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  • Freedom of media and sustainable development — Belarus

    The achievement of sustainable development goals in Belarus is undoubtedly impossible without independent media and journalists allowing the general public access to information of public interest. However, the state of media freedom and the right of access to information in Belarus is deteriorating year by year. The 2020 presidential election period has been a critical milestone that launched a large-scale policy process against independent media, accompanied by official attempts to control all information dissemination, as well as suppress dissent.

    In July 2022, Belarus pre­pared its sec­ond Vol­un­tary Nation­al Review on the imple­men­ta­tion of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this review does not address the tar­get on pub­lic access to infor­ma­tion, despite the fact that glob­al indi­ca­tor 16.10.2 is at Lev­el I, which demon­strates the pri­or­i­ty of report­ing on it.  How­ev­er, offi­cial­ly pub­lished data reports the fol­low­ing sta­tis­tics for nation­al indi­ca­tors in rela­tion to tar­get 16.10:

    • Num­ber of con­firmed cas­es of killing, abduc­tion, enforced dis­ap­pear­ance, arbi­trary deten­tion and tor­ture of jour­nal­ists and asso­ci­at­ed media rep­re­sen­ta­tives, trade union­ists and human rights defend­ers in the last 12 months — (0).[1]

    In the con­text of this indi­ca­tor, it should be stressed that the offi­cial sta­tis­tics do not cor­re­spond to the actu­al state of affairs. Accord­ing to the mon­i­tor­ing data of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (here­inafter — BAJ), 481 cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tion of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives were record­ed in 2020[2], 113 cas­es were record­ed in 2021[3], and 43 cas­es were record­ed in 2022[4].

    • Num­ber of legal acts pro­vid­ing guar­an­tees of cit­i­zens’ access to infor­ma­tion (1).[5]

    Regard­ing this indi­ca­tor, it seems nec­es­sary to note that the cur­rent Law «On Infor­ma­tion, Informa­ti­za­tion and Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion» does not pro­vide suf­fi­cient and effec­tive leg­isla­tive guar­an­tees to cit­i­zens, while the nec­es­sary poli­cies and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al mea­sures to imple­ment SDG 16.10 have not been adopt­ed in Belarus.

    Investigative journalism in Belarus

    Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism in Belarus, which is key to achiev­ing the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, faces numer­ous chal­lenges — includ­ing the risk of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists, state reprisals against media out­lets and forced relo­ca­tion of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

    • the case of Dzia­n­is Ivashyn

    Dzia­n­is Ivashyn[6] is a Belaru­sian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal pris­on­er sen­tenced to 13 years and 1 month of impris­on­ment. Ivashyn is known for his inves­ti­ga­tions into the influ­ence of the «Russ­ian world» on Belarus and Syr­ia, the scan­dalous devel­op­ment in Kuropaty, as well as the tran­si­tion of for­mer Ukrain­ian Berkut offi­cers into the secu­ri­ty ser­vices of Belarus. Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was charged under Arti­cles 356 (trea­son against the state) and 179 (ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of pri­vate infor­ma­tion) of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus for his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

    • the case of Siarhei Sat­suk

    Siarhei Sat­suk[7]  is a Belaru­sian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and polit­i­cal pris­on­er sen­tenced to 8 years of impris­on­ment. One of Sat­suk’s most high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tions, after the pub­li­ca­tion of which he faced prob­lems with the offi­cial author­i­ties, was the mate­r­i­al about large-scale cor­rup­tion in the med­ical indus­try in Belarus. Siarhei Sat­suk was charged under Arti­cles 130 (incite­ment of enmi­ty or dis­cord), 426 (exceed­ing pow­er or offi­cial author­i­ty) and 430 (bribery) of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus for his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

    • Inde­pen­dent media pub­lish­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism

    In Belarus, a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media out­lets that pub­lish inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism have also faced state repres­sion fol­low­ing 2020. For instance, the largest media por­tal TUT BY[8] was forced to cease its activ­i­ties due to state harass­ment in the form of numer­ous search­es of the edi­to­r­i­al office, block­ing of the web­site, crim­i­nal cas­es against its staff, depri­va­tion of media sta­tus and recog­ni­tion as an ‘extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion’. Anoth­er illus­tra­tive exam­ple in this regard is the BELSAT TV chan­nel[9], whose web­site is blocked on the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus, with employ­ees fac­ing admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. More­over, BELSAT is offi­cial­ly recog­nised as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion» and its con­tent as «extrem­ist mate­ri­als» whose dis­tri­b­u­tion is pro­hib­it­ed.

    Details of oth­er reprisals against inde­pen­dent media out­lets can be found at the fol­low­ing link.[10]

    • Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter

    Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter is a project launched in 2019 that brings togeth­er inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and aims to expose cor­rup­tion schemes and vio­la­tions of the law at the high­est lev­el. Since April 2022, Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter has been a mem­ber of the Organ­ised Crime and Cor­rup­tion Report­ing Cen­tre (OCCRP). After a search of the pro­jec­t’s  office in 2021 and an active crack­down in the media space, the project team was forced to relo­cate and con­tin­ue to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions from abroad.

    Challenges for independent media and journalists in Belarus

    1. Key chal­lenges in the field of poli­cies and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al mea­sures.

    Cur­rent­ly, the main chal­lenges for inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Belarus in the field of pol­i­tics and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al mea­sures include crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives, admin­is­tra­tive deten­tions and search­es of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, appli­ca­tion of «anti-extrem­ist» leg­is­la­tion, admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion, as well as dif­fi­cul­ties for jour­nal­ists to access infor­ma­tion held by the state and a clear dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to state-owned media.  It should be empha­sised that all of the above chal­lenges are com­pound­ed by the lack of effec­tive reme­dies in Belarus, which could allow inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media to defend their rights and inter­ests.

    • crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists

    To date, accord­ing to BAJ mon­i­tor­ing data, 31 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Belarus have been sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and remain behind bars. The max­i­mum sanc­tion applied to blog­ger and free­lance con­sul­tant Ihar Losik[11] is 15 years of impris­on­ment in a high-secu­ri­ty colony. Each of the cas­es of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed while among the incrim­i­nat­ed arti­cles pre­dom­i­nate Arti­cle 342 (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them), Arti­cle 361–1 (estab­lish­ment or par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion), Arti­cle 369 (insult­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the author­i­ties), Arti­cle 357 (plot or oth­er actions aimed at seiz­ing state pow­er) and Arti­cle 130 (incit­ing hatred or dis­cord) of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

    • admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion and search­es of jour­nal­ists

    As men­tioned above, accord­ing to BAJ mon­i­tor­ing, there were 481 cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tion of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2020, 113 cas­es were record­ed in 2021, and 43 cas­es of deten­tion and 55 search­es occurred in 2022. It should be stressed that the decrease in the num­ber of arbi­trary deten­tions does not indi­cate a soft­en­ing of state repres­sion, but is caused by a decrease in the num­ber of jour­nal­ists stay­ing in Belarus (high num­ber of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives were forced to re-locate for secu­ri­ty rea­sons or to quit their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties).

    • appli­ca­tion of «anti-extrem­ist” leg­is­la­tion

    Anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion is one of the key tools of the state’s strug­gle against inde­pen­dent media and is active­ly used as a basis for restrict­ing access to inde­pen­dent media con­tent as well as for pros­e­cut­ing any involve­ment in their activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to the BAJ mon­i­tor­ing, in 2022, 9 inde­pen­dent media out­lets were labelled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’, the media por­tal TUT BY was declared an ‘extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion’, while around 1500 web resources were recog­nised as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’. It should be empha­sized that this has led to mass pros­e­cu­tion of inter­net audi­ence of inde­pen­dent media for dis­tri­b­u­tion of «extrem­ist» media con­tent.

    • admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net

    One of the key instru­ments used by the state to con­trol infor­ma­tion is an arbi­trary restric­tion of access to Inter­net resources. Accord­ing to offi­cial data, in Jan­u­ary-Novem­ber 2022 alone, the state restrict­ed access, ful­ly or par­tial­ly, to 3 002 Inter­net resources. It should be stressed that the block­ing of Inter­net resources in Belarus is done out-of-court and is with­in the com­pe­tence of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and the Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office.

    • сhal­lenges to jour­nal­ists’ access to infor­ma­tion

    In the course of their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists con­stant­ly face exclu­sion from pub­lic court hear­ings and offi­cial events, as well as unjus­ti­fied refusals to pro­vide infor­ma­tion when con­tact­ing state bod­ies. More­over, it should be high­light­ed that state author­i­ties do not seek to proac­tive­ly post pub­lic infor­ma­tion offline and online, the pub­li­ca­tion of which is not direct­ly pro­vid­ed for in the law.

    • the dis­ad­van­tage in com­par­i­son to state media

    In order to estab­lish total con­trol over infor­ma­tion, the state uses both legal and polit­i­cal meth­ods to main­tain a monop­oly over the pro­pa­gan­da media in the fields of radio, tele­vi­sion and print media. It should be stressed that the man­age­ment staff of state media, who are appoint­ed on a non-com­pet­i­tive and non-trans­par­ent basis, must show absolute loy­al­ty to the author­i­ties. More­over, state-owned media are direct­ly sup­port­ed from the state bud­get and have oth­er finan­cial pref­er­ences, which is clear evi­dence of dis­crim­i­na­tion in access to finan­cial sup­port com­pared to non-state media. More­over, since 2020, the author­i­ties have deprived inde­pen­dent print media of the pos­si­bil­i­ty to print and dis­trib­ute their con­tent, rein­forc­ing the monop­oly of the state-owned press.

    1. Key chal­lenges in the field of leg­isla­tive reg­u­la­tion.

    As not­ed ear­li­er, the leg­isla­tive frame­work in Belarus allows for arbi­trary crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty for media rep­re­sen­ta­tives. How­ev­er, in addi­tion to this, spe­cial atten­tion should be paid to the legal acts reg­u­lat­ing the media and access to infor­ma­tion in Belarus.

    • Law «On Mass Media»

    The main legal act reg­u­lat­ing the activ­i­ties of media and jour­nal­ists in Belarus is the Law «On Mass Media». The main defi­ciences of the Law include:

    • lack of nec­es­sary guar­an­tees for jour­nal­ists

    First­ly, it should be empha­sized that the Law uses a nar­row inter­pre­ta­tion of the term «jour­nal­ist», refer­ring only to those per­sons who have con­trac­tu­al rela­tions with legal enti­ties that have offi­cial media sta­tus (media sta­tus in Belarus is grant­ed on a per­mis­sive basis). Thus, jour­nal­ists of unreg­is­tered media and free­lancers are not con­sid­ered as «jour­nal­ists» with­in the mean­ing of the law and can­not enjoy their guar­an­tees.

    Sec­ond­ly, anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem is the need for accred­i­ta­tion, pro­vid­ed for by the Law,  which sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­its the access of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media to infor­ma­tion. First of all, only a per­son who would be con­sid­ered a «jour­nal­ist» with­in the mean­ing of the law could apply for accred­i­ta­tion. More­over, accred­i­ta­tion in fact gives state agen­cies the right to per­mit a jour­nal­ist to cov­er their activ­i­ties.

    Third­ly, although the right of jour­nal­ists to request and receive infor­ma­tion from State bod­ies is enshrined, there are no real guar­an­tees for the imple­men­ta­tion of this right in the leg­is­la­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, the Law does not take into account the cat­e­go­ry of «pub­lic inter­est» in the con­text of deter­min­ing the legal­i­ty of pro­vid­ing jour­nal­ists with infor­ma­tion.

    • a blan­ket ban on infor­ma­tion

    The Law pro­vides for a wide range of infor­ma­tion, the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is pro­hib­it­ed in the media and on Inter­net resources. First of all, it is nec­es­sary to empha­size that the list of this infor­ma­tion is open, since Arti­cle 38 of the Law con­tains the vague word­ing «oth­er infor­ma­tion the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is like­ly to harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus or is pro­hib­it­ed by oth­er leg­isla­tive acts». Sec­ond­ly, as a result of inno­va­tions in 2021, it is also pro­hib­it­ed to pub­lish the results of pub­lic opin­ion polls relat­ed to the socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, con­duct­ed with­out obtain­ing spe­cif­ic accred­i­ta­tion. More­over, hyper­links to mate­ri­als and mes­sages con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is pro­hib­it­ed are also for­bid­den.

    • arbi­trary restric­tion of access to media con­tent

    First­ly, the Law gives the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, as well as the Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office, broad pow­ers to arbi­trar­i­ly restrict access to any Inter­net resource. Sec­ond­ly, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion can extra­ju­di­cial­ly sus­pend the activ­i­ties of a media out­let for up to three months. Third­ly, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion is also capa­ble of ter­mi­nat­ing a mass media out­let both judi­cial­ly and non-judi­cial­ly.

    It should be empha­sized that in all cas­es the grounds on which the media may be sub­ject­ed to these lia­bil­i­ty mea­sures are exces­sive­ly broad and open up unlim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for abuse.

    • Law «On Infor­ma­tion, Informa­ti­za­tion and Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion»

    The key legal act reg­u­lat­ing the issue of access to infor­ma­tion in Belarus is the Law «On Infor­ma­tion, Informa­ti­za­tion and Infor­ma­tion Pro­tec­tion. It should be high­light­ed that accord­ing to the Glob­al Right to Infor­ma­tion Rat­ing[12] this Law received only 38 points out of 150 pos­si­ble, which is obvi­ous­ly a  low  rate. Among the key prob­lems of the Law are the fol­low­ing:

    • Lack of an effec­tive mech­a­nism for appeal­ing the refusal of a state body to pro­vide infor­ma­tion.

    • Wide restric­tions on access to infor­ma­tion.

    Accord­ing to the Law, in Belarus there are «pub­licly acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion» (infor­ma­tion access to which may not be restrict­ed) and «infor­ma­tion the pro­vi­sion and (or) dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is restrict­ed». How­ev­er, it should be empha­sized that the list of cat­e­gories of pub­licly acces­si­ble infor­ma­tion is closed, while the list of restrict­ed infor­ma­tion is not only exces­sive­ly broad, but also is open and may be sup­ple­ment­ed by reg­u­la­to­ry legal acts of var­i­ous lev­els.

    • Lack of an inde­pen­dent autho­rized body to con­trol access to infor­ma­tion.

    Key findings and recommendations

    The above data clear­ly shows that inde­pen­dent media in Belarus today are one of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups from the point of view of the risk of polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion. Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media out­lets face a whole range of leg­isla­tive and polit­i­cal chal­lenges that cre­ate extreme­ly seri­ous obsta­cles for them to car­ry out their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. In con­nec­tion with the gen­er­al state of media free­dom in Belarus, the sit­u­a­tion of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists, who play an impor­tant role in the con­text of imple­ment­ing the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, remains extreme­ly dif­fi­cult, and two inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists are cur­rent­ly polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

    There­fore, BAJ can iden­ti­fy the fol­low­ing key rec­om­men­da­tions that can con­tribute to the imple­men­ta­tion of SDG Tar­get 16.10 in Belarus:

    • to release inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, Siarhei Sat­suk, and oth­er media rep­re­sen­ta­tives who remain behind bars imme­di­ate­ly;

    • to stop the prac­tice of arbi­trary deten­tions and search­es of jour­nal­ists, bring­ing them to admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties and oth­er obstruc­tion of their work by law enforce­ment bod­ies;

    • to stop the prac­tice of apply­ing «anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion» to inde­pen­dent media and jour­nal­ists, as well as their audi­ences;

    • to stop the prac­tice of arbi­trar­i­ly restrict­ing access to Inter­net resources, as well as sus­pend­ing and ter­mi­nat­ing the activ­i­ties of media out­lets;

    • to stop the prac­tice of unjus­ti­fi­ably deny­ing jour­nal­ists access to infor­ma­tion;

    • to end the pol­i­cy of monop­o­liz­ing state-owned media and to cre­ate trans­par­ent and com­pet­i­tive mech­a­nisms for financ­ing the media;

    • to under­take leg­isla­tive reform in the field of free­dom of the media and access to infor­ma­tion in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards of free­dom of expres­sion;

    • to cre­ate effec­tive legal reme­dies allow­ing jour­nal­ists and media to pro­tect their legit­i­mate rights and inter­ests.

     

     
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