Mass media in Belarus № 2 (55). January — June, 2018

Main events in mass media field  in January – June 2018

LEGISLATIVE CHANGES  IN MASS MEDIA FIELD

In June 2018, the Nation­al Assem­bly of Belarus (the Belaru­sian Par­lia­ment) adopt­ed a law on intro­duc­ing amend­ments to the mass media law that broad­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly the gov­ern­men­tal con­trol over the Inter­net space in Belarus. 

In par­tic­u­lar, accord­ing to the law:

-there has been intro­duced vol­un­tary reg­is­tra­tion of Web-resources as mass media; how­ev­er, the unrea­son­ably com­pli­cat­ed per­mit­ting pro­ce­dures of this reg­is­tra­tion were left intact;

- the on-line media that couldn’t pass the reg­is­tra­tion bar­ri­er are deprived of media rights and their cor­re­spon­dents are deprived of jour­nal­ist sta­tus; how­ev­er, the whole scope of legal lia­bil­i­ty is laid upon them in accor­dance with the media law;

- there has been kept the extra­ju­di­cial pro­ce­dure of block­ing access to Web-resources and intro­duced addi­tion­al grounds for the  appli­ca­tion of this sanc­tion (e.g., a Web-resource may be blocked for imple­ment­ing the activ­i­ty, which is for­bid­den by Belaru­sian laws);

- The Web-resources are oblig­ed to iden­ti­fy com­men­ta­tors on their pages and in forum sec­tions as well as to fil­ter com­ments under the threat of respon­si­bil­i­ty for them.

The adopt­ed amend­ments to the mass media law have been crit­i­cized by the pro­fes­sion­al media com­mu­ni­ty.

The OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media Harlem Désir expressed con­cern fol­low­ing the adop­tion of the leg­isla­tive amend­ments in Belarus. “Many of the pro­vi­sions are exces­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate and could result in the cur­tail­ing of free­dom of expres­sion, includ­ing the right of cit­i­zens to remain anony­mous online,” he said. 

Accord­ing to the new norms, addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty has been laid upon the own­ers of Web-resources, and new amend­ments have been intro­duced into the Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (arti­cle 22.9 “Vio­la­tion of Mass Media Leg­is­la­tion”). In par­tic­u­lar, there has been intro­duced a fine for dis­trib­ut­ing the banned infor­ma­tion by reg­is­tered Web-resources that totals 200 base amounts (over 2000 EUR). The unreg­is­tered Web-resources may be fined 100 base amounts in this case. The police have been enti­tled with pow­ers to con­trol the com­pli­ance of Web-site con­tent with media leg­is­la­tion.

RESTRICTION OF ACCESS  TO WEB-RESOURCES

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion took a deci­sion to restrict access to Charter’97 Web-site on Jan­u­ary 24, 2018.

The min­is­te­r­i­al deci­sion was ground­ed on the alleged­ly reg­is­tered banned infor­ma­tion on the Web-resource.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists not­ed that the block­ing of access to charter97.org Web-site was the sec­ond deci­sion on restrict­ing access to pop­u­lar news Web-resources in Belarus with­in a month’s term. (In par­tic­u­lar, there had been tak­en a deci­sion to dis­able access to the ‘Belaru­sian Par­ti­san’ Web-site at the end of Decem­ber 2017.)

In both cas­es the extra­ju­di­cial deci­sions on restric­tion of free­dom of expres­sion were tak­en in a non-trans­par­ent way with­out any pri­or notice sent to the own­ers of the Web-sites as well as with­out any expla­na­tion of legal rea­sons for block­ing access to the Web-resources.  

CRIMINAL  PROSECUTION

‘THE CASE OF REGNUM AUTHORS’

On Feb­ru­ary 2, 2018, Min­sk City Court issued a guilty ver­dict in a crim­i­nal case against three Belaru­sian authors – Yury Paulavets, Dzmit­ry Alimkin, and Siarhei Shypten­ka, whose mate­ri­als had been pub­lished on the Web-site of ‘REGNUM’ News Agency (Rus­sia) as well as on oth­er Russ­ian Web-resources. The court found them guilty of com­mit­ting delib­er­ate acts aimed at incit­ing eth­nic enmi­ty or dis­cord com­mit­ted by a group of peo­ple (part 3 of arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus), and imposed a sen­tence of five years’ impris­on­ment with a three-year sus­pend­ed sen­tence. The con­victs were released in the court­room. They can be released from serv­ing their sen­tences, if they do not com­mit vio­la­tions of pub­lic order and com­ply with the court orders.

‘The case of REGNUM authors’ was filed by the Legal Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee upon a claim from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus on the pres­ence of man­i­fes­ta­tions of extrem­ism in the authors’ pub­li­ca­tions. The indict­ed per­sons spent 14 months in cus­tody since the moment of their deten­tion in Decem­ber 2016.

“These sen­tences would be appro­pri­ate for dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals, to deter them from reof­fend­ing, but not for blog­gers who were pros­e­cut­ed for express­ing con­tro­ver­sial views,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk. “Under inter­na­tion­al stan­dards on free­dom of expres­sion, there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for such dis­pro­por­tion­ate sen­tences. We call for their con­vic­tions to be over­turned on appeal.”

Y. Paulavets and S.Shyptenka appealed the ver­dict, but the Supreme Court of Belarus upheld it.  

CRIMINAL CASE

AGAINST THE HEAD OF BELAPAN NEWS ALES LIPAI

On June 12, 2018, there was filed a crim­i­nal case against Ales Lipai, the head of the lead­ing inde­pen­dent ‘Bela­PAN’ news agency. The case was insti­tut­ed by the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions Depart­ment on the fact of delib­er­ate eva­sion of income tax in an espe­cial­ly large amount in 2016–2017 (part 2, arti­cle 243 of Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus). The Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions under­scored the polit­i­cal back­ground of the case and asso­ci­at­ed it with the gen­er­al trend of increas­ing pres­sure on non-state media and Inter­net resources in Belarus.

THE REINFORCED PRESSURE UPON FREELANCE JOURNALISTS FOR COOPERATION WITH FOREIGN MEDIA

In 2017, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists expressed anx­i­ety in con­nec­tion with the abrupt rein­force­ment of pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media. In par­tic­u­lar, the jour­nal­ists were fined 69 times on the grounds of part 2 of arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es last year. The num­ber of fines in 2017 exceed­ed the num­ber of penal­ties, imposed on free­lance reporters on sim­i­lar charges dur­ing the pre­ced­ing three years tak­en togeth­er.  

Part 2 of arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es envis­ages respon­si­bil­i­ty for ille­gal pro­duc­tion and/or dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists insists on the irrel­e­vance of mak­ing jour­nal­ists legal­ly account­able with a ref­er­ence to this arti­cle, since mass media pro­duc­tion is pro­duced by edi­to­ri­als and dis­trib­uted by dis­trib­u­tors. The Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es doesn’t pro­vide for any kind of respon­si­bil­i­ty for work with­out press accred­i­ta­tion.

The sit­u­a­tion got even worse in 2018. The num­ber of fines on the ground of part 2 of arti­cle 22.9 totaled near­ly 60 in the first half year of 2018. And the total amount of fines near­ly reached the sum of 50,000 Belaru­sian rubles (around 20,000 EUR).

The jour­nal­ists, coop­er­at­ing with the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel are pros­e­cut­ed in most cas­es. The ‘Bel­sat’ TV is a part of the Pol­ish TV Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, it presents itself as the first inde­pen­dent TV chan­nel of Belarus.

The prob­lem of pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists has been active­ly dis­cussed in the frame­work of the Dia­logue on Human Rights between the EU and Belarus. How­ev­er, instead of chang­ing the prac­tice of apply­ing part 2 of arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, the author­i­ties have intro­duced addi­tion­al penal­ties for dis­tri­b­u­tion of ‘banned infor­ma­tion’ on the Web (see above – Leg­isla­tive Changes in the Mass Media Field).

DETENTIONS, INSPECTIONS, AND OTHER OBSTACLES TO JOURNALISTS’ AND BLOGGERS’ ACTIVITIES

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­is­tered more than 70 cas­es of vio­la­tion of jour­nal­ist rights, includ­ing 11 cas­es of deten­tion and sev­er­al cas­es of search­es at jour­nal­ists’ and blog­gers’ hous­es, with­in the first half year of 2018.

A jour­nal­ist Andrus Koziel was beat­en hard at a polling sta­tion in Min­sk on the main vot­ing day of Local elec­tions on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2018. He was video-stream­ing the process of count­ing votes to his Face­book account as a trustee of one of the can­di­dates. The police offi­cers on duty oblig­ed the jour­nal­ist to stop tak­ing video records, attacked him with the use of phys­i­cal force and detained him on the charges of dis­obe­di­ence to the police. A. Koziel spent a night in a pre-tri­al ward. Con­se­quent­ly, the Court of Cen­tral City Dis­trict of Min­sk sent the case back to the police for revi­sion and released A. Koziel in the court room.

On March 7, 2018, A.Koziel was fined 735 Belaru­sian rubles (over 300 EUR) for dis­obe­di­ence to the police (arti­cle 23.4 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

On Feb­ru­ary 22, 2018, the police inspect­ed a pri­vate apart­ment, owned by the par­ents of a blog­ger from Min­sk Stsi­a­pan Svi­at­lou aka Nex­ta, 19 y.o. As a result of inspec­tion, there were seized a lap­top and a video cam­era from the pri­vate apart­ment. The blog­ger was study­ing at a Uni­ver­si­ty in Poland at the moment, when the inspec­tion took place. The police offi­cers explained the seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment by the need to check it, fol­low­ing the received per­son­al claim, sub­mit­ted by an indi­vid­ual, about the pres­ence of insults in rela­tion to the Pres­i­dent of Belarus on the Nex­ta chan­nel in YouTube. 

At least 10 cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tion of jour­nal­ists on duty were reg­is­tered dur­ing the pub­lic events on March 25th, ded­i­cat­ed to the 100th anniver­sary of dec­la­ra­tion of Belaru­sian People’s Repub­lic, which is tra­di­tion­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed by the demo­c­ra­t­ic forces of Belarus as Free­dom Day.   
Around 10 drones, which were used for video broad­cast­ing of fes­tive events on March 25th, dis­ap­peared with­out a trace. The own­ers of the tech­ni­cal equip­ment as well as the media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are con­vinced that their loss is con­nect­ed with inter­fer­ence on the part of law enforce­ment agen­cies.
The Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus Ihar Shu­nievich informed jour­nal­ists that he didn’t know any­thing about the fate of the drones: ‘It might have been the operator’s tech­ni­cal mis­take or a sys­tem mal­func­tion. They might have been stolen. I do not exclude any­thing. We are inves­ti­gat­ing the cas­es.’

Report­ed­ly, the police inspect­ed a pri­vate apart­ment, owned by a blog­ger Siarhei Pia­trukhin from Brest on May 12, 2018. Fol­low­ing the inspec­tion pro­ce­dures, the police seized the blogger’s lap­top, tablet, mobile phone, and pho­to cam­era.

Rating lists, indexes, statistics

The inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Free­dom House has placed Belarus on the list of non-free coun­tries in their Free­dom in the World 2018 rat­ing list. Also, the human rights defend­ers rat­ed min­i­mal­ly the degree of media free­dom and Inter­net free­dom in the coun­try (score 1 out of 4). The ‘Press Free­dom Sta­tus’ and ‘Net Free­dom Sta­tus’ of Belarus were defined as ‘Not Free’ at that.

Belarus was ranked 155 out of 180 coun­tries of the world in the World Press Free­dom Index 2018, pre­sent­ed by the ‘Reporters with­out Bor­ders’ inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion in April 2018. Thus, the coun­try dropped two posi­tions in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous year.

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The con­tents of this pub­li­ca­tion are copy­right­ed.  It is oblig­a­tory to refer to the Belaruss­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists,  when using the E‑NEWSLETTER: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS mate­ri­als.