Human Rights Watch: Media Under Attack as European Games Loom

 Belaru­sian author­i­ties have car­ried out con­cert­ed attacks on media free­dom over the past two years that direct­ly affect the cli­mate in which news media will cov­er the coun­try before, dur­ing, and after the upcom­ing Euro­pean Games, Human Rights Watch said today. The Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees (EOC) should ensure that all jour­nal­ists, for­eign and local, cov­er­ing the 2019 Euro­pean Games, from June 21–30, in Belarus, can oper­ate free from harass­ment.

In the past two years, Belaru­sian author­i­ties have filed a record num­ber of crim­i­nal charges against jour­nal­ists and blog­gers, car­ried out ground­less search­es of the edi­to­r­i­al offices of sev­er­al news orga­ni­za­tions, intro­duced tighter state con­trol of the inter­net, and expand­ed grounds for pros­e­cut­ing speech. On May 8, in response to con­cerns about press free­dom raised by Human Rights Watch and oth­er groups, the EOC told Human Rights Watch that it would appoint a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to mon­i­tor media free­dom dur­ing the games.

“It’s good news that the EOC has com­mit­ted to deal­ing with inter­fer­ence with press free­doms, but it needs to fol­low up with effec­tive action,” said Rachel Den­ber, deputy Europe and Cen­tral Asia direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. “It’s dis­turb­ing that jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the games will need pro­tec­tion from Belaru­sian author­i­ties’ harass­ment.”

Andrei Bas­tunets, chair of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Belarus’ top media rights watch­dog, has said that “2018 has become the dark­est year for Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism since 2011,” when there was a mas­sive crack­down fol­low­ing elec­tions in Decem­ber of the pre­vi­ous year. Bas­tunets has said that the author­i­ties are try­ing to strength­en their con­trol of mass media ahead of par­lia­men­tary and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions at the end of 2019 and 2020.

Leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed in 2014 autho­rized the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry to com­pel inter­net providers to block access to web­sites with­out judi­cial review. Amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media in 2018 intro­duced a bur­den­some reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure for online media to be able to cov­er the gov­ern­ment. And reporters are being pros­e­cut­ed under the 2016 amend­ments to the country’s anti-extrem­ism law.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists doc­u­ment­ed 26 police search­es of jour­nal­ists’ and blog­gers’ homes and of media offices in 2018. In Feb­ru­ary 2018, a court sen­tenced three blog­gers to five years in prison and sus­pend­ed their sen­tences, after they had spent 14 months in pre­tri­al cus­tody, for posts that alleged­ly “ques­tioned Belarus’s sov­er­eign­ty” and “insult­ed the Belaru­sian nation.” In March 2019, police arrest­ed two Russ­ian jour­nal­ists as they were giv­ing a lec­ture about oper­at­ing small online out­lets. A blog­ger who cov­ered envi­ron­men­tal protests is fac­ing dubi­ous “crim­i­nal insult” charges.

In April, a court con­vict­ed an inde­pen­dent media edi­tor of crim­i­nal neg­li­gence on alle­ga­tions that some of her staff had been access­ing the web­site of BelTA, the state news agency, with­out pay­ing a sub­scrip­tion fee. The charges were whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate for the alleged offense, Human Rights Watch said. In con­nec­tion with sim­i­lar cas­es, police searched the offices of sev­er­al inde­pen­dent media out­lets, and held eight jour­nal­ists in cus­tody for three days. They, along with at least six oth­ers, were also pros­e­cut­ed and fined.

Author­i­ties have pros­e­cut­ed blog­gers who cov­er con­tro­ver­sial issues on a range of dubi­ous or trumped-up charges. They have also rou­tine­ly detained and fined jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing unau­tho­rized protests.

Pres­i­dent Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka will mark his 25^th anniver­sary in office in July. His pres­i­den­cy has been marked by entrenched author­i­tar­i­an rule, Human Rights Watch said. The gov­ern­ment severe­ly restricts inde­pen­dent media and inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions and refus­es per­mis­sion for most human rights groups to reg­is­ter and oper­ate freely. It is the only coun­try in Europe that con­tin­ues to allow the death penal­ty.

In recent years, the gov­ern­ment made some improve­ments in the human rights sit­u­a­tion. It has down­grad­ed “unreg­is­tered” involve­ment in non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (NGOs) from a crim­i­nal offense to an admin­is­tra­tive one and has released most high-pro­file polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. The author­i­ties have jailed few­er jour­nal­ists than in the past, though they have great­ly increased pros­e­cu­tions that result in fines.

Human rights and media free­dom groups have repeat­ed­ly urged the EOC to estab­lish media free­dom pro­ce­dures for the Min­sk Games. In a May 8 let­ter to Human Rights Watch, the EOC’s lead­er­ship wrote that it had appoint­ed a “con­tact per­son to mon­i­tor” the rights of jour­nal­ists dur­ing the games.

The EOC should ensure that the infor­ma­tion about the con­tact per­son is made avail­able to for­eign and Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists alike, and that the indi­vid­ual has the resources to respond effec­tive­ly to any com­plaints. The EOC, an asso­ci­a­tion of 50 Nation­al Olympic Com­mit­tees, owns and reg­u­lates the Euro­pean Games. The EOC and its mem­bers are part of the Olympic Move­ment and gov­erned by the Olympic Char­ter, which has explic­it guar­an­tees for media free­dom.

“The sit­u­a­tion for press free­doms in Belarus is alarm­ing,” Den­ber said. “The EOC needs to do what­ev­er is required to ensure jour­nal­ists can report safe­ly dur­ing the games.”

For details about the new leg­is­la­tion and the cas­es brought against jour­nal­ists and blog­gers, please see below.

New Restric­tive Leg­is­la­tion

Leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed in 2014 autho­rized the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry to com­pel inter­net providers to block access to web­sites with­out judi­cial review.

In the last two years, access to two inde­pen­dent news plat­forms, Belaru­sian Par­ti­san and Char­ter ’97, were blocked for “dis­sem­i­nat­ing pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion,” includ­ing infor­ma­tion about an “unau­tho­rized assem­bly.” Both remain blocked, although one re-opened under a dif­fer­ent domain.

Amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media in 2018 intro­duced a bur­den­some pro­ce­dure for “vol­un­tary” reg­is­tra­tion for online media out­lets. Web­sites with­out this reg­is­tra­tion can­not file requests for accred­i­ta­tion with gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, effec­tive­ly ban­ning them from report­ing on the work of the gov­ern­ment.

Web­sites that want to be reg­is­tered must have an offi­cial­ly reg­is­tered com­pa­ny and office. The website’s edi­tor-in-chief must be a cit­i­zen of Belarus with more than five years of media expe­ri­ence. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists told Human Rights Watch that as of the begin­ning of 2019, only five web­sites were reg­is­tered.

The amend­ments require both reg­is­tered and unreg­is­tered online media out­lets to keep pub­lic records of the names of peo­ple who sub­mit com­ments online and dis­close that infor­ma­tion to author­i­ties. The amend­ments also make own­ers of online media crim­i­nal­ly liable for any con­tent post­ed on their web­site and pro­vide addi­tion­al grounds for the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry to block web­sites with­out judi­cial over­sight.

Amend­ments to the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, also adopt­ed in 2018, intro­duced fines for dis­sem­i­nat­ing “pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion,” up to 4,900 Belaru­sian rubles (about US$2,320) for reg­is­tered media out­lets, and 2,450 Belaru­sian rubles (about US$1,160) for unreg­is­tered out­lets.

The Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Com­mit­tee (HRC), which over­sees com­pli­ance with the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights (ICCPR), found that many aspects of Belarus media reg­u­la­tion, includ­ing the 2018 legal amend­ments, “severe­ly restrict free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion.”

Mis­use of “Anti-Extrem­ism” Leg­is­la­tion to Restrict Legit­i­mate Speech

Leg­isla­tive amend­ments adopt­ed in 2016 expand­ed the def­i­n­i­tion of “extrem­ist activ­i­ty” to include, among oth­er things, “dis­sem­i­nat­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als.”

Two high-pro­file exam­ples illus­trate how Belaru­sian author­i­ties have used crim­i­nal “extrem­ism” charges to sup­press provoca­tive speech relat­ed to Russ­ian-Belaru­sian rela­tions. The Belarus author­i­ties have tried to pre­vent infor­ma­tion about the cas­es get­ting out, clos­ing the tri­als to the pub­lic and requir­ing the accused and their lawyers to sign non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments.

In one of the cas­es, in an August 2016 closed hear­ing, a Min­sk court found that nine arti­cles pub­lished on 1863x.com, a news and ana­lyt­i­cal web­site often crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment, were “extrem­ist,” alleg­ing that some con­tent con­tained pornog­ra­phy and incit­ed eth­nic hatred. In reach­ing its con­clu­sion, the court relied exclu­sive­ly on a state expert’s analy­sis.

The website’s admin­is­tra­tor, Eduard Palchys, was arrest­ed in May 2016, con­vict­ed in Octo­ber on crim­i­nal extrem­ism charges fol­low­ing a closed tri­al, sen­tenced to 21 months on parole, and released. Palchys and his lawyer had to sign a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment pro­hibit­ing them from speak­ing pub­licly about the tri­al. Human Rights Watch under­stands that the speech was provoca­tive and might be offen­sive to some, but it did not call for vio­lence.

In the sec­ond case, in Decem­ber 2016, author­i­ties arrest­ed Yuri Pavlovets, Dim­itri Alimkin, and Sergei Shiptenko, blog­gers with the Russ­ian-lan­guage web­sites Reg­num, Lenta.ru, and EADai­ly, on charges of incit­ing extrem­ism and sow­ing social dis­cord between Rus­sia and Belarus, for posts author­i­ties said “ques­tioned Belarus’s sov­er­eign­ty” and “insult­ed the Belaru­sian nation.” It appears that the arti­cles that formed the basis for the charges were dis­mis­sive of the Belaru­sian lan­guage and spec­u­lat­ed that Belarus could face a nation­al­ist revolt and might fol­low the exam­ple of Ukraine, where a pub­lic upris­ing in 2013–2014 over­threw the gov­ern­ment. In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the court con­vict­ed them and hand­ed down five-year sus­pend­ed prison sen­tences, upheld lat­er on appeal. All three spent 14 months in pre-tri­al cus­tody.

In Decem­ber, Inter­nal Affairs Min­is­ter Igor Shunevich pre­sent­ed a draft law to par­lia­ment that would cre­ate addi­tion­al admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for the “pro­pa­gan­da and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism.” Par­lia­ment approved the bill on the first read­ing, but the bill would have to be approved in two more read­ings and be signed by the pres­i­dent to become law.

Around the same time, author­i­ties start­ed using exist­ing arti­cles of the admin­is­tra­tive offens­es code pro­hibit­ing “pro­pa­gan­da or pub­lic demon­stra­tion of Nazi symbols”(article 17.10) and “dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ty” (arti­cle 17.11) to penal­ize jour­nal­ists and activists, in par­tic­u­lar, those involved in the anar­chist move­ment, for their social media posts.

In one exam­ple, in Novem­ber, Ali­ak­san­dr Dzian­isau, a free­lance jour­nal­ist, was fined 612.5 Belaru­sian rubles (about US$290) for repost­ing two videos of a 2017 ral­ly against the “social par­a­sites tax.” These videos were re-post­ed from a group that author­i­ties had black­list­ed in 2016 for fea­tur­ing “extrem­ist” con­tent, mak­ing repost­ing of any of the group’s pub­li­ca­tions an offense.

In oth­er cas­es, Ali­ak­san­dr Hor­bach and Mikalay Dzi­adok, free­lance jour­nal­ists, were fined for posts involv­ing Nazi sym­bols. Hor­bach was fined for postsfea­tur­ing anti-fas­cist graf­fi­ti, from 2013 to 2016. Dzi­adok was fined sev­er­al times, includ­ing for posts that depict­ed a swasti­ka and con­demned famous Belaru­sian pub­lic fig­ures for being pho­tographed with the flag of a neo-Nazi group called Mis­an­throp­ic Divi­sion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists report­ed that in mid-March 2019, police in Min­sk detained two Russ­ian jour­nal­ists, Pavel Nikulin and Jan Potarsky, while they were about to give a lec­ture about small-scale media out­lets at the Belaru­sian Press Club. They were released after three hours with­out charge, but their pre­sen­ta­tion mate­ri­als were con­fis­cat­ed. The police said lat­er that they had filed an admin­is­tra­tive case against Nikulin and Potarsky for dis­sem­i­nat­ing “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als. Both are with moloko plus, a Russ­ian non­com­mer­cial media project devot­ed to study­ing vio­lence.

The BelTA Case

In August 2018, Belaru­sian author­i­ties opened a crim­i­nal inquiry against sev­er­al media out­lets for alleged­ly using pass­words to access a paid sub­scrip­tion to the state-owned news agency, BelTA, with­out autho­riza­tion and with­out pay­ing for a sub­scrip­tion.

Police searched the offices of Bela­PAN, the only inde­pen­dent news agency in Belarus, and TUT.by, a lead­ing news web­site that is one of the few reg­is­tered, inde­pen­dent online out­lets. TUT.by has the largest audi­ence among inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media, com­pa­ra­ble with that of state tele­vi­sion chan­nels. Police also searched the edi­to­r­i­al offices of sev­er­al oth­er media out­lets, some of them state-owned, and the homes of sev­er­al jour­nal­ists. They con­fis­cat­ed com­put­ers and oth­er data stor­age devices.

A lawyer with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists told Human Rights Watch that at least 18 jour­nal­ists and edi­tors from var­i­ous online out­lets were inter­ro­gat­ed as sus­pects or wit­ness­es, eight of whom were detained for up to three days.

In Sep­tem­ber, Dzmit­ry Bobrik, edi­tor of FINANCE.TUT.by, said in a social media post that the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, Belarus’s crim­i­nal inves­tiga­tive ser­vice, had forced him to coop­er­ate by threat­en­ing his fam­i­ly and pri­va­cy. Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee offi­cials denied his alle­ga­tions.

In Novem­ber, 14 sus­pects were charged with “unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion for per­son­al gain, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age” under part 2, arti­cle 349 of the Crim­i­nal Code. Vio­la­tions are pun­ish­able by up to two years in prison.

Ali­ak­sei Kazliuk, co-founder of Human Con­stan­ta, an inde­pen­dent human rights group, told Human Rights Watch that such charges are intend­ed for cyber-crimes like hack­ing, and not for abus­ing a pass­word to get free access to a com­mer­cial web­site. “These jour­nal­ists are not hack­ers”, he said, “and such sit­u­a­tions should be dealt with in the frame­work of civ­il pro­ceed­ings.”

By the end of Decem­ber, the crim­i­nal charges had been replaced with admin­is­tra­tive charges. Each of the accused had to pay fines and dam­ages rang­ing from 3,000 to 17,000 Belaru­sian rubles (US$1,420 – $8,050) to BelTA and anoth­er state-owned media com­pa­ny.

In March, a court found Mary­na Zolata­va, the edi­tor of TUT.by, guilty of crim­i­nal neg­li­gence for alleged­ly being aware that her staff was using log-in data for BeITA’s paid sub­scrip­tion. The court fined her 7,650 Belaru­sian rubles and ordered her to pay BeI­TA 6,000 Belaru­sian rubles (US$3,650 and $2,860, respec­tive­ly) in legal costs.

Dur­ing her tri­al, Zolata­va admit­ted that she became aware that one employ­ee was using a BelTA paid sub­scrip­tion pass­word, and said she imme­di­ate­ly ordered the per­son to stop. The defense under­scored that all the news that appears on the BelTA paid sub­scrip­tion ser­vice is pub­lished, usu­al­ly sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, for open access.

The defense said that there were only two instances in which the inves­ti­ga­tion had been able to demon­strate that news orig­i­nat­ing from BelTA appeared on TUT.by’s web­site before being pub­licly released by BelTA. Nev­er­the­less, the pros­e­cu­tion insist­ed that BelTA and its sub­scribers incurred dam­ages that equaled the total cost of sev­er­al paid sub­scrip­tion licens­es for sev­er­al months.

“The entire case appears to be an attempt by the law enforce­ment to intim­i­date and bring under con­trol lead­ing inde­pen­dent media, in par­tic­u­lar TUT.by,” Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, a Belaru­sian media expert, told Human Rights Watch. “Dur­ing hun­dreds of inter­ro­ga­tions con­duct­ed for this case, jour­nal­ists were asked detailed ques­tions on how the work of their edi­to­r­i­al offices is orga­nized, which went far beyond what was nec­es­sary.… Law enforce­ment also obtained a large amount of data stored on seized com­put­ers, which poten­tial­ly may be used to per­se­cute jour­nal­ists and their sources.”

In June 2018, two months before the BelTA case was opened, the author­i­ties began inves­ti­gat­ing Ales Lipai, head of the Bela­PAN news agency, on crim­i­nal tax eva­sion charges. A week before the case was opened, the tax author­i­ties imposed an admin­is­tra­tive fine on Lipai for late sub­mis­sion of his 2016–2017 tax returns. Lipai paid the fines in full by the day the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was opened, but the author­i­ties pro­ceed­ed with it any­way, seized his prop­er­ty and putting him under house arrest. They dropped the case after Lipai died in August from can­cer.

Harass­ment of Jour­nal­ists Con­tribut­ing to For­eign Media

Belaru­sian media leg­is­la­tion requires jour­nal­ists work­ing for media out­lets reg­is­tered out­side Belarus to obtain accred­i­ta­tion from the For­eign Affairs Min­istry, even if they are Belaru­sian nation­als. The same law also requires them to have an offi­cial labor con­tract with the accred­it­ed for­eign media out­let, which makes it dif­fi­cult for free­lancers to become accred­it­ed. Author­i­ties have often arbi­trar­i­ly denied accred­i­ta­tion to jour­nal­ists work­ing for for­eign media.

For years, law enforce­ment offi­cials harassed jour­nal­ists con­tribut­ing to for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion, most­ly by issu­ing warn­ings. In April 2014, the author­i­ties start­ed pros­e­cut­ing them under part 2 of arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences, for “ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts.”

Accord­ing to Human Rights Cen­ter Vias­na, an inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian group, in 2018 alone, the courts imposed 131 fines on 36 jour­nal­ists and blog­gers for this offense, rang­ing from 490 to 1,225 Belaru­sian rubles (US$230 to US$580). The total sum, more than 110,000 Belaru­sian rubles (about US$52,000), exceed­ed the amount of the fines imposed in the pre­vi­ous four years for this offense. In the first four months of 2019, author­i­ties have brought at least 35 such cas­es against 15 jour­nal­ists.

Free­lance jour­nal­ists con­tribut­ing to the Belaru­sian-lan­guage TV chan­nel Bel­sat are the main tar­gets of these charges, as well as of oth­er harass­ment. Bel­sat is reg­is­tered in Poland but posi­tions itself as the only inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian TV chan­nel. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the total amount of fines imposed on Bel­sat jour­nal­ists for this offense in 2018 had exceed­ed the equiv­a­lent of US$47,000.

Vol­ha Chaichyts, a free­lance jour­nal­ist, was fined for her work with Bel­sat 14 times in 2018 for a total of 12,250 Belaru­sian rubles (about US$5,860). Although she and her hus­band, Bel­sat cam­era­man Andrei Koziel, who was him­self fined sev­en times for a total of about US$4,220, had paid all the fines, in Sep­tem­ber they were barred from leav­ing Belarus for a planned trip abroad where they were sup­posed to speak about the sit­u­a­tion con­cern­ing media free­dom in Belarus.

The day before their trip, a court bailiff told them they could not trav­el because it was impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy whether they had paid the entire amount, as “the data­base was not work­ing.” Chaichyts told Human Rights Watch that the ban was lift­ed the fol­low­ing day, and by then Chaichyts had to trav­el to Vil­nius to take anoth­er flight.

Oth­er Per­se­cu­tion of Bel­sat Jour­nal­ists

In March 2017, police searched the Min­sk offices of Bel­sat, alleged­ly for unlaw­ful­ly using its trade­mark, and seized the channel’s equip­ment, which was not returned.

In March 2017, law enforce­ment also brought six charges in a sin­gle day against Larysa Shchyrako­va, a free­lance jour­nal­ist work­ing with Bel­sat, for cov­er­ing protests on Free­dom Day on March 25. She told Human Rights Watch they also threat­ened, twice, to take away her 10-year-old son. Police accused her of coop­er­at­ing with unreg­is­tered for­eign media, fail­ing to appear for ques­tion­ing, fail­ing to reg­is­ter her pet dog, and, for good mea­sure, hav­ing a pile of sand out­side her house. Since then, she has been repeat­ed­ly fined for oth­er ground­less media-relat­ed infrac­tions.

Kanstantsin Zhuk­ous­ki, anoth­er free­lancer, told Human Rights Watch he had to leave the coun­try in Jan­u­ary 2019 due to con­tin­u­ous pres­sure on him that inten­si­fied after he pub­lished an exposé with Bel­sat on the secu­ri­ty ser­vices’ work on ille­gal migra­tion across the Belaru­sian bor­der. In 2018 alone, he was fined 12 times for his coop­er­a­tion with Bel­sat. He said that he and his fam­i­ly had received threats online, he had been beat­en by police, and his home had been bro­ken into. None of these inci­dents was inves­ti­gat­ed. In Jan­u­ary, he was attacked by uniden­ti­fied men, who splashed some burn­ing liq­uid in his face, knocked him down, and tore up his pass­port. Zhuk­ous­ki and his fam­i­ly request­ed asy­lum in anoth­er Euro­pean coun­try.

In April 2019, police raid­ed Bel­sat’s Min­sk office in con­nec­tion with libel charges. The case was prompt­ed by a 2018 arti­cle on the channel’s web­site, which mis­tak­en­ly alleged that the for­mer deputy pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al, Andrei Shved, had been arrest­ed togeth­er with his broth­er, Aleh, on cor­rup­tion charges. Bel­sat’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives pub­licly acknowl­edged the error, as the arrest and bribery charge involved Aleh Shved only, and pub­lished a cor­rec­tion. Dur­ing the search, police seized all the data stor­age devices and com­put­ers in the office, return­ing them two days lat­er.

Harass­ment of Jour­nal­ists, Blog­gers Cov­er­ing Protests

Jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing unau­tho­rized pub­lic assem­blies, in par­tic­u­lar annu­al ral­lies on March 25, Free­dom Day, and April 26, the anniver­sary of Cher­nobyl, are reg­u­lar­ly detained, as law enforce­ment offi­cers often do not dis­tin­guish jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing such ral­lies from par­tic­i­pants. Media rights orga­ni­za­tions say the num­ber of deten­tions has start­ed to decrease, and that the jour­nal­ists are now for the most part fined instead for dubi­ous rea­sons.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, in 2017, the author­i­ties arbi­trar­i­ly detained at least 101 jour­nal­ists, in most cas­es while they were report­ing on street protests, and sen­tenced them to at least 10 and up to 15 days in deten­tion on a vari­ety of trumped-up charges. Also in 2017, the asso­ci­a­tion said, police beat six jour­nal­ists. In 2018, 31 jour­nal­ists were detained, includ­ing 10 dur­ing Free­dom Day ral­lies.

In Decem­ber 2017, a court fined Ana­tol Bukas, chief edi­tor of Borisov News, a local inde­pen­dent news web­site, 345 Belaru­sian rubles (rough­ly US$163) for writ­ing that an unau­tho­rized ral­ly would take place in Min­sk. This vio­lat­ed the law on mass gath­er­ings, which bans giv­ing the date and time of demon­stra­tions if they are not autho­rized. The tri­al fol­lowed a warn­ing issued to the out­let by the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry in Novem­ber. Under Belaru­sian law, two warn­ings may lead to an outlet’s clo­sure.

In July 2018, par­lia­ment amend­ed the Law on Mass Events, intro­duc­ing a require­ment for jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing ral­lies to clear­ly iden­ti­fy them­selves by pro­vid­ing their iden­ti­ty doc­u­ments and doc­u­ments con­firm­ing offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion and wear­ing a vis­i­ble “press” sign. Belaru­sian rights defend­ers are con­cerned that law enforce­ment offi­cials may use this pro­vi­sion to jus­ti­fy penal­iz­ing unac­cred­it­ed free­lancers and blog­gers who cov­er protests. If they iden­ti­fy them­selves to police as press, they may be fined for work­ing with­out offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion, and if they do not, they may be detained and fined as par­tic­i­pants of the unau­tho­rized ral­ly.

Harass­ment of Blog­gers

In 2018, Siarhei Pia­trukhin, a blog­ger whose posts are crit­i­cal of the author­i­ties and attract large num­bers of view­ers, was reg­u­lar­ly detained and fined for the cov­er­age of week­ly protests against the con­struc­tion of a bat­tery plant near Brest over seri­ous con­cerns about the plant’s envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Pia­trukhin told Human Right Watch that in May, the police came to his apart­ment, seiz­ing his lap­top, a tablet that belonged to a third par­ty, mobile phone, and cam­era. In July, a court charged him with dis­obey­ing police when he would not allow police to enter his apart­ment. The police offi­cer had come in rela­tion to a com­plaint filed by a per­son who accused Pia­trukhin of insult­ing them. The charges stem from a series of videos the blog­ger had uploaded to YouTube, which alleged that police in Brest beat a local res­i­dent in 2016. The alleged vic­tim has repeat­ed­ly peti­tioned author­i­ties to pros­e­cute the abu­sive police, but no crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings fol­lowed.

A crim­i­nal slan­der and insult case was filed against Pia­trukhin, and in August, police again searched his apart­ment, seiz­ing equip­ment. Masked police­men broke the door and used force to take him to the police sta­tion for inter­ro­ga­tion.

In April 2019, a court con­vict­ed Pia­trukhin, fined him 9,180 Belaru­sian rubles (US$4,380), and ordered him to pay the equiv­a­lent of US$3,700 in moral dam­ages to four police offi­cers who were alleged­ly tar­get­ed in his YouTube videos. Pia­trukhin plans to appeal.

In March 2019, police in the Homel region arrest­ed Andrei Pavuk, a blog­ger who lives in the rur­al area around Homel. He cre­at­ed a local online com­mu­ni­ty for inde­pen­dent news and has about 9 000 sub­scribers on his YouTube chan­nel. The police also searched his apart­ment and seized his equip­ment.

The inves­ti­ga­tion claims that Pavuk emailed a fake bomb mes­sage to the region­al depart­ment of the Emer­gen­cies Min­istry, caus­ing the agency to evac­u­ate staff of the local gov­ern­ment build­ing. After ques­tion­ing Pavuk on crim­i­nal charges of mak­ing a “know­ing­ly false state­ment of dan­ger,” the police released him. In mid-April, Pavuk was noti­fied that the crim­i­nal charges against him had been lift­ed, but police have not returned his con­fis­cat­ed equip­ment.

For­eign Jour­nal­ists Pre­vent­ed from Work­ing in Belarus

In the past two years, there have been few­er inci­dents of Belaru­sian author­i­ties deny­ing entry to or deport­ing for­eign, espe­cial­ly West­ern, reporters than in the past. This is part of Belarus’s declared pol­i­cy of open­ness to the West, which includes short-term visa-free entry for nation­als of many West­ern coun­tries. The few cas­es in 2018 and 2019 were prompt­ed by coop­er­a­tion between Belaru­sian and Russ­ian bor­der police ser­vices and deci­sions by Russ­ian author­i­ties to include jour­nal­ists in black­lists that are now shared between both states.

In Octo­ber 2018, police in Min­sk detained Myko­la Bal­a­ban, a Ukrain­ian nation­al and pub­lish­er of The Vil­lage Ukraine mag­a­zine. He was in Belarus to attend an inter­na­tion­al Media Man­age­ment and IT forum.

The police came to Balaban’s hotel room at 5 a.m., took him to a police sta­tion, and put him in a cell. Six hours lat­er, they released him. It turned out police had mis­tak­en him for anoth­er Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist with the same name and date of birth, appar­ent­ly black­list­ed in Rus­sia, who works for Informnapalm.orgweb­site, which inves­ti­gates Rus­si­a’s mil­i­tary involve­ment in Crimea and east­ern Ukraine.

Fol­low­ing the inci­dent, Bal­a­ban can­celled his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the event and returned to Ukraine.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, bor­der guards detained Olga Vallee, FOJO Media Insti­tutepro­gram coor­di­na­tor and a Swedish nation­al, at the Min­sk air­port. She arrived in Belarus at the invi­ta­tion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists for a meet­ing with young jour­nal­ists. Bor­der guards told Vallee she could not enter Belarus, since her name appears on a Russ­ian “black­list.” As a result, she had to return to Riga.

FOJO Media Insti­tute has coop­er­at­ed with Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists’ orga­ni­za­tions for more than 15 years. Its rep­re­sen­ta­tives had faced no imped­i­ments to vis­it­ing Belarus. Vallee had received a busi­ness visa for a year in Octo­ber 2018.