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offences were start­ed.

OBSERVATION OF JOURNALIST AND MEDIA RIGHTS DURING THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

The main vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ist and media rights were reg­is­tered in Octo­ber 2015.

On Octo­ber 3, 2015, the Web-serv­er of ‘Bela­PAN’ News Agency suf­fered from a large-scale DDoS attack that last­ed for a cou­ple of days. (The ‘Bela­PAN’ Web-site and its on-line news­pa­per Naviny.by are stored there.) The attack start­ed on the first day of ear­ly vot­ing at the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the coun­try. Bela­PAN con­nect­ed the attack with a series of arti­cles about ‘The Prayer for Belarus reli­gious and polit­i­cal action’, pub­lished on Naviny.by Web-site: “The author of the arti­cles crit­i­cized the meth­ods of arrang­ing the event, pre­sent­ed the stu­dents’ opin­ions and not­ed that the lat­ter were oblig­ed to take part in the action with par­tic­i­pa­tion of the head of state.”

It was for­bid­den to con­duct pho­to- and video-record­ing at some polling sta­tions dur­ing the ear­ly vot­ing peri­od and on the main vot­ing day.

Thus, on Octo­ber 9, 2015, the local elec­tion com­mis­sion at the polling sta­tion No.29 of Lenin­s­ki city dis­trict in Min­sk accused a ‘Novy Chas’ jour­nal­ist Art­siom Lia­va of imped­ing the elec­tion process and forced him to leave the polling sta­tion.

It is worth men­tion­ing that A. Lia­va wasn’t per­mit­ted to enter the premis­es of anoth­er polling sta­tion #33, locat­ed in the same city dis­trict, on the main vot­ing day – Octo­ber 11, 2015.

On Octo­ber 9, 2015, a ‘Bobruyskiy kury­er’ Web-site jour­nal­ist was pre­vent­ed from car­ry­ing out her jour­nal­is­tic work at a polling sta­tion in the city of Babruysk (Mahilou region). The Chair­per­son of the local elec­tion com­mis­sion strict­ly “restrict­ed” the time of her pres­ence at the polling sta­tion to mak­ing one pho­to. Con­se­quent­ly, the lady jour­nal­ist had to leave the polling sta­tion. 

On Octo­ber 11, 2015, a jour­nal­ist of Eastbook.eu on-line resource wasn’t per­mit­ted to film the vote count­ing process at a polling sta­tion in Pier­shamays­ki city dis­trict of Min­sk.

An observ­er from ‘Belaya Rus’ GONGO made attempts to pre­vent jour­nal­ists from film­ing at a polling sta­tion in Brest; the TUT.BY video-crew faced numer­ous obsta­cles to their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty etc.  

It is note­wor­thy that the actions of mem­bers of local elec­tion com­mis­sions direct­ly con­tra­dict­ed the instruc­tions, adopt­ed by the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

In par­tic­u­lar, the spe­cial­ly elab­o­rat­ed ‘Ten­ta­tive Sce­nario of Train­ing Work­shops for Mem­bers of Local Elec­tion Com­mis­sions at the Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion’ con­tained the analy­sis of cas­es with par­tic­i­pa­tion of jour­nal­ists at polling sta­tions. And it was stat­ed unam­bigu­ous­ly that media work­ers had the right to con­duct pho­to-video report­ing from there.

Among oth­er vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ist rights, con­nect­ed with the elec­toral process, there should be men­tioned numer­ous refusals to pro­vide them with infor­ma­tion, relat­ed to the elec­tion.

How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion – 2015 was held in a quite calm atmos­phere. Appar­ent­ly, it was con­nect­ed with the inten­tion of Belaru­sian offi­cial author­i­ties to receive the pos­i­tive eval­u­a­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, the absence of polit­i­cal ten­sion in the coun­try dur­ing the elec­tion peri­od, as well as the ‘cool­ing’ effect on the mass media, reached due to the tough­en­ing of leg­is­la­tion and its appli­ca­tion prac­tice.