MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS IN 2023

Marathon of sol­i­dar­i­ty with polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned jour­nal­ists. Vil­nius, May 3, 2023. Pho­to: BAJ

MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS IN 2023

CONTENTS:

CONDITIONS FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY IN 2023

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS’ AND MEDIA RIGHTS

Crim­i­nal cas­es

The case of Andrzej Poc­zobut

The case of Mary­na Zolata­va and Liud­mi­la Chek­ina

The case of Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va

The case of Henadz Mazhey­ka

The case of Kanstantsin Zalatych

The case of Yauhien Merkis

The case of Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka

The case of Pavel Mazhei­ka

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Sni­azhana Inanets

The case of Andrei Famin

The case of Larysa Shchyrako­va

The case of Pavel Pad­abed

The case of Viachaslau Laza­rau and Tat­siana Pyt­sko

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Ziank­ou

The case of Ihar Karnei

The case of Andrei Tolchyn

The case of Dzia­n­is Dashke­vich

The case of Uladz­imir Khilmanovich (‘in absen­tia’)

The case of Ales Sabaleus­ki

The case of ‘Ranak’ TV com­pa­ny

The case of Pavel Maryn­ich (‘in absen­tia’) 

Pros­e­cu­tion of blog­gers

Pres­sure on Jour­nal­ists and Mass Media

THE USE OF ANTI-EXTREMIST LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

THE APPLICATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE MEASURES TO RESTRICT ACCESS TO INFORMATION

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STATE MEDIA FIELD

CONDITIONS FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY IN 2023

The repres­sive poli­cies of gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties in rela­tion to the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists as part of their wider strug­gle with dis­sent were fur­ther applied in 2023. The Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, blog­gers and media out­lets faced the increas­ing pres­sure and restric­tions with­in the peri­od under review:

• crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and blog­gers,
• two waves of repres­sion on the part of secu­ri­ty forces, includ­ing the first one that took place in March 2023 (appar­ent­ly, it was relat­ed to the act of sab­o­tage that occurred at a mil­i­tary air­field near Min­sk on Feb­ru­ary 26^th) and the sec­ond one in the fall of 2023, which was obvi­ous­ly con­nect­ed to the prepa­ra­tions for the Sin­gle Vot­ing Day for the par­lia­men­tary and local elec­tions, sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 25, 2024,
• the fight against “extrem­ism” as a basis for cen­sor­ship and per­se­cu­tion (e.g., access to the con­tent of mass media that con­tin­ued to oper­ate from abroad was blocked, and any coop­er­a­tion with them was con­sid­ered as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of extrem­ism),
• the appli­ca­tion of admin­is­tra­tive and leg­isla­tive mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, the adop­tion of restric­tive amend­ments to the law “On Mass Media”,
• the adop­tion of new gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, which were direct­ed to for­mal­ize and ide­ol­o­gize the activ­i­ties of state-owned media as tools of pro­pa­gan­da and strug­gle with dis­sent in the con­di­tions of the alleged “infor­ma­tion war against Belarus and Rus­sia”.

Belarus dropped by four posi­tions over the recent year in the Press Free­dom Index pub­lished by Reporters With­out Bor­ders, hold­ing the 157^th place among 180 coun­tries of the world. It can be found among 31 coun­tries rat­ed as ‘very poor’ for press free­dom, between Pales­tine and Nicaragua.

The posi­tion of Belarus in the Free­dom on the Net annu­al glob­al rank­ing list, com­piled and pub­lished by a human rights orga­ni­za­tion Free­dom House, has dete­ri­o­rat­ed, too. As a coun­try lack­ing free Inter­net, it received only 25 points out of 100 pos­si­ble, com­pared to 28 points a year before.

Accord­ing to Reporters with­out Bor­ders, Belarus held the third posi­tion in the rank­ing list 2023 after Chi­na and Myan­mar as for the num­ber of media work­ers, who were kept behind bars for the peri­od of more than 48 hours, amount­ing to 55 peo­ple dur­ing the year. Ten of them were female jour­nal­ists. It was the sec­ond posi­tion after Chi­na (14) in the rank­ing list.

The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty drew close atten­tion to the polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned jour­nal­ists. Thus, the UN Work­ing Group on Arbi­trary Deten­tion con­clud­ed that the gov­ern­ment of Belarus vio­lat­ed the inter­na­tion­al human rights law by impris­on­ing Ihar Losik, a con­sul­tant for the Belarus ser­vice of Radio Free Europe / Radio Lib­er­ty, since “the arrest and deten­tion of Mr. Losik were based sole­ly on his jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty and his exer­cise of the free­doms of expres­sion and of asso­ci­a­tion”.

The US State Depart­ment pre­sent­ed the sto­ries of Belaru­sians Ihar Losik and Maria Kalesnika­va as part of #With­outJust­Cause glob­al ini­tia­tive in sup­port of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers from around the world. The unique sto­ries of sev­er­al polit­i­cal pris­on­ers were shared in order to focus pub­lic atten­tion on the sit­u­a­tion of thou­sands of polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned indi­vid­u­als, who are unjust­ly kept behind bars in dif­fer­ent parts of the plan­et.

The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ) inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished a por­trait of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va among the pho­tos of sev­en impris­oned media work­ers from dif­fer­ent parts of the world on a spe­cial page in the paper edi­tion of “The Wash­ing­ton Post” dai­ly.

The Pol­ish «Gaze­ta Wybor­cza» news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al includ­ed the polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned jour­nal­ist Andrzej Poc­zobut (as well as Maryia Kalesnika­va) in the list of heroes of 2022. The same jour­nal­ist was award­ed one of the 30 medals, mark­ing the 75th anniver­sary of Karski’s WWII mis­sion, issued by the Jan Kars­ki Soci­ety in New York. The ratio­nale stat­ed as fol­lows: «Just as the leg­endary emis­sary of the Pol­ish under­ground state endured Nazi impris­on­ment and tor­ture, Andrzej Poc­zobut is sim­i­lar­ly test­ed for phys­i­cal endurance, for­ti­tude of char­ac­ter and tenac­i­ty in the spir­it of hope.» Andrzej Poc­zobut also received the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Press Clubs Free­dom of Speech Award 2023 and became a lau­re­ate of the Pol­ish human rights prize named after Sér­gio Vieira de Mel­lo.

A num­ber of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and media resources in exile were award­ed for their activ­i­ties.

A for­mer employ­ee of ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ and ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel Han­na Liubako­va was pre­sent­ed an inter­na­tion­al award of One Young World non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion (UK) in July 2023. She was hailed as a voice from Belarus, who talks about the sit­u­a­tion in her native coun­try at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023, the edi­to­r­i­al team of ‘Reform.by’ media out­let was announced as one of the win­ners of the 2023 Free Media Awards in the field of media free­dom for «cov­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus in par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.» This award has been found­ed by the Fritt Ord Foun­da­tion (Nor­way) and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebe­lin und Gerd Bucerius char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion (Ger­many).

Jour­nal­ists Aleh Hruzdzilovich (non-fic­tion book «My Prison Walls») and Vol­ha Klask­ouskaya (per­son­al prison diaries) were announced as lau­re­ates among oth­er win­ners of Frantsishak Alyakhnovich Prison Lit­er­a­ture Award for the best lit­er­ary works, cre­at­ed in impris­on­ment. A jour­nal­ist of Radio Lib­er­ty Andrei Kuzniechyk was pre­sent­ed Frantsishak Alyakhnovich Prison Lit­er­a­ture Award for his poems.

A jour­nal­ist Yahor Martsi­novich was pre­sent­ed the «Hope of Free­dom» award in the Seimas of Lithua­nia on Decem­ber 7, 2023. The media work­er spent 2.5 years in prison before being released from cus­tody in the sum­mer of 2023. The award is pre­sent­ed to Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists as a sign of sup­port for free­dom of speech.

The founder of the Belaru­sian Inves­ti­ga­tion Cen­tre Stanis­lau Ivashke­vich was pre­sent­ed the “Anti-Cor­rup­tion Cham­pi­ons Award” (ACCA) for his unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the fight against cor­rup­tion and the rein­forc­ing impact of sanc­tions against Rus­sia and Belarus.

The inde­pen­dent media and civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, which con­tin­ued their activ­i­ties from abroad, respond­ed to pres­sure and repres­sion with sol­i­dar­i­ty and mutu­al sup­port. Thus, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) arranged the inter­na­tion­al “Marathon of Sol­i­dar­i­ty” with impris­oned jour­nal­ists and took part in “We care!” online char­i­ty marathon of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, arranged by influ­en­tial inde­pen­dent mass media and blog­gers. The sum of col­lect­ed dona­tions dur­ing the fundrais­ing event exceed­ed EUR 574,000.

The BAJ’s activ­i­ty in sup­port of the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian press was marked by the award of the East­ern Part­ner­ship Civ­il Soci­ety Forum, pre­sent­ed on Novem­ber 14, 2023.

At the same time, the BAJ was labeled by the KGB as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023. The BAJ’s web­site, pages on social media, and logo were arbi­trar­i­ly rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” on the ini­tia­tive of Min­sk City Pub­lic Prosecutor’s office. As it was men­tioned in the pub­lic prosecutor’s state­ment, «the specifed resources pur­pose­ful­ly con­tributed to the for­ma­tion of sources of threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty, incit­ing social enmi­ty and hos­til­i­ty through the dis­sem­i­na­tion of inac­cu­rate or delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed infor­ma­tion. Being addressed to an unlim­it­ed cir­cle of peo­ple, the post­ed infor­ma­tion was delib­er­ate­ly politi­cized and biased.”

Also, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties seized the domain name of BAJ at the end of 2023 — begin­ning of 2024. Since the begin­ning of 2024, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has changed the address of its web­site to https://baj.media/, and its email address to office@baj.media (for inter­na­tion­al mail­ing — intercomm@baj.media).

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

The law «On Licens­ing» entered into force on Jan­u­ary 1, 2023. Among oth­er things, it reg­u­lates the field of TV and radio broad­cast­ing. In par­tu­cu­lar, it has intro­duced the require­ment of pass­ing a qual­i­fi­ca­tion exam for the spe­cial­ists, who are respon­si­ble for broad­cast­ing TV or radio pro­grams, as well as for ensur­ing the com­pli­ance of their con­tent with legal require­ments. The exam con­tent is based on the pro­gram, approved by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023.

The Crim­i­nal Code  was sup­ple­ment­ed with new “extrem­ist” crimes. The cor­re­spond­ing law “On Amend­ments to Codes on Crim­i­nal Respon­si­bil­i­ty” came into force on March 24, 2023. Thus, Arti­cle 289–1 intro­duced lia­bil­i­ty for “pro­pa­gan­da of ter­ror­ism or its pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion” (max. pun­ish­ment – 7 years in prison). Arti­cle 369–1 (“dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus”) was sup­ple­ment­ed with lia­bil­i­ty for dis­sem­i­nat­ing know­ing­ly false infor­ma­tion, dis­cred­it­ing the armed forces of the Repub­lic of Belarus, oth­er troops, and mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, as well as para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

On June 30, 2023, the law «On Amend­ments to the Law «On Mass Media»” was adopt­ed. It entered into force three months after this date. The law fur­ther restricts the activ­i­ties of the press. In par­tic­u­lar,

• the pos­si­bil­i­ty of apply­ing retal­ia­to­ry mea­sures against for­eign media has been estab­lished. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion got enti­tled to ban the activ­i­ties of for­eign media and their jour­nal­ists in Belarus based on the infor­ma­tion, pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs. The restric­tion includes the ban on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the con­tent of these media on the Inter­net and by oth­er media,
• the require­ments for the func­tion­ing of news aggre­ga­tors, which have been oblig­ed to pre­vent the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­ri­als of «blocked» Web-resources and hyper­links to them as well as to pro­vide the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion with “the data for the infor­ma­tion analy­sis” with­in 5 busi­ness days under the threat of being blocked by the deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion were trans­ferred from Pres­i­den­tial Decree No. 116 «On News Aggre­ga­tors in the Glob­al Com­put­er Net­work Inter­net» (2022) into the law,
• the list of grounds for can­cel­ing media reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cates and restrict­ing access to Web-resources, online pub­li­ca­tions, and news aggre­ga­tors was expand­ed. Thus, the new grounds include the pub­li­ca­tion of mate­ri­als of unreg­is­tered TV and radio broad­cast­ing media and the involve­ment of the mass media founder or the legal enti­ty entrust­ed with edi­to­r­i­al func­tions in the extrem­ist or ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties,
• deci­sions on restrict­ing access to the infor­ma­tion­al web­sites can be tak­en with­in six months from the day, when the grounds for such lim­i­ta­tions occured. The deci­sions may spec­i­fy a peri­od dur­ing which the access to these Web-resources can­not be restored.

Amend­ments to the Law «On Cit­i­zen­ship of the Repub­lic of Belarus» entered into force on July 11, 2023. On the basis of these amend­ments, the author­i­ties can deprive peo­ple of their Belaru­sian cit­i­zen­ship, in case they left the coun­try and were con­vict­ed on «extrem­ist» charges. Among oth­er things, cit­i­zen­ship can be revoked for the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the activ­i­ties or lead­er­ship of an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion», as well as for the alleged financ­ing or facil­i­ta­tion of «extrem­ist activ­i­ties». The jour­nal­ists who reside in exile and work for the mass media, which have been labeled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions,” may be affect­ed by the law, if con­vict­ed ‘in absen­tia’, i.e. with­out the per­son­al par­tic­i­pa­tion of defen­dants in the tri­al ses­sions.

The law «On Amend­ments to the Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus «On Pub­lish­ing in the Repub­lic of Belarus»» was adopt­ed on July 17, 2023. It revised the grounds for sus­pend­ing the publisher’s, producer’s or press distributor’s cer­tifi­cate of state reg­is­tra­tion by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. The law pro­vides for the oper­a­tion of the Nation­al Expert Com­mis­sion for Eval­u­a­tion of Sym­bols, Para­pher­na­lia, and Infor­ma­tion Prod­ucts to eval­u­ate print­ed pub­li­ca­tions for the pres­ence (absence) of infor­ma­tion mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als, which can harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus if pub­licly dis­sem­i­nat­ed. Fol­low­ing the Commission’s find­ings, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion is sup­posed to com­pile a list of print­ed pub­li­ca­tions con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als, which can harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus if pub­licly dis­trib­uted and post this list on the Ministry’s offi­cial Web­site.

On Octo­ber 17, 2023, the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters adopt­ed Res­o­lu­tion No. 688 «On Amend­ments to the Res­o­lu­tions of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the Repub­lic of Belarus», which amend­ed a num­ber of pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment res­o­lu­tions regard­ing the coun­ter­ac­tion to «extrem­ism» and «reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism». In par­tic­u­lar, it estab­lished a detailed pro­ce­dure for ana­lyz­ing infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject of «extrem­ism». Among oth­er things,

• the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion was autho­rized to take a deci­sion on ban­ning (restor­ing) the activ­i­ties of for­eign mass media and Web-resources that dis­trib­ute their pro­duc­tion, infor­ma­tion mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Repub­lic of Belarus,
• the new types of media out­lets were oblig­ed to pro­vide «copies of doc­u­ments» to the Min­istry free of charge, includ­ing the «com­bined» media (pro­vid­ing the copies of the print­ed text and audio and (or) images on oth­er tan­gi­ble stor­age media), the online pub­li­ca­tions as well as the print­ed peri­od­i­cal edi­tions, which are pro­duced orprint­ed out­side the Repub­lic of Belarus on the orders, placed by the Belaru­sian media out­lets,
• the Nation­al Expert Com­mis­sion for Eval­u­a­tion of Sym­bols, Para­pher­na­lia, and Infor­ma­tion Prod­ucts for Pres­ence or Absence of Signs of Extrem­ism was trans­formed into the Nation­al Expert Com­mis­sion for Eval­u­a­tion of Sym­bols, Para­pher­na­lia, and Infor­ma­tion Prod­ucts. (The Region­al and Min­sk City Expert Com­mis­sions were renamed in a sim­i­lar way). The detec­tion of «infor­ma­tion mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als, which can harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus if dis­sem­i­nat­ed” was added to its func­tions. (No expla­na­tion regard­ing the con­tent of this con­cept was pro­vid­ed. How­ev­er, it is obvi­ous that it is broad­er than the con­cept of «extrem­ism».),
• the Pro­vi­sions on the pro­ce­dure for eval­u­at­ing sym­bols, para­pher­na­lia, and infor­ma­tion prod­ucts was adopt­ed. Among oth­er things, they intro­duced the algo­ry­thm for appeal­ing the deci­sions, which had been tak­en by the expert com­mis­sions. How­ev­er, such com­plaints can be filed only by the gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies that sub­mit­ted the cor­re­spond­ing appli­ca­tions to the rel­e­vant com­mis­sion and do not agree with its con­clu­sion. Accord­ing to the Pro­vi­sions, the sub­mit­ted media pro­duc­tion can be eval­u­at­ed both by sev­er­al and one expert com­mis­sion mem­ber or spe­cial­ist.

VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS’ AND MEDIA RIGHTS

CRIMINAL CASES

16 court ver­dicts were pro­nounced against jour­nal­ists in crim­i­nal cas­es dur­ing the year of 2023. More­over, crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against 10 more jour­nal­ists dur­ing the same peri­od.

Report­ed­ly, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs filed a crim­i­nal case against the orga­niz­ers and par­tic­i­pants of ‘We Care!’ char­i­ty marathon of sol­i­dar­i­ty with Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers on Octo­ber 3, 2023. The event was held with the sup­port of more than 20 inde­pen­dent media orga­ni­za­tions in July 2023. Bas­ing on the mate­ri­als, col­lect­ed by the agents of GUBAZiK (Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus), around 60 peo­ple from among the char­i­ty marathon orga­niz­ers and their assis­tants were labeled as sus­pects in the crim­i­nal case for the alleged “fund­ing of extrem­ist activ­i­ties”.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties start­ed fil­ing crim­i­nal cas­es against the peo­ple who left the coun­try to avoid per­se­cu­tion with­in the peri­od under review. (These crim­i­nal cas­es were held “in absen­tia”, i.e. with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of defen­dants.)

Prac­ti­cal­ly any per­son can be accused of «facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties», as it is enough to give an inter­view or com­ment to the media rec­og­nized as «extrem­ist for­ma­tions» to face crim­i­nal charges. The rel­a­tives of exiled media work­ers were sub­ject­ed to harass­ment and pres­sure in 2023. In par­tic­u­lar, the author­i­ties con­duct­ed search­es at the media work­ers’ places of reg­is­tra­tion, and their pri­vate prop­er­ty was inven­to­ried or seized.

It was reg­is­tered for the first time that a jour­nal­ist’s real estate was seized. Ihar Kazmier­chak, the edi­tor of ORSHA.EU inde­pen­dent news Web­site learnt that his apart­ment in Belarus had been seized by the regime in pow­er. Pre­sum­ably, the prop­er­ty was seized as part of crim­i­nal charges, faced by the media work­er for the alleged ‘insult of Pres­i­dent of Belarus’ in 2022. Also, the author­i­ties inven­tor­ized the pri­vate prop­er­ty, owned by a jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na Uladz­imir Khilmanovich.

32 jour­nal­ists were in jail at the end of 2023. The list of such media work­ers includ­ed the heads of TUT.by News Por­tal Mary­na Zolata­va and Lyud­mi­la Chek­ina, both sen­tenced to 12 years in prison as well as a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and edi­tor of the “Belaru­sian Year­book” peri­od­i­cal Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, sen­tenced to 10 years in prison.

Jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to pres­sure and inhu­mane treat­ment in cus­tody.

Report­ed­ly, Siarhei Sat­suk, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, and Andrzej Pochobut faced prob­lems with obtain­ing med­ica­tions and access­ing qual­i­fied med­ical care in 2023. Dzia­n­is Ivashyn’s rel­a­tives report­ed that they were forced to stop spread­ing infor­ma­tion about the journalist’s con­di­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, they were threat­ened with the ter­mi­na­tion of any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him. On July 18, 2023, it became known that Dzia­n­is Ivashyn had been trans­ferred from the colony to a strict regime prison by a court deci­sion. Nei­ther the journalist’s lawyer, not his rel­a­tives were aware of the tri­al or its cir­cum­stances.

Accord­ing to human rights activists, Ihar Losik, a for­mer employ­ee of Radio Lib­er­ty went on a hunger strike for a long peri­od of time, while being in the Navap­o­latsk Penal Colony. Then, he cut his hands and neck. And con­se­quent­ly, he was tak­en to the prison hos­pi­tal. It was report­ed in Octo­ber 2023, that he had spent at least 6 months in cell-type premis­es of Navap­o­latsk Penal Colony No.1. It means that he was pro­hib­it­ed from meet­ing lawyers and rel­a­tives, as well as banned access to any cor­re­spon­dence.

A blog­ger Uladz­imir Tsy­hanovich (Moz­gON YouTube Channel’s author) has spent almost three years in jail serv­ing the ini­tial prison term. On April 10, 2023, he was con­vict­ed sup­ple­men­tary under Arti­cle 411 of the Crim­i­nal Code for ‘mali­cious dis­obe­di­ence to the require­ments of the penal colony admin­is­tra­tion’. Con­se­quent­ly, one more year was added to the ini­tial­ly pro­nounced ver­dict of 15 years in prison.

A blog­ger from Pin­sk Mikalai Klimovich, 61, died in Vit­seb­sk Penal Colony No.3 on May 7, 2023. At the end of Feb­ru­ary 2023, he was sen­tenced to one year in prison on charges of ‘insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’, while he had a very seri­ous heart con­di­tion, which the court was aware of.

The case of Andrzej Poc­zobut

On Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, the Hrod­na Region­al Court sen­tenced Andrzej Poc­zobut, a jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na and a mem­ber of the non-reg­is­tered Union of Poles of Belarus, to 8 years of impris­on­ment on charges of ‘incit­ing enmi­ty’ and ‘call­ing for sanc­tions’ (Arti­cles 130 and 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus, respec­tive­ly).

Accord­ing to the indict­ment, the jour­nal­ist regard­ed the USSR’s attack on Poland in 1939 as aggres­sion, spoke out in defense of the Pol­ish minor­i­ty in Belarus, pub­lished arti­cles in Gaze­ta Wybor­cza about the Belaru­sian protests in 2020 and a text in Mag­a­zyn Pol­s­ki, ded­i­cat­ed to the his­to­ry of the Pol­ish anti-com­mu­nist under­ground move­ment in Hrod­na region. Andrzej Poc­zobut was arrest­ed togeth­er with sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the Union of Poles of Belarus on March 25, 2021, and placed in cus­tody.

Accord­ing to the offi­cial ver­sion, since 2018 the mem­bers of the Union of Poles held a series of ille­gal events with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of minors in Hrod­na and oth­er cities of the region «to hon­our mem­bers of anti-Sovi­et gangs who act­ed dur­ing and after the Great Patri­ot­ic War, com­mit­ting rob­bery, killing peace­ful pop­u­la­tion of Belarus, destruc­t­ing prop­er­ty». These actions of the author­i­ties took place against the back­ground of the anti-Pol­ish pro­pa­gan­da spread by the state media, which described Poland as an aggres­sor that alleged­ly had ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims to the Repub­lic of Belarus. In August 2022, Andrzej Poc­zobut faced a new charge: he was addi­tion­al­ly con­vict­ed with «call­ing for restric­tive mea­sures (sanc­tions), alleged­ly, aimed at caus­ing dam­age to nation­al secu­ri­ty».

The case of Mary­na Zolata­va and Liud­mi­la Chek­ina

On March 17, 2023, Mary­na Zolata­va, Edi­tor-in-chief, TUT.BY News Por­tal and Liud­mi­la Chek­ina, Direc­tor Gen­er­al, TUT.BY News Por­tal were sen­tenced to 12 years of impris­on­ment each. More­over, L. Chek­ina was oblig­ed to pay a fine of BYN 37,000 (around USD 12,000). Both of them were charged under Arti­cle 130, part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or enmi­ty based on racial, nation­al, reli­gious, lin­guis­tic or oth­er social affil­i­a­tion, com­mit­ted by a group of per­sons or which result­ed in seri­ous con­se­quences’) and Arti­cle 361, part 3 (‘calls for actions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus, car­ried out with the use of mass media or the glob­al Inter­net’).

Accord­ing to the indict­ment, the jour­nal­ists were direct­ly involved in the pub­li­ca­tion of mate­ri­als that con­tained «the delib­er­ate­ly pos­i­tive assess­ment of the actions of oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment, the know­ing­ly neg­a­tive reflec­tion of the deci­sions of offi­cials who were in favor of pre­serv­ing the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion­al order, the hid­den coor­di­na­tion of protest activ­i­ty in soci­ety, as well as the infor­ma­tion aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try and caus­ing dam­age to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus».

Liud­mi­la Chek­ina was also charged with ‘large scale tax eva­sion’ (Arti­cle 243, part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus). The tri­al took place behind closed doors.

Zolata­va and Chek­ina were detained togeth­er with 11 more TUT.BY employ­ees on May 18, 2021, when the Belaru­sian author­i­ties launched an unprece­dent­ed attack on the most influ­en­tial news Web-resource in Belarus. A crim­i­nal case was filed for tax eva­sion on a par­tic­u­lar­ly large scale (Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Alleged­ly, being a res­i­dent of the Hi-Tech Park, TUT BY Media received rev­enues for about a year with­out hav­ing the right to do so.

The com­pa­ny paid the dam­age, which had been cal­cu­lat­ed by the inves­ti­ga­tion after a while. The sum exceed­ed 1 mil­lion 120 thou­sand euros. Nine defen­dants in the case filed motions to be released from crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty, and their cas­es did not go to court. A new crim­i­nal case for “incit­ing hatred” was filed against the TUT.by employ­ees in Octo­ber 2021.

The case of Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va

On March 17, 2023, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, the founder and the edi­tor of ‘Our Opin­ion’ Web­site for expert com­mu­ni­ty as well as the edi­tor of ‘Belorusskiy Yezhed­nevnik’ Web-resource and the head of ‘Belarus in Focus’ mon­i­tor­ing expert group was sen­tenced to 10 years of impris­on­ment togeth­er with a researcher Tat­siana Kuz­i­na. The author­i­ties charged her on the grounds of three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus:  Arti­cle 357 (‘facil­i­ta­tion of activ­i­ties, aimed at seiz­ing pow­er’), Arti­cle 361 (‘call­ing for acts aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty’), and Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing oth­er social enmi­ty’).

She was detained by the KGB agents on June 30, 2021. The arrest was pre­ced­ed by her speech on Euro­ra­dio, where she answered ques­tions about whether it would be pos­si­ble to achieve the release of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers through sanc­tions and whether a split with the West would pro­voke a rapid deep­en­ing of Belarus’ inte­gra­tion with Rus­sia. She has been in cus­tody since then.

The case of Henadz Mazhey­ka

On March 23, 2023, Henadz Mazhey­ka, a jour­nal­ist of ‘Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da in Belarus’ was sen­tenced to three years in prison. (The news­pa­per reporter had been detained in Moscow and deport­ed to Belarus in Octo­ber 2021.)

The per­se­cu­tion was caused by a pub­li­ca­tion on the KP.BY Web­site, where a com­put­er pro­gram­mer Andrei Zeltser, who shot down a KGB offi­cer and got mur­dered him­self at the thresh­old of his pri­vate apart­ment, was pos­i­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ized by his for­mer class­mate.

Although the news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al delet­ed the text in sev­er­al min­utes after its pub­li­ca­tion, the Web­site KP.BY was blocked on deci­sion of Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus in con­nec­tion with pub­lish­ing infor­ma­tion that, alleged­ly, ‘facil­i­tates form­ing the sources of threats to the nation­al secu­ri­ty’. Henadz Mazhey­ka was pre­sent­ed charges under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus – Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing the racial, nation­al, reli­bi­ous or oth­er social enmi­ty) and Arti­cle 368 (‘an insult to the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’). The jour­nal­ist was released from prison in Novem­ber 2023.

The case of Kanstantsin Zalatych

On April 6, 2023, Kanstantsin Zalatych, direc­tor of ‘Belorusy I Rynok’ news­pa­per was sen­tenced to four years in prison. His case was con­sid­ered behind closed doors. He was charged with com­mit­ting the crimes, men­tioned in four arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus: Arti­cle 426 (‘exceed­ing author­i­ty or duties’), Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social enmi­ty’), Arti­cle 369 (‘insult­ing a gov­ern­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Arti­cle 368 (‘insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’).

The case of Yauhien Merkis

On May 30, 2023, Homiel Region­al Court announced the ver­dict to Yauhien Merkis, a local free­lance jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an, who used to col­lab­o­rate with the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel. He was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison in a strict regime colony under Art. 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘assis­tance to extrem­ist activ­i­ties’), as well as Art. 361–1 (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’). The exact cir­cum­stances of the case are unknown since the tri­al was held behind closed doors. The jour­nal­ist was detained on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2022.

The case of Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka

On March 23, 2023, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka, a for­mer employ­ee of the state ANT TV chan­nel was sen­tenced to three years in prison under Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘incit­ing enmi­ty’). It should be men­tioned that he used to be the head of the pres­i­den­tial pool of jour­nal­ists. How­ev­er, he resigned in protest against vio­lence in August 2020. The jour­nal­ist was crim­i­nal­ly charged for pub­li­ca­tions in «Vkon­tak­te» and Insta­gram, which in the judge’s opin­ion were aimed at «form­ing a neg­a­tive stereo­type and under­min­ing trust in law enforce­ment offi­cers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties, and ulti­mate­ly weak­en­ing the cur­rent sys­tem of gov­er­nance.»

The case of Pavel Mazhei­ka

On July 26, 2023, Hrod­na Region­al Court sen­tenced a jour­nal­ist Pavel Mazhei­ka and an attor­ney Yulia Yurhile­vich to six years of impris­on­ment in the strict and com­mon regime colonies, respec­tive­ly. They were found guilty of facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties repeat­ed­ly (Arti­cle 361–4 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code). The court estab­lished that Pavel Mazhei­ka post­ed infor­ma­tion on Bel­sat TV chan­nel, which he had received from Yulia Yurgile­vich, about her res­ig­na­tion from the bar of attor­neys and about the ver­dict against the artist Ales Pushkin. The jour­nal­ist was detained fol­low­ing his return to Belarus on August 30, 2022.

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Sni­azhana Inanets

The spouse jour­nal­ists Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Sni­azhana Inanets were charged under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘arrange­ment and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’) in con­nec­tion with their par­tic­i­pa­tion in protests in 2020 and sub­scrip­tion to «destruc­tive» Telegram chan­nels and sen­tenced to three and two years of restric­tion of lib­er­ty with­out being sent to an open-type cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty («home con­fine­ment»), respec­tive­ly.

Both of them were detained on Octo­ber 6, 2022.

The case of Andrei Famin

Andrei Famin was sen­tenced to sev­en years in a strict regime colony on June 21, 2023 after being detained on Octo­ber 26, 2022. He con­fessed that he was the edi­tor and author of arti­cles for a net­work of ‘Ves­ni­ki’ civ­il protest news­pa­pers, pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by activists of local ini­tia­tives. Con­se­quent­ly, he was pre­sent­ed charges under three arti­cles of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code, name­ly, Arti­cle 361 (‘calls to sanc­tions’), Arti­cle 342 (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order’), and Arti­cle 361–1 (‘estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’).

The case of Larysa Shchyrako­va

Larysa Shchyrako­va, a for­mer free­lance jour­nal­ist, who used to col­lab­o­rate with the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel, was detained in Homiel on Decem­ber 6, 2022. The same day, her son Svi­ataslau was tak­en to a social shel­ter for chil­dren until his father could see him and take him back home on col­lect­ing the nec­es­sary paper­work, on Decem­ber 23, 2022.

On 31 August, 2023, the jour­nal­ist, local his­to­ri­an and cul­tur­al activist Larysa Shchyrako­va was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced by Homel Region­al Court to 3.5 years in a gen­er­al-secu­ri­ty penal colony. She was also fined 100 base amounts (approx. 1,365 euros).

The con­vic­tion was based on Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’), Part 1 and Part 2 of Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘pro­mo­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty and the same action car­ried out repeat­ed­ly’).

Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion mate­ri­als, Larysa Shchyrako­va “from August 2020 to Decem­ber 2022, using the tense pub­lic sit­u­a­tion and seek­ing to desta­bi­lize the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, post­ed mate­ri­als with delib­er­ate­ly false data that dis­cred­it­ed the Repub­lic of Belarus.”

The case of Pavel Pad­abed

Pavel Pad­abed, a jour­nal­ist and a cam­er­ap­er­son from Min­sk, who coop­er­at­ed with a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media, has been crim­i­nal­ly charged for being part of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion (Arti­cle 361–1 of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code). He was detained on Jan­u­ary 20, 2023. Con­se­quent­ly, he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to four years of impris­on­ment by Min­sk City Court on June 30, 2023,

The case of Viachaslau Laza­rau and Tat­siana Pyt­sko

A jour­nal­ist from Vit­sieb­sk Viachaslau Laza­rau was detained on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2023.

As report­ed lat­er, he was accused of ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 parts 1–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code). His wife Tat­siana Pyt­sko was detained on June 6, 2023. Tat­siana and Vyachaslau’s daugh­ter, who was a year and a month old at the time of her mother’s deten­tion, was placed under the care of the state and sent to a chil­dren’s hos­pi­tal. Her grand­moth­er was allowed to take the baby back home some time lat­er. Tat­siana Pyt­sko was indict­ed under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘estab­lish­ment or par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’) in con­nec­tion with her alleged col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel.

Legal inves­ti­ga­tors found video footage in the cameraman’s archive, where Tat­siana Pyt­sko was also present, which enabled the inves­ti­ga­tion to con­clude that she took part in the activ­i­ties of the extrem­ist for­ma­tion.

On Sep­tem­ber 25, 2023, Viachaslau Laza­rau was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to five and a half years of impris­on­ment in a high secu­ri­ty penal colony, and his wife was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to three years of impris­on­ment in a gen­er­al regime prison colony.

On Novem­ber 21–22, 2023, the impris­oned cou­ple of jour­nal­ists appealed the ini­tial court ver­dict of Vit­seb­sk Region­al Court in the Supreme Court of Belarus. Con­se­quent­ly, the charges were amend­ed to part 3 of Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code. Due to this change of charges, Viachaslau Lazarau’s term of impris­on­ment was reduced by half a year – to 5 years in prison. And his spouse Tat­siana Pyt­sko got the same pun­ish­ment con­firmed in the form of three years of impris­on­ment. How­ev­er, the sen­tence exe­cu­tion was sus­pend­ed for three years that allowed her to stay at home with cer­tain restric­tions.

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich

On Novem­ber 3, 2023, Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, the for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of «Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta» (Mal­adzech­na) was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison and a fine of 14,800 Belaru­sian rubles (approx­i­mate­ly 4,350 euros), alleged­ly for dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus (Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

The jour­nal­ist was detained after a search of his house in Vilei­ka (Min­sk region) on March 15, 2023. And he has been kept behind bars since then. Accord­ing to the indict­ment, alleged­ly, he dis­trib­uted false infor­ma­tion in coop­er­a­tion with oth­er indi­vid­u­als in the print­ed edi­tion and the affil­i­at­ed Web-resources that defamed the Belaru­sian state and its author­i­ties.

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Ziank­ou

Ali­ak­san­dr Ziank­ou, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er from Barysau (Min­sk region) was detained on June 22, 2023. The law enforce­ment agents con­duct­ed a search in his house and seized his com­put­er equip­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, Ziank­ou was tak­en to Min­sk, where he was placed in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. He was charged under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’). Alleged­ly, his video footage was shown on one of the resources rec­og­nized as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. On Jan­u­ary 30, 2024, Min­sk City Court con­vict­ed Ali­ak­san­dr Ziank­ou and sen­tenced him to three years of impris­on­ment.

The case of Ihar Karnei

A free­lance jour­nal­ist Ihar Karnei was detained in Min­sk on July 17, 2023.  He is an author of texts about the cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal her­itage of Belarus as well as a trav­el blog­ger.

At first, he was sen­tenced to 10 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest. Then, he was trans­ferred to a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre. At the begin­ning, it was not known what exact­ly Ihar Karnei was accused of, as his lawyer was under a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment.

Min­sk City Court began con­sid­er­ing his case on March 19, 2024. Con­se­quent­ly, Ihar Karnei was charged with join­ing an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion with the intent of com­mit­ting an extrem­ist crime (Arti­cle 361–1, part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

Accord­ing to the indict­ment, alleged­ly, Ihar “insult­ed the pres­i­dent and gov­ern­ment offi­cials, jour­nal­ists, and oth­er cit­i­zens as well as report­ed false infor­ma­tion about the eco­nom­ic, social, mil­i­tary, and inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus in his neg­a­tive jour­nal­is­tic mate­ri­als” for BAJ.

The case of Andrei Tolchyn

A for­mer free­lance jour­nal­ist Andrei Tolchyn was detained and indict­ed under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘cre­at­ing an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion or par­tic­i­pat­ing in it’) in Homiel on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2023. As a cam­er­ap­er­son, he used to coop­er­ate with inde­pen­dent media resources, includ­ing the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, for ten years.

Andrei Tolchyn was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 2.5 years of impris­on­ment on March 21, 2024.

The case of Dzia­n­is Dashke­vich

The house of jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Dashke­vich was searched in Raha­chou, Mahilou region at the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2023. (The media work­er is cur­rent­ly out­side of Belarus.)  Since this was not the first inci­dent of this kind, the police­men who were look­ing for the infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers did not seize any­thing this time. The prosecutor’s order was giv­en to the journalist’s wife. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, it appeared that the search was con­duct­ed in con­nec­tion with sev­er­al crim­i­nal cas­es. Accord­ing to Dashke­vich, the list of accu­sa­tions includ­ed «facil­i­tat­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion»,
“insult­ing the pres­i­dent and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the gov­ern­ment”, “dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus” and “spread­ing per­son­al data on the Inter­net”.

The case of Uladz­imir Khilmanovich (‘in absen­tia’)

On Decem­ber 1, 2023, a police search was con­duct­ed in the apart­ment, owned by the wife of the jour­nal­ist and human rights activist Uladz­imir Khilmanovich, in Hrod­na, where the lat­ter used to live in 2014–2021. Uladz­imir Khilmanovich has been resid­ing out­side of Belarus for 2.5 years. Report­ed­ly, a crim­i­nal case was filed against him under parts 1 and 2 of Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ties’). The legal inves­tiga­tive bod­ies draft­ed a res­o­lu­tion on the seizure of his prop­er­ty, name­ly fur­ni­ture and house­hold appli­ances.

It became known that a crim­i­nal case was filed against him under parts 1 and 2 of Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’). Inves­tiga­tive bod­ies draft­ed a res­o­lu­tion on the seizure of prop­er­ty (fur­ni­ture and house­hold appli­ances).

The case of Ales Sabaleus­ki

A for­mer blog­ger and jour­nal­ist from Mahilou Ales (Ali­ak­san­dr) Sabaleus­ki was detained in his home city on Decem­ber 12, 2023. He used to coop­er­ate with a num­ber of inde­pen­dent region­al pub­li­ca­tions.

The jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced twice to admin­is­tra­tive arrest. Then, report­ed­ly, Ales Sabaleus­ki was trans­ferred to a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter and a crim­i­nal case was filed against him. The crim­i­nal case is prob­a­bly relat­ed to the label­ing of region­al media resources, includ­ing ‘6TV Belarus’ YouTube chan­nel and ‘Mahilou. Media’ Region­al News Web­site as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ by the regime in pow­er.

The case of ‘Ranak’ TV com­pa­ny

On Decem­ber 14, 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus offi­cial­ly announced the fil­ing of a crim­i­nal case «for the estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion» in con­nec­tion with the activ­i­ties of ‘Ranak’ TV and Radio com­pa­ny from Svet­la­horsk in Homiel region. For­mer employ­ees of ‘Ranak’ TV and Radio com­pa­ny Yulia Daule­ta­va and Liud­mi­la Anden­ka were detained in the frame­work of the crim­i­nal case, filed under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code. Both were released from cus­tody on recog­ni­zance not to leave the place of their res­i­dence some time lat­er. The for­mer edi­tor Andrei Lip­s­ki was the third con­vict­ed per­son in the group. How­ev­er, he had already been abroad by the moment when the deten­tions took place.

Accord­ing to the legal inves­ti­ga­tors, the con­vict­ed indi­vid­u­als «cre­at­ed and admin­is­tered a Telegram group, which pub­lished infor­ma­tion aimed at orga­niz­ing, prepar­ing and com­mit­ting mass riots, resist­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers with the aim of encroach­ing on the country’s inde­pen­dence, ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, and the foun­da­tions of its con­sti­tu­tion­al order in 2020. The destruc­tive ideas were pro­mot­ed through the infor­ma­tion resources of the TV and Radio com­pa­ny”. (See also: «Pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and mass media).

The case of Pavel Maryn­ich (‘in absen­tia’)  

A crim­i­nal case was filed against the head of «Malan­ka Media» Pavel Maryn­ich in Decem­ber 2023. Togeth­er with three oth­er peo­ple, he was charged under Arti­cle 191, part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘obstruc­tion of the work of the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, as well as the com­mis­sions on the ref­er­en­dum, car­ried out with the use of threats and oth­er means, by a group of per­sons with a pri­or con­spir­a­cy’):

Alleged­ly, the group of peo­ple devel­oped and imple­ment­ed a plan of ille­gal actions to dis­rupt the nation­al ref­er­en­dum on amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion of Belarus in 2022. On March 18, 2024, all four defen­dants were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 4 years in prison. The court con­sid­ered the case in the order of spe­cial pro­ceed­ings (‘in absen­tia’), since all the defen­dants cur­rent­ly reside out­side of Belarus.

Pros­e­cu­tion of blog­gers

Five admin­is­tra­tors of the ‘Black Book of Belarus’ Telegram chan­nel were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced in absen­tia to 12 years in prison each on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023. The list of pros­e­cut­ed blog­gers includ­ed Zmit­si­er Navosha, a civ­il soci­ety activist, a jour­nal­ist, and a co-founder of pop­u­lar sport Web-resources Tribuna.com and Sports.ru.

The crim­i­nal cas­es were filed by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus on Arti­cle 130 (‘incite­ment of hos­til­i­ty’) and Arti­cle 203–1 (‘ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of per­son­al data’) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus. It was the first case of appli­ca­tion of the insti­tu­tion of «spe­cial court pro­ceed­ings» (con­vic­tion of polit­i­cal emi­grants in absen­tia).

Mikalai Klimovich, a blog­ger from Pin­sk, 69, died after two weeks of con­fine­ment in Viteb­sk Penal Colony No. 3 on May 7, 2023. On Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023, he had been con­vict­ed under Arti­cle 368 of Crim­i­nal Code and sen­tenced to one year in prison on charges of «insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus» for a polit­i­cal car­i­ca­ture of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, “revealed” by legal inves­ti­ga­tors in his social media. The blog­ger had a seri­ous heart con­di­tion, which was known to the court.

A court ver­dict was announced in the crim­i­nal case against Dzmit­ry Harbunou, a local civ­il soci­ety activist and blog­ger in Brest on March 17, 2023. He was con­vict­ed under Arti­cle 368 (‘insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’) and Arti­cle 369 (‘insult­ing a gov­ern­men­tal offi­cial’) of Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus and was sen­tenced to one and a half years in prison. The crim­i­nal charges were relat­ed to the mes­sages that Har­bunou had made two years ear­li­er on social media.

Sev­er­al new crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau, a blog­ger and ex-polit­i­cal pris­on­er from Brest in March 2023. The new devel­op­ment became known due to the fact that law enforce­ment offi­cials searched his par­ents’ house.

On May 3, 2023, a ver­dict was pro­nounced in absen­tia in the crim­i­nal case of well-known blog­gers, who edit­ed the ‘Nex­ta’ and ‘Belarus of the Brain’ Telegram chan­nels.

The court stat­ed that the indict­ed Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, Yan Rudzik, and Raman Prata­se­vich were direct­ly involved in the arrange­ment of mass riots, which were accom­pa­nied by arson, pogroms, block­ing the oper­a­tion of trans­port, as well as inten­tion­al incite­ment of social enmi­ty and calls to com­mit ter­ror­ist acts dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion cam­paign. Since the used Web-resources were rec­og­nized by the author­i­ties as «extrem­ist for­ma­tions», their man­age­ment incurred addi­tion­al crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la was sen­tenced to 20 years of impris­on­ment in a high secu­ri­ty colony and Yan Rudzik was sen­tenced to 19 years in prison. (Both of them were con­vict­ed in absen­tia since they reside out­side of Belarus.) Raman Prata­se­vich was the only defen­dant, who was present dur­ing the tri­al in the court room. Since the lat­ter col­lab­o­rat­ed with the legal inves­ti­ga­tion “in the undis­put­ed man­ner”, he was sen­tenced to 8 years in a gen­er­al regime penal colony. And con­se­quent­ly, he was par­doned by Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on May 22, 2023.

Dzmit­ry Selvyas­truk, a sports blog­ger and author of the «Sil­ver Age. Foot­ball of Belarus» Telegram chan­nel was detained and lat­er charged under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’) on May 10, 2023. Human rights defend­ers learned that the last court hear­ing in this case took place at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023. How­ev­er, the court ver­dict remained unknown.

On Decem­ber 8, 2023, Dzmit­ry Selvyas­truk was includ­ed in the «list of extrem­ists» by the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus.

Ali­ak­san­dr Ihnat­siuk, the author of ‘About Stolin’ blog and the for­mer edi­tor of ‘Vech­erniy Stolin’ inde­pen­dent dis­trict news­pa­per was detained and placed in cus­tody on charges under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’) on July 18, 2023. The tri­al ses­sion start­ed on March 15, 2024. Dur­ing the tri­al, it became known that he was charged under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: Arti­cle 367, part 2 (‘defama­tion of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus, com­mit­ted by a per­son who has already been tried for defama­tion or insult’), Arti­cle 342, part 1 (‘arrange­ment and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’), as well as Arti­cle 208, parts 1 and 2 (black­mail­ing; black­mail­ing com­mit­ted repeat­ed­ly, or by a group of indi­vid­u­als by pri­or agree­ment, or with the use of vio­lence that does not pose a dan­ger to the life or health of the vic­tim, or under the threat of killing or caus­ing seri­ous bod­i­ly harm, or com­bined with the destruc­tion or dam­age of prop­er­ty, or for the pur­pose of obtain­ing mate­r­i­al ben­e­fit in a large amount’).

Pres­sure on Jour­nal­ists and Mass Media

Accord­ing to the BAJ’s cal­cu­la­tions, jour­nal­ists were arrest­ed 16 times on admin­is­tra­tive charges in 2023.

All in all, it was reg­is­tered that jour­nal­ists were detained 46 times, and 34 search­es were con­duct­ed in their homes and offices in 2023.

Thus, in Feb­ru­ary 2023, a search with sezure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment took place in the edi­to­r­i­al office of “Intex-press” news­pa­per (Baranavichy, Brest region).

Mass search­es and deten­tions of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists were also reg­is­tered all over the coun­try in March 2023. In par­tic­u­lar, the search­es and arrests took place in the edi­to­r­i­al offices of “Infa-Kury­er” (Slut­sk, Min­sk region), and “Rehіyanal­naya Gaze­ta” (Mal­adziech­na, Min­sk region) region­al news­pa­pers. The pres­sure on the media out­lets was of com­plex char­ac­ter, which had been applied by Belaru­sian author­i­ties ear­li­er. It includ­ed search­es, deten­tions and admin­is­tra­tive per­se­cu­tion of employ­ees, seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment, ban on dis­tri­b­u­tion, defam­ing in pro-gov­ern­men­tal media, and recog­ni­tion of pub­li­ca­tions as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als.” Con­se­quent­ly, all these media out­lets were forced to cease their activ­i­ties.

Since June 2023, the author­i­ties start­ed ruin­ing the ‘Ranak’ pri­vate TV and Radio com­pa­ny in the city of Svet­la­horsk (Homiel region). They con­duct­ed a search in the edi­to­r­i­al office and pros­e­cut­ed nine of its employ­ees, includ­ing the edi­tor Andrei Lip­s­ki, on admin­is­tra­tive charges. The TV com­pa­ny was rec­og­nized as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” lat­er. Con­se­quent­ly, three of its jour­nal­ists faced crim­i­nal charges.

The ‘Ranak’ employ­ees’ sub­scrip­tion to a local group on ‘Odnok­lass­ni­ki’ social media was pre­sent­ed by the author­i­ties as the offi­cial rea­son for the admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion. How­ev­er, most like­ly, the real motive was the TV company’s cov­er­age of the acci­dent at the Svet­la­horsk pulp and card­board mill, which hap­pened on June 7th and led to the death of three fac­to­ry work­ers.

The male employ­ees were pun­ished with admin­is­tra­tive arrests, and female employ­ees were fined on the ground of the police pro­to­cols drawn up under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences. As soon as the employ­ees were detained, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion blocked access to the chan­nel’s web­site. On July 4, 2023, its con­tent was rec­og­nized as «extrem­ist mate­r­i­al.»

The TV and Radio com­pa­ny was rec­og­nized as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion», and three of its jour­nal­ists were charged in a crim­i­nal case some time lat­er (see more in ‘Crim­i­nal Cas­es’).

Two police­men came to the apart­ment of Homiel jour­nal­ist Ana­tol Hatouchyts to find out if he was sub­scribed to extrem­ist Telegram chan­nels in the evening on May 23, 2023. Since 2020, this was already the sixth vis­it by the police. Four of them were accom­pa­nied by search­es and seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment.

The offi­cers from Ivat­se­vichy Police Depart­ment came to the house of the ‘Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas’ News Web­site (ganc-chas.by) edi­tor Pavel Dajlid on June 19, 2023 in the morn­ing. One of the offi­cers pro­posed him to fol­low them to the police sta­tion for “a talk” about the sit­u­a­tion, when a car with Russ­ian license plates was stopped in Ivat­se­vichy on June 17^th. At the same time, the police offi­cer told Pavel Dajlid to take his phone with him.

The police­man did not answer the edi­tor’s ques­tion about his pro­ce­dur­al sta­tus and the mat­ter of the meet­ing he was sum­moned for. How­ev­er, he not­ed that Pavel Dajlid was nei­ther a sus­pect nor a con­vict. Alleged­ly, some­one just want­ed “to have a talk» with him. When the edi­tor refused to go to the police with­out a writ and with­out a lawyer, the offi­cer called some­one and then they left the house with his col­leagues in a police car.

On August 29, 2023, police offi­cers came to the house of Svi­at­lana Malysh­ka, a cor­re­spon­dent of the same «Hantsav­it­sky Chas» web­site and pro­posed her in a high­ly push­ing way to come with them for a «talk». The jour­nal­ist learned at the police sta­tion that the call to the police depart­ment was caused by her arti­cle ‘Hantsavichy Down­town Turned Bold on the Eve of Prepa­ra­tions for Dazhyn­ki’. The police offi­cers dis­liked the title of this pub­li­ca­tion and claimed it was not true.

On the same day, anoth­er employ­ee of «Hantsav­it­sky Chas» web­site Siarhei Bahrou was invit­ed to the police sta­tion, where he explained that he does not write arti­cles. Pre­sum­ably, the atten­tion of the police was caused by the dis­sat­is­fac­tion of the city author­i­ties due to the crit­i­cal cov­er­age of their actions. The chair­man of the Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee Uladz­imir Bialou and his deputy Siarhei Sarak­ou want­ed to talk with the «Hantsav­it­sky Chas» edi­to­r­i­al staff just on the eve of these events with the police. They took turns call­ing the «Hantsav­it­sky Chas» cor­re­spon­dents and express­ing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion. How­ev­er, they did not receive an answer regard­ing the authors of the crit­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions.

Siarhei Hardziye­vich, a for­mer jour­nal­ist of «The First Region» web­site was detained at a check­point on the Belaru­sian-Pol­ish bor­der in Brest on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023. He had been con­vict­ed and served a year and a half in prison ear­li­er. As soon as his phone was checked, he was tak­en into cus­tody and sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (‘dis­sem­i­na­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als’) after­wards.

Nadzeya Mali­nouskaya, the admin­is­tra­tor of «Vol­naye Hly­bokaye» region­al online publication’s social media was pun­ished with a fine of 4,440 Belaru­sian rubles on July 25, 2023. Also, her smart­phone was seized. She was penal­ized for the alleged ‘dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ (Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es) in the form of repost­ing pub­li­ca­tions from the Bel­sat TV chan­nel on the «Vol­naye Hly­bokaye» Insta­gram account, as well as for plac­ing the Belaru­sian his­tor­i­cal nation­al sym­bols – the ‘Pur­suit’ coat of arms, a white-red-white flag and the «Long Live Belarus» inscrip­tion – In the pub­li­ca­tion’s Vkon­tak­te account, which was regard­ed as pick­et­ing (Arti­cle 24.23 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

A pho­tog­ra­ph­er from Brest Vasil Pashaluk («Vas­ka Pilot») was fined 370 Belaru­sian rubles at the end of Octo­ber 2023. He was penal­ized for using his quad­copter for film­ing with­out pri­or per­mis­sion under Arti­cle 18.35 of the Civ­il Code (‘vio­la­tion of the air­space usage rules’) at the ini­tia­tive of the pros­e­cu­tor’s office. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er pro­duced a num­ber of video clips bas­ing on the footage for a state-owned orga­ni­za­tion and post­ed them on his YouTube chan­nel lat­er on.

On Novem­ber 28, 2023, a search was car­ried out at Siarhei Chaly’s apart­ment in Belarus. The eco­nom­ic ana­lyst and host of the «Night with Chaly» YouTube project cur­rent­ly resides in exile out­side of Belarus. The search was for­mal­ly jus­ti­fied by his engage­ment in the activ­i­ties of the oppo­si­tion­al Coor­di­na­tion Coun­cil.

\Law enforce­ment agents con­duct­ed search­es with seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment and mobile phones at six people’s hous­es in Mahilou region on Decem­ber 5–6, 2023. The search­es affect­ed for­mer edi­tor Barys Vyr­vich, as well as Ali­ak­san­dr Aheyeu, Ali­ak­sei Bat­siuk­ou, Ihar Sharukha, Piotr Mihurs­ki, and Siarhei Antonau. All these indi­vid­u­als used to be con­nect­ed this way or anoth­er with the local inde­pen­dent online pub­li­ca­tions ‘Mahilou.media’ and ‘6TV.by’, which were pre­vi­ous­ly labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ by the regime in pow­er. Vyr­vich was tak­en to the police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing, but lat­er released.

Also, the pri­vate apart­ment of jour­nal­ist Zmitser Lupach was searched in Hly­bokaye on Decem­ber 6, 2023. (The media work­er resides in exile nowa­days.) The police knocked out the entrance door since the apart­ment was emp­ty. After spend­ing some time in the journalist’s apart­ment, the police sealed it and left the build­ing.

Since the autumn of 2023, the author­i­ties have focused their atten­tion on blog­gers who are not direct­ly involved in the polit­i­cal agen­da. Thus, it was report­ed about the arrests of influ­en­tial Min­sk blog­gers and media per­son­al­i­ties with­in the peri­od under review, includ­ing Han­na Bond, who served 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest for “dis­obey­ing a police offi­cer,” Larysa Hry­balio­va, who is on the so-called “black­list” for con­demn­ing vio­lence in Belarus in 2020, and Dzia­n­is Kuryan even though none of them dwelt upon polit­i­cal issues in their work.

It looks like the author­i­ties were try­ing to make sure that there were no out-of-con­trol influ­en­tial pub­lic fig­ures in the coun­try in the run-up to the sin­gle vot­ing day on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2024.

Restric­tive mea­sures also affect­ed a for­eign jour­nal­ist Justy­na Prus, who used to work as a cor­re­spon­dent of the Pol­ish Infor­ma­tion Agency (PAP) in the coun­try since 2016. The KGB banned her from enter­ing Belarus for five years.

THE USE OF ANTI-EXTREMIST LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

The author­i­ties con­tin­ued large-scale per­se­cu­tion for dis­sent under the pre­text of fight­ing extrem­ism in the media space.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and 15 inde­pen­dent media out­lets were labeled as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” in Belarus in 2023. The num­ber of affect­ed media orga­ni­za­tions increased thrice in com­par­i­son with the pre­vi­ous year.

It was for the first time that a for­eign media resource was includ­ed in the list of “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties last year. These were the Telegram, YouTube and Tik­Tok accounts of the pop­u­lar Ukrain­ian blog­ger Alexan­der Rykov (Bal­aganOff). He pays sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion to the Belaru­sian issues in his videos.

33 con­vict­ed media work­ers were includ­ed in the offi­cial list of “extrem­ists” and 12 impris­oned media work­ers were includ­ed in the list of “ter­ror­ists” in 2023.

Accord­ing to a new trend, the ordi­nary cit­i­zens who com­ment­ed on any socio-polit­i­cal events for jour­nal­ists or col­lab­o­rat­ed in any oth­er way with the inde­pen­dent media, which had been labeled by the regime in pow­er as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’, faced charges along­side the civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Thus, Darya Losik, the wife of Radio Lib­er­ty employ­ee Ihar Losik, was sen­tenced to two years in prison in Jan­u­ary 2023 for an inter­view with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel about her husband’s sit­u­a­tion.

Con­se­quent­ly, their four-year-old daugh­ter was left with­out par­ents. The kid’s grand­par­ents took care of their grand­child in their absense.

The con­vict­ed jour­nal­ists Kseniya Lut­ski­na, Iry­na Leushy­na, Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau (and his spouse Iry­na Zlobi­na), Sni­azhana Inanets and Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka (a mar­ried cou­ple), Ali­ak­san­dr Liu­bianchuk, Dzmit­ry Luk­sha, Ivan Murauy­ou, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka, Andrzej Poc­zobut, Henadz Mazhey­ka, Larysa Shchyrako­va, Yauhien Merkis, Pavel Pad­abied, Pavel Mazhey­ka, Andrei Famin, Viachaslau Laza­rau and his spouse Tat­siana Pyt­sko as well as the TUT.BY employ­ees Liud­mi­la Chek­ina and Mary­na Zolata­va, a colum­nist on mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal issues Yahor Lebi­adok, a sport media man­ag­er Dzmit­ry Navosha as well as blog­gers Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, Yan Rudzik, Raman Prata­se­vich, and Dzmit­ry Selvi­as­truk were includ­ed in the list of indi­vid­u­als, who are alleged­ly ‘engaged in extrem­ist activ­i­ties’.

The KGB includ­ed a polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Tat­siana Kuz­i­na, a jour­nal­ist Henadz Mazhey­ka, and the direc­tor of ‘Belaru­sian and Mar­ket’ news­pa­per Kanstantsin Zalatykh to the list of indi­vid­u­als, who are alleged­ly ‘engaged in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties’.

As before, the pub­li­ca­tions of inde­pen­dent media were fre­quent­ly includ­ed in the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als. The media resources and online com­mu­ni­ties of the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra abroad were most often among them.

In total, the courts rec­og­nized 1,721 media pro­duc­tion resources as «extrem­ist mate­ri­als» in 2023. (The absolute major­i­ty of these resources were includ­ed in the list for con­tain­ing «oppo­si­tion­al» opin­ions, except for sev­er­al resources with neo-Nazi con­tent). The list includes online resources of inde­pen­dent media, such as Tik­Tok accounts of ‘Nasha Niva’, ‘KYKY’, ‘Tribuna.by’, ‘Chest­nOK’, ‘Cur­rent Time. Belarus’,

Telegram-каналы of ‘Hrodna.life’, ‘Ex-Press.by, the Web­site of ‘Pozirk’ media out­let, the Web­site and ‘VKon­tak­tie’ page of ‘Inform Progul­ka Luninets’ media out­let, Tik­Tok, Insta­gram and YouTube accounts of ‘Bel­sat’ TV, YouTube chan­nel of ‘Bela­Me­dia’ media out­let, Tik­Tok and ‘X’ accounts of ‘Novy Chas’ peri­od­i­cal, Insta­gram accounts of ‘TALK’ and ‘The First Region’ online-edi­tions, all social media and mes­sen­gers of ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’, ‘Sal­i­dar­nasts’ online news­pa­per, ‘Palat­no’ online peri­od­i­cal, ‘volkovysk.by’ News Web­site, ‘WARTA – Belaru­sian nation­al media’, ‘Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas’ news­pa­per, ‘Belaru­sian Radio Racy­ja’ and oth­ers.

If ear­li­er the author­i­ties rec­og­nized main­ly online con­tent as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’, then in 2023 they often began to label the arti­cles in print­ed pub­li­ca­tions as ‘extrem­ist’, too. The num­ber of deci­sions on the recog­ni­tion of books as well as per­son­al pages with crit­i­ciz­ing con­tent in social media as ‘extrem­ist’ sky­rock­et­ed in 2023. Thus, such deci­sions affect­ed the social media, owned by Rus­lan Kule­vich, the founder of the ‘Most’ media out­let from Bia­lystok, the Insta­gram account of the TV pre­sen­ter Kat­siary­na Pytl­e­va, the accounts of mod­ern Belaru­sian writer and poet Andrei Khadanovich and oth­ers).

The books of the ‘Yanushke­vich’ pub­lish­ing house attract­ed spe­cial atten­tion of the author­i­ties. It was sub­ject­ed to repres­sion and forced to ter­mi­nate its activ­i­ties in Belarus. 15 books of this pub­lish­ing house were labeled as «extrem­ist mate­ri­als» by the regime in pow­er. It was for the first time that a fic­tion book – «Dogs of Europe» by Algerd Bakhare­vich – was men­tioned in the list.

Refer­ring to Arti­cle 33 of the Law ‘On Pub­lish­ing Activ­i­ties’, the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk deprived the ‘Yanushke­vich’ pub­lish­ing house of the right to pub­lish books at the request of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion on Jan­u­ary 16, 2023. The deci­sion was rea­soned by the pub­li­ca­tion of books, which alleged­ly con­tained infor­ma­tion of extrem­ist nature, includig the «Dogs of Europe» nov­el by Algerd Bakhare­vich, the mono­graph on ‘The Agrar­i­an pol­i­cy of the Nazis in West­ern Belarus: Plan­ning. Secu­ri­ty. Imple­men­ta­tion (1941–1944)’ by Svi­at­lana Kazlo­va, and the Belaru­sian trans­la­tion of «The Bal­lad of a Lit­tle Tug­boat» poem by Iosif Brod­sky.

The list was sup­ple­ment­ed by 4 more book edi­tions at the end of the year., It includ­ed two vol­umes of lit­er­ary works by the clas­sic of Belaru­sian lit­er­a­ture, Vin­cent Dunin-Martsinke­vich, in which some ‘extrem­ist’ poems were iden­ti­fied by the regime in pow­er.

Quite a few mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles were out­lawed, too. Some of them were pub­lished almost 30 years ago. Thus, a num­ber of issues of «Arche Pachatak» and «Our His­to­ry» mag­a­zines, an issue of «Svabo­da» news­pa­per, pub­lished in 1997, six arti­cles from the «Infa-Kuri­er» print news­pa­per, pub­lished in 2020, as well as some oth­er pub­li­ca­tions were labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by the regime in pow­er, too.

The num­ber of cas­es of bring­ing peo­ple to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (‘Dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­porta­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ty or pro­mot­ing such activ­i­ty’) has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the begin­ning of 2023. (The repost­ing or shar­ing of such mate­ri­als has been regard­ed by the author­i­ties as a breach of the law.) The num­ber of con­vict­ed peo­ple under Arti­cle 19.11 increased 1.7 times in the first half of the year com­pared to the same peri­od in 2022 (at least 1274 vs 721 cas­es).

Since almost all lead­ing inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion­al media resources have been “banned” by the regime in pow­er, almost every­one can be held liable for dis­trib­ut­ing vir­tu­al­ly any infor­ma­tion that is not want­ed by the author­i­ties.

Regard­less of how old the pub­li­ca­tion is, prac­ti­cal­ly any­one can be con­vict­ed for hav­ing it on the elec­tron­ic device. More and more peo­ple were pun­ished with admin­is­tra­tive arrests rather than fines in 2023.

Accord­ing to human rights defend­ers’ reports, no less than 2952 indi­vid­u­als were con­vict­ed for dis­sem­i­na­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als in 2023.

Courts con­tin­ued to pro­nounce ver­dicts for «dis­sem­i­na­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als» that includ­ed sub­scrip­tion to pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion sources apart from pub­li­ca­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of cer­tain con­tent. As it was ‘explained’ on the YouTube chan­nel asso­ci­at­ed with the Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces, it is not for­mal­ly a crime to be sub­scribed to pro­hib­it­ed Web-resources. How­ev­er, it was not­ed, that “it is as clear as day that if a per­son is inter­est­ed in these kind of things, oth­er legal vio­la­tions will def­i­nite­ly be found. The for­mal absence of cor­pus delic­ti is not an excuse to ignore an offend­er.”

A case of con­vic­tion ‘in absen­tia’ under the ‘extrem­ist’ Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es was reg­is­tered for the first time in 2023. On August 21, 2023, Iry­na Zyl, the judge of Raha­chou Dis­trict Court imposed a fine of 740 Belaru­sian rubles on the jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Dashke­vich from Raha­chou, who is cur­rent­ly out­side of Belarus. Also, she ruled to seize the ‘object of the offence’ for the media worker’s post­ing of sev­er­al pho­tos with the nation­al sym­bols of Belarus on the ‘Raha­chou Online’ online media resource.

In addi­tion to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent from inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion resources, ‘extrem­ist’ ref­er­ences in sci­en­tif­ic works, dis­tri­b­u­tion of pho­tos with a white-red-white flag, instal­la­tion of appli­ca­tions relat­ed to the banned news resources and send­ing infor­ma­tion to the feed­back bots of inde­pen­dent media were reg­is­tered as grounds for per­se­cu­tion in Belarus in 2023.

Thus, e.g., the judge of Brest Region­al Court con­vict­ed and sen­tenced the Ukrain­ian cit­i­zen Kat­siary­na Brukhana­va to two and a half years of impris­on­ment for the alleged ‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code), since she had sent two videos with mil­i­tary equip­ment to the chat­bot of the «Zerka­lo» online pub­li­ca­tion.

THE APPLICATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE MEASURES TO RESTRICT ACCESS TO INFORMATION

The mass media that con­tin­ued to oper­ate in Belarus, were sub­ject­ed to cen­sor­ship. Apart from the pub­li­ca­tions on polit­i­cal issues, it also affect­ed crit­i­cal expres­sions in rela­tion to gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties. 

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion con­tin­ued repres­sive activ­i­ties to lim­it access to «unwant­ed» infor­ma­tion, which con­tributed to the reduc­tion of the num­ber of non-state media in the coun­try. Among oth­er things, it mon­i­tored Web-con­tent, ini­ti­at­ed the block­ing of web­sites, and issued warn­ings. Thus, onliner.by, officelife.by and some oth­er Web-resources were forced to remove cer­tain con­tent in order to receive per­mis­sion for regain­ing pub­lic access to their web­sites.

Offi­cial warn­ings were issued to the “Nasha TV” (“Our TV”) chan­nel (Vit­seb­sk) as well as to the founders of the “Bel­MuzTV” and “Europa Plus TV” pro­grams.

The pro­pa­gan­dist Telegram-chan­nels report­ed that the lat­ter media out­let was ‘pun­ished’ for the appear­ance of Larysa Hry­balio­va in its pro­grams. She is on the so-called ‘black­list’ of 80 ‘banned’ per­form­ers and oth­er cul­tur­al work­ers, who con­demned vio­lence in Belarus in 2020.

The “Vkon­tak­te” social media (Rus­sia) blocked the com­mu­ni­ties of “Zerka­lo,” “Medi­a­zone. Belarus,” and «Nasha Niva» inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions as well as ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel at the request of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus in 2023.

The Russ­ian government’s watch­dog ‘Roskom­nad­zor’ banned access to a num­ber of Russ­ian, Belaru­sian, and Ukrain­ian web­sites on the grounds of mil­i­tary cen­sor­ship, includ­ing the BAJ web­site, mediazona.by and ‘Flag­stock’ online news Web-resources in 2023.

Also, pub­lic access was blocked to a num­ber of region­al Web-resources, includ­ing Intex-press.by, newgrodno.by, brestnote.by, as well as the IT-indus­try news Web­site Dev.by and a sport online peri­od­i­cal ‘Press­ball’, fol­low­ing the cor­re­spond­ing deci­sion, tak­en by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

A sim­i­lar deci­sion was tak­en by the Min­istry in rela­tion to Kamunikat.org that is the largest online library of Belaru­sian lit­er­a­ture nowa­days as well as the audiobooks.by Web­site with more than 500 audio record­ings of lit­er­ary works in the Belaru­sian lan­guage.

A meet­ing of the Nation­al Coun­cil on His­tor­i­cal Pol­i­cy was held on Decem­ber 5, 2023. It was chaired by Ihar Siarheyen­ka, the head of the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion. Among oth­er things, the pub­lish­ing issues were dis­cussed dur­ing the gath­er­ing. The meet­ing par­tic­i­pants dwelt upon the approach­es of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to the exclu­sion of ‘pub­li­ca­tions that dis­tort the his­tor­i­cal truth’ from sale and the algo­rithm of inter­de­part­men­tal inter­ac­tion to seize ‘extrem­ist’ pub­li­ca­tions from library funds. Siarheyen­ka sug­gest­ed work­ing out cer­tain mech­a­nisms. How­ev­er, he not­ed that the ‘phys­i­cal destruc­tion’ of unwant­ed books was not con­sid­ered at that.

Against the back­ground of sys­tem­at­ic per­se­cu­tion for crit­i­cal state­ments on the Inter­net, block­ing access to dozens of inde­pen­dent media and clas­si­fy­ing the online con­tent of cer­tain groups as «extrem­ist,» the Belaru­sian author­i­ties orga­nized the «Inter­net Gov­er­nance Forum» («Belarus IGF») on Novem­ber 15, 2023. Appar­ent­ly, the gath­er­ing was direct­ed to cre­ate the impres­sion of nor­mal­i­ty and legit­imize the repres­sive prac­tices. The event hadn’t been held in the peri­od from 2020 till 2023.

On June 16, 2023, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus can­celled the cer­tifi­cate of state reg­is­tra­tion of ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’ news­pa­per, which used to be one of the lead­ing Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent main­stream peri­od­i­cals, due to the fact that its print­ed ver­sion had not been pub­lished for six months in a row, sub­ject to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting it print­ed either in Belarus or in Rus­sia.

On July 31, 2023, the ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’ news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al stopped updat­ing its web­site, and on August 4, 2023, Iosif Siaredzich resigned from the posi­tion of the news­pa­per’s edi­tor-in-chief. The ‘Hyper PC’ pri­vate com­pa­ny took over the busi­ness. The ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’ web­site and Telegram chan­nel resumed oper­a­tion under the ‘NV’ brand name on August 8, 2023. How­ev­er, pro-gov­ern­ment nar­ra­tives were noticed in their pub­li­ca­tions. On Decem­ber 7, 2023, the new own­er ter­mi­nat­ed updat­ing the ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’ web­site and Telegram chan­nel.

A range of well-known inde­pen­dent region­al media ter­mi­nat­ed their oper­a­tion in Belarus, suf­fer­ing from the unfa­vor­able atmos­phere for the activ­i­ties of the non-state press in the coun­try that includ­ed direct per­se­cu­tion. The remain­ing «Intex-press» (Baranavichy, Brest region), «Infa-Kury­er» (Slut­sk, Min­sk region), and «Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta» (Mal­adziech­na, Min­sk region) news­pa­pers, which con­tin­ued to appear in one form or anoth­er, as well as the «Ranak» TV and Radio com­pa­ny (Svi­et­la­horsk, Homiel region) were actu­al­ly ruined as a result of bru­tal intru­sion of secu­ri­ty forces.

More­over, the de fac­to takeover of some pop­u­lar local media resources took place in 2023. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, their man­age­ment was trans­ferred to the odi­ous ‘Min­skaya Prau­da’ media out­let with the pur­pose of pub­lish­ing pro­pa­gan­da con­tent. There were reg­is­tered at least three cas­es of the kind, which affect­ed oper­a­tion of ‘Our Native Land of Lahoysk’ Telegram chan­nel (Lahoysk, Min­sk region), ‘Stoubt­sy City’ Insta­gram chan­nel (Stoubt­sy, Min­sk region), and ‘Kraj.by’ Web­site (Mal­adziech­na, Min­sk region).

The clo­sure of “Dzieyaslou” lit­er­ary and artis­tic mag­a­zine was report­ed at the end of Decem­ber 2023. The peri­od­i­cal had been pub­lished for more than 20 years. The pub­li­ca­tion of the chil­dren’s ‘Striped News­pa­per’ was sus­pend­ed, too.

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STATE MEDIA FIELD

The exist­ing ten­den­cy to ide­ol­o­gize the activ­i­ties of state media and their reori­en­ta­tion exclu­sive­ly to pro­pa­gan­da con­tin­ued. The trend also extend­ed to the field of jour­nal­ism edu­ca­tion in 2023.

On Jan­u­ary 9, 2023, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka expressed the opin­ion that a pow­er­ful and mod­ern media hold­ing should be cre­at­ed in the Union State of Belarus and Rus­sia in 2023. On April 6, 2023, he repeat­ed this idea at a meet­ing of the Supreme State Coun­cil of the Union State, explain­ing its neces­si­ty with the exist­ing «oppo­si­tion along the West-East line». In his opin­ion, a media com­pa­ny that cov­ers the agen­da of the Union State should be cre­at­ed in order to avoid the sur­ren­der in «the bat­tle for the cit­i­zens’ hearts and minds on the print, TV, radio and dig­i­tal bat­tle­fields.» The spe­cif­ic con­di­tions for the cre­ation of this media hold­ing were dis­cussed by Dzmit­ry Kru­ty, the Ambas­sador of Belarus to Rus­sia and Alex­ei Gro­mov, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russ­ian Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tive Office in Moscow on Octo­ber 6, 2023.

The top­ic of con­fronta­tion on the infor­ma­tion front was also dwelt upon by the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Pert­sou at a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the region­al press on Jan­u­ary 20, 2023. He not­ed that jour­nal­ists of the state media are front-line fight­ers of the infor­ma­tion resis­tance, who take the brunt of the ene­my forces: «There is an infor­ma­tion war going on against Belarus and Rus­sia. And we are not los­ing the bat­tle yet.»

On Feb­ru­ary 9, 2023, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka announced the estab­lish­ment of a spe­cial Coun­cil of Heads of Nation­al Mass Media at the Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty, which would super­vise the train­ing of jour­nal­ists. He not­ed that he pays such spe­cial atten­tion to the mass media, since in his opin­ion «the mass media is a field of strug­gle, start­ing from the Inter­net and end­ing with tra­di­tion­al media.» On March 22, 2023, the first meet­ing of the «super­vi­so­ry coun­cil» was held under the chair­man­ship of the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Piart­sou. It was ded­i­cat­ed to the revi­sion of the con­tent of edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams in con­nec­tion with the change of approach­es to the train­ing of mod­ern jour­nal­ists as «the infor­ma­tion front fighers».

In accor­dance with the tak­en deci­sions, the Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment of the Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty enrolled stu­dents only to the sub­si­dized places in the sum­mer of 2023. Con­se­quent­ly, the num­ber of first-year stu­dents in this depart­ment reduced by 20%. The depart­ment dean Ali­ak­sei Bialayeu stat­ed that there was no need in the stu­dents, who pay for their stud­ies, since “the Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment ful­fills the state order and trains spe­cial­ists for the state media.”

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Piart­sou regard­ed the first-year stu­dents of the Jour­nal­ism Depart­ment as «the fight­ing bay­o­nets in the infor­ma­tion war» dur­ing a meet­ing with them.

At the same time, polit­i­cal ‘purges’ con­tin­ued among state media employ­ees. It was report­ed at the begin­ning of 2023, that 8 peo­ple were fired at Homiel TV com­pa­ny at the end of 2022. Also, Andrei Rasa­fonau, the jour­nal­ist of «Dragichyn­s­ki ves­nik» region­al news­pa­per was dis­missed.

In March 2023, Andrei Pinchuk, the hon­ored direc­tor of sports broad­casts was detained in a TV stu­dio, tak­en to the police in hand­cuffs for a «pre­ven­tive inter­view» and fired, alleged­ly, for his side­line remarks.

On May 5, 2023, sev­er­al employ­ees of ‘Homiel Plus’ radio sta­tion were detained direct­ly at their work­places. The edi­tor-in-chief Siarhei Krasnabar­o­da, radio hosts Zhan­na Min­i­na and Anas­ta­sia Gryt­sen­ka, as well as sound engi­neer Art­siom Vasilk­ou were sen­tenced to dif­fer­ent terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest for up to 15 days for the alleged ‘dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ (Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

Yana Tsehla, writer and jour­nal­ist of ‘Litaratu­ra i Mas­tats­va’ news­pa­per was fired from her job “for absen­teeism” in ear­ly June 2023. This is how the edi­to­r­i­al man­age­ment inter­pret­ed the two months she spent in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. (Con­se­quent­ly, she was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to two years of “home chem­istry”, which is a form of house arrest with strict restric­tions on move­ment under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code for tak­ing part in protest actions.) Since she was direct­ed to work at the news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al after grad­u­a­tion from her uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies, which is a manda­to­ry require­ment for the sub­sidised uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates in Belarus, she was urged to reim­burse more than 3.5 thou­sand rubles (around 1,000 EUR) to the state for her uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies.

The “Zhyt­st­sio Palessia” (“Palessie Life”) dis­trict state news­pa­per faced pres­sure from the secu­ri­ty forces in 2023. The peri­od­i­cal is pub­lished by Mazyr Dis­trict Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee (Homiel region). The pub­lic access was tem­porar­i­ly dis­abled to the newspaper’s Web-site on Octo­ber 23, 2023.

It was just a day ear­li­er that an anony­mous com­plaint had appeared in a Telegram chan­nel, cre­at­ed by the police. Some­one found it sus­pi­cious that an adver­tise­ment for recruit­ment to the Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my was placed next to an adver­tise­ment for funer­al ser­vices in the news­pa­per issue, which was pub­lished on Octo­ber 19, 2023.The law enforce­ment agents promised to check it out if the news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al was ’extrem­ist and lousy’ with the help of the local depart­ment of GUBAZiK (Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus).

New inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions were intro­duced against the state-owned media and pro­pa­gan­dists in 2023.

Thus, the Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny was exclud­ed from the list of Olympic Games broad­cast­ers for the term of 10 years.

The Tik­Tok social media blocked and then delet­ed the account of the chau­vin­is­tic pro­pa­gan­da news­pa­per “Min­skaya Prau­da”, which had about 70 thou­sand sub­scribers.

On Jan­u­ary 15, 2023, Ukraine imposed sanc­tions against odi­ous pro­pa­gan­dists Ryhor Azaron­ak, Ihar Tur, Ali­ak­san­dr Shpak­ous­ki as well as the CEO of CTV chan­nel Ali­ak­san­dr Aseyen­ka. Lit­er­al­ly the next day, the «Belarus 1» state TV chan­nel showed a pro­pa­gan­dist sto­ry accus­ing Ukrain­ian diplo­mats of «recruit­ing for­eign mil­i­tants.» On Jan­u­ary 17, 2023, Ambas­sador of Ukraine to Belarus Ihar Kizym report­ed that a note of protest was sent to the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Belarus in this regard.

In con­nec­tion with the adop­tion of anoth­er pack­age of EU sanc­tions against Rus­sia and Belarus on August 3rd, restric­tive mea­sures were intro­duced against sev­er­al Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­dists, employed by the state TV broad­cast­ers, includ­ing Kseniya Lebedzie­va, Yauhien Pus­tavy, Anas­tasiya Benedzi­siuk as well as Vadz­im Hihin, who is the cur­rent chair of the “Vedy” (‘Knowl­edge’) soci­ety.

The Hun­gar­i­an author­i­ties didn’t per­mit Nadzieya Sas, a pro­pa­gan­dist of CTV chan­nel to enter the coun­try. She was stopped at the air­port. Then she was forced to stay overnight in the Tem­po­rary Deten­tion Cen­ter and sent back to Belarus. Sas attempt­ed to vis­it Hun­gary, in order to film a sto­ry about George Soros, the Amer­i­can financier and the founder of the Open Soci­ety Foun­da­tions.

Two TV chan­nels oper­at­ing in the Gagauz Autonomous Region of Moldo­va were fined for rebroad­cast­ing the «Belarus 24» TV pro­grams in Octo­ber 2023.

On this occa­sion, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus expressed its indig­na­tion at «the desire of the offi­cial author­i­ties of Moldo­va to deprive the cit­i­zens of their coun­try of access to any alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion.»

On Decem­ber 27,

The law «On the Nation­al Bud­get 2024» was adopt­ed in Belarus on Decem­ber 27, 2023. It pro­vides for the financ­ing of the five largest state-owned media resources, name­ly the Belaru­sian State TV and Radio Com­pa­ny, the ‘Mir’ TV chan­nel, the Sec­ond Nation­al TV Chan­nel, CJSC ‘Cap­i­tal Tele­vi­sion’ (CTV chan­nel), and the BelTA News Agency. In gen­er­al, it will amount to 150.1 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles.

Report­ed­ly, the nom­i­nal increase in financ­ing totaled only 8%, if com­pared to 2020. How­ev­er, tak­ing into account the infla­tion rate, it decreased by almost a quar­ter. At the same time, only CTV can boast of a sig­nif­i­cant increase in fund­ing. Even tak­ing into account the infla­tion rate, it amount­ed to more than 100%. It should be kept in mind that apart from the bud­get fund­ing, the state pro­pa­gan­da media also get income from adver­tis­ing, which could sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase after the «purge» of inde­pen­dent media in the coun­try.

Accord­ing to the res­o­lu­tion of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of Belarus No. 914, dat­ed Decem­ber 20, 2023, 21 print­ed media out­lets will be financed from the state bud­get in 2024. The titles of these peri­od­i­cals remain the same as in 2023.