MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS. E‑NEWSLETTER No.2 (64) 2021. Persecution of journalists in 2021

MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS. E‑NEWSLETTER download

PART 1. PERSECUTION OF JOURNALISTS (JANUARY – SEPTEMBER 2021)

Gen­er­al infor­ma­tion

The sit­u­a­tion in Belaru­sian mass media field has crit­i­cal­ly aggra­vat­ed since the time of Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion a year ago.

The media and jour­nal­ists have faced the unprece­dent­ed wave of repres­sion. Jour­nal­ists were detained more than 500 times by the law enforce­ment agen­cies after the elec­tion day More than 130 col­leagues were sen­tenced to dif­fer­ent terms of arrest on admin­is­tra­tive charges. 68 col­leagues faced vio­lence or were injured.

More than 60 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are under crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. 29 of them are in cus­tody (as of Octo­ber 03, 2021) or in places of impris­on­ment.

Dozens of legal enti­ties that enabled oper­a­tion of mass media orga­ni­za­tions have been liq­ui­dat­ed or are in the process of liq­ui­da­tion.

The info pro­duc­tion of mass media, Web-sites, and blog­gers is round­ly rec­og­nized as extrem­ist with the pro­hi­bi­tion of its dis­tri­b­u­tion by oth­er sub­jects in the media field.

More than 140 search­es and inspec­tions were con­duct­ed in the offices of the major­i­ty of inde­pen­dent nation­al and region­al media orga­ni­za­tions as well as at the apart­ments of their offi­cers. They were accom­pa­nied by the seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment, doc­u­ments, and mon­ey.

The offi­cial author­i­ties restrict­ed access to more than 100 socio-polit­i­cal Web-sites and online media. The major­i­ty of nation­al and region­al news­pa­pers were forced to sus­pend their pro­duc­tion in the print for­mat. How­ev­er, they con­tin­ued to oper­ate online.

The sup­port­ing media orga­ni­za­tions suf­fered from per­se­cu­tion, too. The author­i­ties deprived more than 270 civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions of their legal sta­tus, includ­ing the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter, led by Noble lau­re­ate Svi­at­lana Alek­sievich. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Press Club Belarus were sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. The orga­ni­za­tion was also liq­ui­dat­ed.

The pres­sure on mass media and their employ­ees con­tin­ues and increas­es.  

Persecution of journalists (January – September 2021)

The trend of restrict­ing the jour­nal­ists’ rights and tough­en­ing the con­di­tions of their work start­ed after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in August 2020. It con­tin­ued in the year of 2021. Repres­sions against inde­pen­dent media work­ers were mas­sive and increased par­tic­u­lar­ly since July 2021. As a result of this trend, quite a few jour­nal­ists couldn’t con­tin­ue their work in Belarus. Con­se­quent­ly, they had to leave the coun­try.

The direc­tions of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists were as fol­lows:

• deten­tions and fines for pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty;

• aggra­va­tion of legal con­di­tions for jour­nal­ists’ work;

• mass search­es and deten­tions in con­nec­tion to crim­i­nal cas­es;

• crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and oth­er media work­ers;

• hin­der­ing the activ­i­ty of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that sup­port jour­nal­ists and mass media.

Detentions and fines in connection to professional activity

The work of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus was accom­pa­nied by deten­tions, seizure of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers as well as admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion.

101 cas­es of deten­tion were reg­is­tered by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists since the begin­ning of 2021 till the end of Sep­tem­ber 2021. The duly accred­it­ed for­eign jour­nal­ists were among the detained media work­ers — Nicholas Con­nol­ly (Ger­many) and Luzia Tschirky (Switzer­land).

The jour­nal­ists were most often fined on arti­cle 23.5 of Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (pre­vi­ous­ly known as arti­cle 22.9 of the Code) for the alleged coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion. This kind or pros­e­cu­tion was reg­is­tered in 32 cas­es. Thus, a jour­nal­ist from Mahilou Ali­na Skrabuno­va was fined 10 times, Zmit­si­er Lupach from Hly­bokaye was fined 7 times.

17 times inde­pen­dent reporters were brought to respon­si­bil­i­ty for their work on the ground of arti­cle 24.23 of Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es for the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the unau­tho­rized mass events. Thus, the author­i­ties equal­ized par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass events with their cov­er­age by pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists. As a rule, the judges issued their rul­ings, sole­ly ground­ing them on the tes­ti­mo­ny of law enforce­ment agents, whose names were changed and faces hid­den.

More­over, jour­nal­ists were tried on the basis of arti­cles of Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es: 24.3 (dis­obe­di­ence to a law­ful order or demand of an offi­cial in the exer­cise of his/her offi­cial pow­ers), 19.1 (pet­ty hooli­gan­ism) and 19.11 (dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­porta­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ties or pro­mot­ing such activ­i­ties).

In 23 cas­es, the jour­nal­ists were pun­ished with dif­fer­ent terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest, which they served in harsh con­di­tions in over­crowd­ed cam­eras with­out suf­fi­cient sleep­ing places and hygien­ic items etc.

https://baj.media/ru/analytics/represii-suprac-zhurnalistau-u-2021-godze

https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/srf-korrespondentin-in-belarus-luzia-tschirky-maskierte-maenner-zerrten-mich-in-minibus

Aggravation of legal conditions for journalist work

The inter­fer­ence in the jour­nal­ists’ work by law enforce­ment agen­cies was accom­pa­nied by the tight­en­ing of legal reg­u­la­tion of mass media and jour­nal­ists’ activ­i­ties.

On April 2, 2021, there was adopt­ed a large pack­age of amend­ments to the laws, which enshrined extra­or­di­nary mea­sures for any kind of protest activ­i­ties, as a rule, referred to as ‘extrem­ist activ­i­ties.’ In fact, these mea­sures had already been tak­en with­out any legal grounds. The amend­ments to the Law ‘On Mass Media’ and ‘On Mass Events in the Repub­lic of Belarus’ aggra­vat­ed the con­di­tions of jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties most of all.

In par­tic­u­lar, there was imposed a ban on the pub­li­ca­tion of the results of unof­fi­cial opin­ion polls con­cern­ing the socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, ref­er­en­dums and elec­tions. Also, there was intro­duced a ban on cov­er­age of pub­lic events until they were autho­rized by the author­i­ties.

In prac­tice, this means the impos­si­bil­i­ty of broad­cast­ing live from unau­tho­rized pub­lic events and con­duct­ing street polls on polit­i­cal top­ics.

More­over, the amend­ments made ille­gal the col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion by jour­nal­ists ‘in the inter­ests of the third par­ty, includ­ing a legal enti­ty, that doesn’t have the sta­tus of the edi­to­r­i­al office of some media out­let.

Thus, jour­nal­ists have been deprived of the right to com­bine work in sev­er­al media if he or she is an employ­ee of one of them.

For the first time, there were intro­duced grounds to the law “On Mass Media” for depriv­ing a jour­nal­ist of accred­i­ta­tion, such as vio­la­tion of the accred­i­ta­tion pro­ce­dure, dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion that does not cor­re­spond to real­i­ty, and com­mit­ting any ille­gal actions.

https://isans.org/columns/popravki-v-belaruskih-zakonah-o-smi.html?fbclid=IwAR1RulJeFxr1ee0L0qz15QaWvrS0i2YZt1VwliSxmsrq7Ggn95B57yFmXBo

Mass searches and detentions

Since July 8, 2021, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties began to car­ry out coor­di­nat­ed mass repres­sions against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media. In fact, they were aimed at destroy­ing the inde­pen­dent media sec­tor.

This activ­i­ty took place with­in the frame­work of the so-called spe­cial oper­a­tion to iden­ti­fy the par­tic­i­pants in “destruc­tive chats”.

Kanstantsin Bychek, Deputy Head of the Inves­tiga­tive Depart­ment of the KGB of Belarus com­ment­ed on the activ­i­ty as fol­lows:

“A large-scale oper­a­tion is being held at the present moment of time to clean up the rad­i­cal­ly mind­ed peo­ple. Urgent inves­tiga­tive actions and oth­er pro­ce­dur­al activ­i­ties are being car­ried out, includ­ing search­es and deten­tions. The involve­ment of each par­tic­i­pant in the imple­men­ta­tion of crim­i­nal acts will be ver­i­fied.”

71 search­es were con­duct­ed at jour­nal­ists’ apart­ments and edi­to­r­i­al offices of inde­pen­dent mass media by the police and KGB rep­re­sen­ta­tives all over the coun­try on July 8–9, 2021.

In most cas­es, they were ground­ed upon the need of inves­ti­ga­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es, in par­tic­u­lar, on arti­cle 289 (act of ter­ror­ism) and arti­cle 342 (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them). Pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment, infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices were seized dur­ing the search­es. At least 14 jour­nal­ists were detained and inter­ro­gat­ed. Yahor Martsi­novich, the ‘Nasha Niva’ online publication’s Edi­tor-in-chief was beat­en cru­el­ly and injured in the head.

The sec­ond mass attack on inde­pen­dent mass media took place on July 16, 2021.

Search­es and deten­tions took place in the Bel­sat TV stu­dio and the office of Radio Lib­er­ty in Min­sk as well as at pri­vate apart­ments of at least 26 inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. Five jour­nal­ists were detained for the term of up to ten days. A jour­nal­ist of Radio Lib­er­ty Ines­sa Studzin­skaya was on a hunger strike through­out the peri­od of her deten­tion.

Criminal prosecution

The unprece­dent­ed scale of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion was among the most seri­ous chal­lenges faced by inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus.

The crim­i­nal­iza­tion of inde­pen­dent media work­ers’ activ­i­ty includ­ed bring­ing them to legal respon­si­bil­i­ty for the cov­er­age of events in the coun­try as well as for the alleged com­mis­sion of eco­nom­ic crimes. As of Octo­ber 3, 2021, 29 jour­nal­ists and oth­er media work­ers were kept in cus­tody in con­nec­tion to their crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

Since the begin­ning of 2021, 4 jour­nal­ists have been con­vict­ed on crim­i­nal charges.

A jour­nal­ist of TUT.by Web-por­tal Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich was sen­tenced to six months in jail on March 2, 2021. She was put on tri­al togeth­er with the doc­tor Art­siom Sarokin, who was fined and sen­tenced to the sus­pend­ed term of two years in jail. Both of them were tried for the alleged dis­clo­sure of med­ical secrets that entailed grave con­se­quences (arti­cle 178, part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

The jour­nal­ist pub­lished infor­ma­tion about the death of a peace­ful pro­tes­tor Raman Ban­daren­ka, who was beat­en cru­el­ly by peo­ple in masks and deliv­ered to a police depart­ment in the unmarked van. The per­son died in hos­pi­tal after­wards. The pub­li­ca­tion con­tra­dict­ed to the offi­cial ver­sion of his death. Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vuch was released from jail on May 18, 2021.

https://baj.media/be/content/mingorsud-ostavil-v-sile-prigovor-zhurnalistke-katerine-borisevich

https://baj.media/be/content/katerina-borisevich-vyshla-iz-kolonii-foto-video

https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-orders-to-land-ryanair-jet-in-minsk-after-bomb-alert-140132–2021/

Hindering the Activity of Belarusian Association of Journalists

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) is a pub­lic asso­ci­a­tion that has been oper­at­ing since 1995. It has more than 1300 mem­bers all over Belarus. Its activ­i­ty includes pro­mo­tion of free­dom of speech and ideas of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, mon­i­tor­ing of vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights and help­ing the vic­tims of these vio­la­tions in Belarus.

In con­nec­tion to the rapid­ly aggra­vat­ed sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech in Belarus since the begin­ning of Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign 2020, the legit­i­mate activ­i­ty of BAJ on jour­nal­ists’ rights defense was ham­pered by the unlaw­ful inter­fer­ence of offi­cial author­i­ties.

The BAJ Web-site (www.baj.by) was blocked in the first group of Web-resources on the elec­tion day. The mobile hot­line num­ber for jour­nal­ists was blocked as well.

The Web-site couldn’t be accessed by Belaru­sian Web-users with­in the peri­od since August 9 till August 27, 2021, despite the absence of any for­mal deci­sions on restrict­ing access to the Web-resource.

On Feb­ru­ary 16, 2021, the police con­duct­ed a search at the BAJ office in Min­sk and seized doc­u­ments and com­put­er equip­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, the office premis­es were sealed. Also, police search­es were con­duct­ed at sev­er­al BAJ mem­bers’ pri­vate apart­ments and hous­es in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, includ­ing the apart­ments of BAJ Deputy Chairs Barys Haret­s­ki and Aleh Aheyeu.

The offi­cers of Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus explained that the oper­a­tion was car­ried out with­in the frame­work of a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion into the financ­ing or arrange­ment of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order under arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus.

The BAJ office was sealed for almost a month after the search, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of its lead­er­ship were sum­moned to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee for inter­ro­ga­tion on sev­er­al occa­sions.

On June 21, 2021, the Min­istry of Jus­tice start­ed to inspect the activ­i­ties of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. Accord­ing to the let­ter that was received on that day thou­sands of doc­u­ments were required to be sub­mit­ted for the peri­od since Jan­u­ary 1, 2018. It is note­wor­thy that the let­ter was dat­ed June 9, 2021, but on June 21, 2021 only, i. e. on the last date when the numer­ous doc­u­ments were asked to be sub­mit­ted. The Min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tive post­poned the dead­line till June 23, 2021. The BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Jus­tice all the request­ed doc­u­ments, which they man­aged to col­lect.

On July 14, 2021, the law enforce­ment bod­ies con­duct­ed anoth­er search at the BAJ office in Min­sk and sealed the premis­es once again. (The sec­ond search was per­formed in the absence of BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives.) The BAJ bank account was blocked. On the fol­low­ing day, a let­ter from the Min­istry of Jus­tice was received stat­ing that the Deputy Min­is­ter Siarhei Kali­nous­ki issued a warn­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists in the writ­ten form on July 8, 2021. He claimed that some doc­u­ments were not pro­vid­ed and the lease agree­ments of sev­er­al BAJ branch­es had to be cor­rect­ed.

It was required to elim­i­nate the vio­la­tions indi­cat­ed in the warn­ing with­in one day, i.e. by July 16, 2021. The BAJ lead­er­ship sent a let­ter to the Min­istry of Jus­tice with a request to post­pone the dead­line due to the lack of access to statu­to­ry doc­u­ments, the seal and lease agree­ments sub­ject to the fact that the BAJ office was sealed after the search.

How­ev­er, on July 21, 2021, it became known that the Min­istry of Jus­tice had filed a claim with the Supreme Court of Belarus on liq­ui­da­tion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists in con­nec­tion with the BAJ’s alleged fail­ure to take mea­sures to elim­i­nate vio­la­tions of the law and the repeat­ed vio­la­tion of the law after the receipt of offi­cial warn­ing in the writ­ten form.

Inesa Laza­viko­va, the judge of the Supreme Court of Belarus sat­is­fied the claim of the Min­istry of Jus­tice to liq­ui­date the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists on August 27, 2021. It hap­pened against the back­ground of a large-scale attack on the inde­pen­dent press and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in Belarus that had tak­en place since July 2021. The major­i­ty of BAJ offi­cers had to leave the coun­try, in order to be able to con­tin­ue their work.

https://baj.media/ru/analytics/vlasti-lishili-registracii-belorusskuyu-associaciyu-zhurnalistov-hronika-dokumenty