E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS Bulletin #6(46) Brief Annual Review

SITUATION IN BELARUSIAN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN 2015 (SHORT SUMMARY)

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2015, new amend­ments into the Belarus law ‘On Mass Media’ came into force. They had been hasti­ly adopt­ed by the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tors with­out any pub­lic dis­cus­sion in Decem­ber 2014. In par­tic­u­lar, the amend­ments spread legal respon­si­bil­i­ty under the law on the Web media. At the same time, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus acquired the right to restrict extra­ju­di­cial­ly access to on-line resources, includ­ing for­eign Web-sites. The Min­istry exer­cised the right 40 times with­in the year. The deci­sions were main­ly tak­en with the pur­pose of strug­gling with drug-traf­fick­ing and fight­ing against vio­la­tions in the trad­ing field.

Pros­e­cu­tion of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out press accred­i­ta­tion was among the main prob­lems in 2015.

28 jour­nal­ists were fined on these charges. Fol­low­ing A. Lukashenka’s pre-elec­tion promise to look into the sit­u­a­tion, the prob­lem seemed to be solved. How­ev­er, three more admin­is­tra­tive cas­es were filed against the jour­nal­ists, whose mate­ri­als had been broad­cast by for­eign TV com­pa­nies, at the very end of the year.

The print media were pres­sur­ized by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, either. Thus, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus issued 27 offi­cial warn­ings for arbi­trary rea­sons to 27 print media at the begin­ning of the year. Since two warn­ings with­in a year may lead to the media clo­sure, there are all grounds to believe that they were aimed at strength­en­ing self-cen­sor­ship in the cor­re­spond­ing media.

A new admin­is­tra­tive bar­ri­er for dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts was intro­duced in July 2015. Thus, the press dis­trib­u­tors were oblig­ed to get reg­is­tered by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus. It reduced oppor­tu­ni­ties for inde­pen­dent print media to sell their pro­duc­tion through retail sales out­lets, since a con­sid­er­able part of them felt reluc­tant to pass the addi­tion­al admin­si­tra­tive pro­ce­dure.

The demand to get the press dis­trib­u­tors reg­is­tered exert­ed espe­cial­ly neg­a­tive impact on the media, which had been deprived of any pos­si­bil­i­ty to get dis­trib­uted through the state monop­o­list media dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems by sub­scrip­tion and through the news-stalls.

The reduc­tion of short-term deten­tions of jour­nal­ists by police and the lack of repres­sions against jour­nal­ists and media after the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion can be men­tioned among the pos­i­tive trends of the year. The lat­ter trend is appar­ent­ly explained by the desire of Belaru­sian gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties to get a pos­i­tive eval­u­a­tion of the elec­tion by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, the absence of sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal ten­sion in the coun­try on the eve of the elec­tion as well as by the ‘cool­ing down’ effect on the media, exert­ed through the pre­ven­tive intro­duc­tion of stricter legal norms into the media leg­is­la­tion and the tight­en­ing of law enforce­ment prac­tice.

MAIN EVENTS AND TRENDS IN BELARUSIAN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN 2015

Reinforcement of prosecution against journalists for cooperation with foreign media

The admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion against Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion rein­forced in 2015.The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to accuse the reporters of break­ing reg­u­la­tions on pro­duc­tion and (or) dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts, refer­ring to the vague­ly for­mu­lat­ed arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es. (The pros­e­cu­tion trend start­ed in May 2014.)

There were reg­is­tered 10 cas­es of bring­ing jour­nal­ists to legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for break­ing the arti­cle in 2014 and 28 cas­es of pros­e­cut­ing jour­nal­ists on the admin­is­tra­tive charges with­in the peri­od since Jan­u­ary till August 2015. The total sum of fines exceed­ed 146 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles that equaled to approx. EUR 8,000 at the time, when the fines were imposed on the jour­nal­ists.

In all the cas­es, it was not the con­tent, but the mere fact of appear­ance of jour­nal­is­tic mate­ri­als in the for­eign media that led to the pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists.

The sit­u­a­tion improved after the Pres­i­dent A. Lukashen­ka had promised ‘to exam­ine the sit­u­a­tion’ dur­ing his inter­view to jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent mass media on August 4, 2015.

Con­se­quent­ly, none of admin­is­tra­tive cas­es against jour­nal­ists for break­ing arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es were filed since the end of August until Decem­ber 24, 2015.

How­ev­er, the pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists on admin­is­tra­tive charges for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion was resumed at the end of 2015.

Thus, three police reports were made against jour­nal­ists Larysa Shchyrako­va and Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki from Homiel in dis­trict police depart­ments of Homiel region on Decem­ber 24 and Decem­ber 28, 2015. The jour­nal­ists were accused of ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion’ of TV reports, fol­low­ing their pre­sen­ta­tion on the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel (Poland). The jour­nal­ists were pun­ished under admin­is­tra­tive law lat­er on.

Arbitrary detentions of journalists

At the begin­ning of 2015, there were reg­is­tered more fre­quent­ly the cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tion of Belaru­sian cit­i­zens, who filmed admin­is­tra­tive build­ings, includ­ing the premis­es of the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of Belarus, Civ­il Reg­istry Offices etc.)

At least three jour­nal­ists were pre­vent­ed from imple­men­ta­tion of their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties this way.

The police offi­cers explained their actions by the received ‘inter­nal’ instruc­tion, issued by Mikalai Melchanka, Deputy Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus. Accord­ing to them, the instruc­tion of Feb­ru­ary 25, 2015 ‘enti­tled’ police rep­re­sen­ta­tives to learn the aims of pho­to- and video-shoot­ing of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings. Also, police offi­cers were instruct­ed to detain the peo­ple, who film admin­is­tra­tive premis­es, for the term of up to three hours and check the footage.

The Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs refused to pro­vide the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists with the orig­i­nal text of this instruc­tion, refer­ring to the inter­nal for­mat of the doc­u­ment that ‘reg­u­lates exclu­sive­ly the actions of police offi­cers and doesn’t deal with the ban on video- or pho­to-record­ing of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings’

In gen­er­al, the num­ber of short-term deten­tions of jour­nal­ists decreased in 2015 in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous years. Thus, jour­nal­ists were detained 19 times in 2015 to be com­pared to 29 cas­es of deten­tion in 2014. The jour­nal­ists were released from cus­tody with­out police reports with­in 3 hours since the moment of their deten­tion.

The peak of deten­tions of jour­nal­ists in Belarus took place in 2010. It hap­pened in the after­math of Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion 2010. The BAJ Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vice reg­is­tered 167 cas­es of the kind at that time. The quan­ti­ty of deten­tions of jour­nal­ists grad­u­al­ly decreased lat­er on. How­ev­er, there appeared a new form of pres­sure on reporters. The offi­cial author­i­ties start­ed bring­ing jour­nal­ists to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media.

Tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the gen­er­al quan­ti­ty of cas­es of police inter­fer­ence with the jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty, the num­ber of inci­dents increased in 2015 in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous year. In par­tic­u­lar, there were reg­is­tered 47 inci­dents in 2015 (19 cas­es of deten­tion and 28 admin­is­tra­tive cas­es for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media) vs. 39 inci­dents (29 cas­es of deten­tion and 10 admin­is­tra­tive cas­es) in 2014.

Official warnings to the print media

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus issued 27 offi­cial warn­ings to 26 media out­lets at the begin­ning of 2015. In the major­i­ty of cas­es the Min­istry explained the issuance of offi­cial warn­ings by ‘incor­rect’ pre­sen­ta­tion of the reg­is­tra­tion author­i­ty in the out­put data lines. In par­tic­u­lar, the “Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Repub­lic of Belarus” was pre­sent­ed as the “Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of RB” there. Obvi­ous­ly, the rea­son for the issuance of offi­cial warn­ings being insignif­i­cant enough, the author­i­ties took the step, in order to increase edi­to­r­i­al self-cen­sor­ship on the eve of the elec­tion cam­paign.

 (It is worth men­tion­ing that the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion can file a claim to court with a demand to close down a media out­let, fol­low­ing the issuance of two offi­cial warn­ings to the cor­re­spond­ing media with­in a year.)

All in all, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus issued 36 offi­cial warn­ings to 34 media out­lets dur­ing the year of 2015.

Problems with distribution of independent newspapers

New amend­ments to the Belarus law ‘On Mass Media’ came into force on July 1, 2015. Accord­ing­ly, the press dis­trib­u­tors were oblig­ed to become offi­cial reg­is­tered.

It reduced oppor­tu­ni­ties for some inde­pen­dent print media that gen­er­al­ly relied on sell­ing their pro­duc­tion through pri­vate retail sales out­lets, since a con­sid­er­able part of the lat­ter felt reluc­tant to under­take the addi­tion­al admin­si­tra­tive pro­ce­dure at the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

The new reg­u­la­tion had a high­ly neg­a­tive impact on the peri­od­i­cal edi­tions, which are deprived of any pos­si­bil­i­ty to sell their pro­duc­tion through the state-owned ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ press dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems with dom­i­neer­ing posi­tions in the mar­ket of press dis­tri­b­u­tion by sub­scrip­tion and through the news-stalls in Belarus. 

The edi­to­ri­als of ‘Gaze­ta Slonim­skaya’, ‘Intex-press’, ‘Intex-press plus’, and ‘SNPlus. Svo­bod­nye novosti plus’ news­pa­pers received new refusals to their requests to include their peri­od­i­cals into the ‘Bel­posh­ta’ sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logues and sell the news­pa­pers through the ‘Sayuz­druk’ net­work of news-stalls in the spring of 2015. 

Sim­i­lar neg­a­tive respons­es were received by the ‘Novy Chas’ and ‘Borisovskiye novosti’ edi­to­ri­als in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

The ‘Bel­posh­ta’ state-owned enter­prise is a monop­o­list in the field of print media dis­tri­b­u­tion by sub­scrip­tion. It refus­es to include inde­pen­dent media into its sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logues, con­sid­er­ing the deci­sion as its right, not respon­si­bil­i­ty. The ‘Sauz­druk’ enter­prise refus­es to dis­trib­ute peri­od­i­cals through the nation­wide net­work of news-stalls for the same rea­sons.

The prob­lems with dis­tri­b­u­tion of inde­pen­dent print media appeared on the eve of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign – 2006, i.e. 10 years ago. The ‘Bel­posh­ta’ Nation­al Uni­tary Enter­prise refused to include around 20 inde­pen­dent social and polit­i­cal news­pa­pers into its sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logue then. Also, the ‘Sayuz­druk’ state-owned enter­prise refused to sell the peri­od­i­cals through the net­work of its news-stalls.

Quite a few of these news­pa­pers had to leave the domes­tic media mar­ket as a result of the eco­nom­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Due to the warm­ing of rela­tions between the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and the EU in 2008,  the ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and ‘Sayuz­druk’ resumed coop­er­a­tion with the lead­ing inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volia’ and ‘Nasha Niva’.

Present­ly, 9 non-state social and peri­od­i­cal edi­tions still face prob­lems with dis­tri­b­u­tion through the state-owned ‘Bel­posh­ta’ and/or ‘Sayuz­druk’ enter­pris­es. (It is almost a half of reg­is­tered inde­pen­dent social and polit­i­cal media in Belarus.)

At the same time, the sub­scrip­tion to the state press is ‘tra­di­tion­al­ly’ imple­ment­ed with the use of admin­is­tra­tive resources. Thus, the Admin­is­tra­tion of Lenin­sky Munic­i­pal Dis­trict of Min­sk addressed to the heads of local­ly reg­is­tered orga­ni­za­tions to arrange sub­scrip­tion to “the main nation­al and munic­i­pal print­ed peri­od­i­cal edi­tions”, includ­ed in the spe­cial list, and report upon the achieved results at the end of 2015. The local author­i­ties explained their appeal by the begin­ning of sub­scrip­tion cam­paign for the first half-year of 2016 and the need “to ensure cor­rect inform­ing of cit­i­zens about social and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of Belarus”.

Sim­i­lar facts were reg­is­tered in Mahilou and Krychau.

Budgetary funding of the state-owned media

Apart from the enjoyed pref­er­ences, the state-owned media also are enti­tled to direct bud­getary fund­ing in Belarus.

The Belarus Law ‘On the Nation­al Bud­get for 2016’ was adopt­ed on Decem­ber 30, 2015. It pro­vides for the issuance of around EUR 45 mil­lion (900 120 843.0 thou­sand Br) for fund­ing the state-owned media in 2016.

Among oth­er, the bud­getary fund­ing includes around EUR 36.6 mil­lion (734 815 075.0 thou­sand Br) for TV and radio broad­cast­ing, around EUR 3.5 mil­lion (69 154 793.0 thou­sand Br) for the peri­od­i­cal press and pub­lish­ing hous­es, and around EUR 4.7 mil­lion (96 150 975.0 thou­sand Br) for ‘oth­er issues in the mass media field’. 

The fund­ing is pro­vid­ed with­out ten­ders at that. The list of 26 state-owned news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines for fund­ing from the nation­al bud­get in 2016 was defined by a gov­ern­ment res­o­lu­tion No.966 of Novem­ber 19, 2015.

Restrictions on Freedom of Activity in the Internet

New amend­ments to the Belarus Law ‘On Mass Media’ came into force on Jan­u­ary 1, 2015. They enti­tled the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus with the right to restrict access to any Web-resources extra­ju­di­cial­ly. Among oth­er, it can be done for a sin­gle vio­la­tion of media leg­is­la­tion.

The vague­ly for­mu­lat­ed list of infor­ma­tion, banned for dis­tri­b­u­tion in mass media, was sup­ple­ment­ed with such an item as ‘the infor­ma­tion, which dis­tri­b­u­tion may be harm­ful to the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus’.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus took a deci­sion to restrict access to the kyky.org Web-site with a ref­er­ence to the legal norm on June 18, 2015. None of offi­cial warn­ings to the Web-site edi­to­r­i­al were issued at that.

As it was men­tioned in the min­is­te­r­i­al press release, a range of arti­cles on the pages of the Web-resource ‘con­tained deroga­to­ry expres­sions about the Vic­to­ry Day, which is a state hol­i­day in Belarus, as well as in rela­tion to the peo­ple, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions, and argued the impor­tance of this event in the nation­al his­to­ry, thus dis­tort­ing the his­tor­i­cal truth about the Great Patri­ot­ic War’. The pub­lic access to kyky.org was restored in six days, as soon as the con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­i­al was delet­ed from the Web-resource.

The block­ing of access to kyky.org was regard­ed by spe­cial­ists as a warn­ing to the Belaru­sian Inter­net com­mu­ni­ty.

All in all, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus restrict­ed access to 40 infor­ma­tion­al Web-resources in 2015. “18 Web-resources from the list were blocked for dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion, con­nect­ed with drug-traf­fick­ing, 2 Web-resources were blocked for the use of taboo vocab­u­lary, 5 Web-sites were blocked for the ille­gal adver­tis­ing of pills, 1 Web-site was blocked for pro­pa­gan­da of chil­dren porno, 1 Web-resource was blocked for dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion that may be harm­ful to the nation­al inter­ests, 2 Web-sites were blocked for the adver­tis­ing of alco­holic drinks, and 11 Web-resources were blocked for dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als,” not­ed the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus in the reply let­ter to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

The access to four Web-resources from the list was restored some time lat­er.

The deci­sions to restrict access to the Web-resources were tak­en by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus on its own. None of offi­cial warn­ings to the own­ers of the blocked Web-sites were issued at that.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2015, the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Informa­ti­za­tion of Belarus and the Oper­a­tional and Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­tre under the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus adopt­ed ‘Pro­vi­sions on the pro­ce­dure of lim­i­ta­tion of access to Infor­ma­tion Resources (and their com­po­nents), locat­ed on the Inter­net’.

The new­ly adopt­ed legal norms pro­vide for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­abling access to Web-resources and anonymiz­ers (prox­ies, Tor etc.) that secure Web-users’ access to the blocked Web-pages.

Accord­ing to the adopt­ed Pro­vi­sions, it is impos­si­ble to appeal against the min­is­te­r­i­al deci­sions on dis­abling access to Web­sites in court.

In con­trast to the pre­vi­ous order, when the black­list­ed Web­sites couldn’t be accessed from state insti­tu­tions as well as edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al estab­lish­ments, the present order pro­vides for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­abling access to the banned Web­sites for all Web-users in Belarus.

The for­mer ‘black list’ of banned Web-resources, includ­ing such pop­u­lar Web­sites as www.charter97.org, www.belaruspartisan.org, http://spring96.org/, has been can­celled.

Apart from the cas­es of restrict­ing access to Web-resources in line with the legal require­mentes, there were reg­is­tered cas­es of block­ing access to Web-sites ille­gal­ly in 2015. Thus, the Web-serv­er of ‘Bela­PAN’ News Agency suf­fered from a large-scale DDoS-attack for a cou­ple of days since Octo­ber 3, 2015. The Web-sites of the news agency and its ‘Naviny.by’ on-line news­pa­per were host­ed on the serv­er.

On Decem­ber 19, 2015, there was restrict­ed access to the Web-sites belapan.com, belapan.by, naviny.by, belaruspartisan.org, udf.by, 21.by, gazetaby.com, zautra.by, and charter97.org. The ‘Bel­t­ele­com’ nation­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tor explained the acci­dent by a DDOS-attack on the equip­ment of its Data Pro­cess­ing Cen­ter. How­ev­er, the equip­ment restora­tion didn’t result in the imme­di­ate ren­o­va­tion of access to the men­tioned Web-resources. None of gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies took respon­si­bil­i­ty for dis­abling access to the Web-sites in both cas­es.