IPI denounces designation of Zerkalo as “extremist formation”

Zerka­lo was pre­vi­ous­ly declared “extrem­ist” by the regime soon after the media out­let was found­ed in July 2021. How­ev­er, Zerkalo’s new “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” sta­tus dras­ti­cal­ly wors­ens penal­ties not only for the media’s jour­nal­ists, but also for its read­ers.

Jour­nal­ists and oth­er Zerka­lo employ­ees now face up to 10 years in prison for their work, accord­ing to arti­cle 361.1 of the Belaru­sian crim­i­nal code.

Zerka­lo read­ers now also face harsh­er penal­ties for any inter­ac­tions with the news out­let. While read­ing the outlet’s pub­li­ca­tions remains legal in the­o­ry, any activ­i­ty con­sid­ered as “assis­tance to an extrem­ist for­ma­tion” is pun­ish­able. Pre­vi­ous­ly, read­ers could be fined up to 1,100 rubles (approx­i­mate­ly 400 euros) or detained for up to 15 days for shar­ing Zerka­lo pub­li­ca­tions. They now poten­tial­ly face up to sev­en years of prison under arti­cle 364.4 of the crim­i­nal code.

Addi­tion­al­ly, read­ers who donate to the media out­let are now con­sid­ered to be “financ­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties”, accord­ing to the arti­cle 361.2 of the crim­i­nal code, and face up to eight years in prison.

What con­sti­tutes “assis­tance to an extrem­ist for­ma­tion” is unclear – fur­ther rais­ing the risk of a chill­ing effect among read­ers – and its appli­ca­tion has been vague. Indi­vid­ual cas­es of Belaru­sians put in prison for “assist­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion” are already known. In Jan­u­ary, Darya Losik, the wife of impris­oned RFE/RL jour­nal­ist Ihar Losik, was sen­tenced to two years in a penal colony for hav­ing giv­en an inter­view to Bel­sat TV, an inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­let based in Poland which is also labelled as “extrem­ist”.

“Zerkalo’s des­ig­na­tion as an ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tion’ is yet anoth­er step in the Lukashenko regime’s planned erad­i­ca­tion of all inde­pen­dent media and crit­i­cal voic­es in Belarus”, said IPI Deputy Direc­tor Scott Grif­f­en. “While we can only agree with our Belaru­sian col­leagues that this deci­sion is hard­ly sur­pris­ing in the cur­rent con­text, we are still appalled by the out­ra­geous and para­noid dri­ve of the country’s secu­ri­ty offi­cials in repress­ing Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and soci­ety at large.”

Zerka­lo com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Ali­ak­san­dra Pushk­i­na told IPI: “I was rather sur­prised that we still didn’t have this sta­tus, as many of our col­leagues in oth­er inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­lets were already ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions.’”

“This [new sta­tus] cre­ates risks for our read­ers, for our fam­i­lies [in Belarus], which is why we also instant­ly saw peo­ple unsub­scrib­ing from our social media accounts. Peo­ple will prob­a­bly con­tin­ue read­ing us, but this is a loss for us in any case. In the­o­ry, read­ing us is not for­bid­den, but if author­i­ties see [Zerka­lo] con­tent on your phone, even if you didn’t share it and only received it [from some­one], you can still be sen­tenced to [up to 15 days of] arrest. And this is one of the lighter mea­sures against inde­pen­dent media, as sub­scrip­tions and shares are now a crim­i­nal offence.”

“Our jour­nal­ists are abroad, so we aren’t under direct threat, but most of us have fam­i­lies in Belarus. For this rea­son, most of us do not work pub­licly, and the con­se­quences of this deci­sion may be felt by the rel­a­tives of the few of us [who are not anony­mous], includ­ing me.”

“All of these efforts by the state only aim to silence us, to have read­ers in Belarus accept what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and to not look around [for oth­er options]. For over three years, and two years already at Zerka­lo, we tell Belaru­sians the real news, with­out pay­ing atten­tion to sta­tus­es [decreed by author­i­ties]. And we will con­tin­ue doing this. We hope that we will not face issues imme­di­ate­ly and that this will be resolved when free­dom of speech returns to Belarus.”

Accord­ing to inde­pen­dent esti­mates, no less than 491 online media out­lets, mir­ror pages and news aggre­ga­tors were blocked in Belarus as of Decem­ber 2022, with this num­ber only hav­ing risen since. Thir­ty-sev­en media work­ers are cur­rent­ly behind bars, mak­ing Belarus one of the most dan­ger­ous coun­tries for jour­nal­ists in the world.

Read more:

“I stay so that those who have been imprisoned or forced to leave have a place to return to”. Motivations of journalists who choose to stay in Belarus

“If one of us is imprisoned, the other one takes the child and leaves the country.” The key from the report of human rights activists on the psychological state of political emigrants

BAJ logo declared extremist