Situation in The Sphere of Mass Media in 2018 (OVERVIEW)

Full Annual Report — Monitoring Report 2018 of Belarusian Association of Journalists

MAIN TRENDS

In 2018, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties inten­si­fied pres­sure on inde­pen­dent media and jour­nal­ists. This hap­pened despite the lib­er­al­iza­tion pol­i­cy declared by the author­i­ties and the dia­logue on human rights with the Euro­pean Union and the Unit­ed States.

The main events and trends in 2018 includ­ed:

- changes in the mass media leg­is­la­tion involv­ing tight­en­ing gov­ern­ment con­trol;

- crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion relat­ed to free­dom of expres­sion (the case of Reg­num jour­nal­ists; crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of the blog­ger Pia­trukhin; the case of the head of the Bela­PAN news agency Ales Lipaj closed because of his death; the “BelTA case”, which end­ed with the con­vic­tion of Mary­na Zolota­va, edi­tor-in-chief of the most pop­u­lar Belaru­sian web­site TUT.BY,);

- extra­ju­di­cial block­ing of pop­u­lar online news resources in Belarus;

- increased pres­sure on free­lance jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion;

- using counter-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to restrict free­dom of expres­sion (espe­cial­ly, online).

These actions by the author­i­ties were, rather, not a “new attack on the media,” but a con­tin­u­a­tion of a tar­get­ed and con­sis­tent pol­i­cy of the Belaru­sian state aimed at estab­lish­ing max­i­mum con­trol over the infor­ma­tion space in the coun­try. In 2018, the “Belaru­sian seg­ment of the Inter­net” became the pri­ma­ry tar­get.

Hav­ing tak­en full con­trol over the tele­vi­sion and radio broad­cast­ing (with the excep­tion of a few for­eign media oper­at­ing in the coun­try, includ­ing the Pol­ish TV chan­nel Bel­sat and oust­ed inde­pen­dent print media, whose cumu­la­tive week­ly cir­cu­la­tion is less than the dai­ly cir­cu­la­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion news­pa­per SB Belarus Segod­nya, into a ghet­to, the author­i­ties have been try­ing to strength­en con­trol over the Belaru­sian seg­ment of the Inter­net, in which the state-owned media are obvi­ous­ly los­ing to inde­pen­dent resources.

Mean­while, accord­ing to a sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Infor­ma­tion Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­ter under the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion, in Belarus, the Inter­net as a source of infor­ma­tion is catch­ing up in pop­u­lar­i­ty with tele­vi­sion.

The lead­ing Belaru­sian por­tal TUT.BY out­paces by a huge mar­gin (by ten folds) the pop­u­lar­i­ty of gov­ern­ment-owned online resources, includ­ing the news agency BelTA (which prob­a­bly became the real rea­son for the “BelTA case”, direct­ed pri­mar­i­ly against the com­peti­tors of this state news agency).

Experts regard the attempts by cer­tain cir­cles in pow­er to solve the prob­lem of the Inter­net by tight­en­ing state con­trol over it as a strate­gic mis­take from the point of view of nation­al secu­ri­ty in the media sphere. The oust­ing of inde­pen­dent media from the infor­ma­tion space will not lead to an increase in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of gov­ern­ment-owned media, but to an increase in the pres­ence of Russ­ian media in the coun­try. Today, the extent of their influ­ence on the audi­ence is already huge: over six­ty per­cent of the prod­ucts of some of the lead­ing Belaru­sian TV chan­nels includ­ed by the gov­ern­ment in the pub­licly avail­able manda­to­ry TV pack­age are Russ­ian-made.

Instead of try­ing to sti­fle inde­pen­dent voic­es, the author­i­ties, at least from an instinct of self-preser­va­tion, should pro­mote the devel­op­ment of non-gov­ern­ment media in Belarus.

CHANGES TO THE MEDIA LEGISLATION

In June 2018, the Nation­al Assem­bly of the Repub­lic of Belarus (the Belaru­sian par­lia­ment) adopt­ed a law on amend­ing the media leg­is­la­tion, sig­nif­i­cant­ly extend­ing state con­trol over the Inter­net space in Belarus.

The law, in par­tic­u­lar:

- intro­duces the vol­un­tary reg­is­tra­tion of online resources as mass media, but retains the unrea­son­ably com­pli­cat­ed autho­riza­tion pro­ce­dure for this reg­is­tra­tion;

- deprives the online resources that failed to pass the reg­is­tra­tion bar­ri­er, the rights of the media, and their cor­re­spon­dents the jour­nal­is­tic sta­tus, while extend­ing to them all the lia­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed for by the Law on Mass Media;

- main­tains the extra­ju­di­cial pro­ce­dure for block­ing online resources by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and intro­duces addi­tion­al grounds for this (for exam­ple, using an online resource for car­ry­ing out activ­i­ties pro­hib­it­ed in accor­dance with the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion);

- bind­ing the online resources to iden­ti­fy com­men­ta­tors on their pages and on forums and to con­duct mod­er­a­tion of their com­ments under the threat of lia­bil­i­ty for them.

The pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty crit­i­cized the amend­ments to the mass media law.

Harlem Désir, the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media, also expressed his con­cern over them. “Many of the pro­vi­sions are exces­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate and could result in the cur­tail­ing of free­dom of expres­sion,” Désir said in a state­ment.  .

New rules that intro­duce addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty for the own­ers of online resources have also been intro­duced into the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (Arti­cle 22.9 “Vio­la­tion of the law on mass media”). A fine has been estab­lished for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of “pro­hib­it­ed” infor­ma­tion. The max­i­mum amount of the fine is 200 base val­ues (about 2,000 euros) for the web­sites reg­is­tered as mass media, and 100 base val­ues for the online resources that do not have the media sta­tus. At the same time, the leg­is­la­tion does not pro­vide for the list of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion and approach­es to its def­i­n­i­tion. The con­trol over the com­pli­ance with leg­is­la­tion on the media in this area has been assigned to police offi­cers.

CRIMINAL PERSECUTION RELATED TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

The “Reg­num case”

On Feb­ru­ary 2, the Min­sk City Court made find­ings of guilt in the crim­i­nal case against Yury Pavlovets, Dmit­ry Alimkin and Sergey Shiptenko, three Belaru­sian authors who were pub­lished in Russ­ian media (the so-called “Reg­num case” named after the Russ­ian news agency which had pub­lished their arti­cles). The court found them guilty of delib­er­ate actions aimed at incit­ing nation­al hatred or dis­cord com­mit­ted by a group of per­sons (Arti­cle 130 (Part 3) of the Crim­i­nal Code) and sen­tenced them to the five years’ impris­on­ment with a three-year reprieve in the exe­cu­tion of the sen­tence. The con­victs were released in the court­room. If they do not com­mit vio­la­tions of pub­lic order dur­ing the reprieve and com­ply with court orders, the court can release them from serv­ing the sen­tence.

The “Reg­num case” was insti­gat­ed on the basis of a let­ter of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee about the. The defen­dants were under arrest for 14 months — from 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 Reporters With­out Borders’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.”

Yury Pavlovets and Sergey Shiptenko appealed the ver­dict, but the Supreme Court upheld it.

The case of Ales Lipaj, the head of Bela­PAN

On June 12, 2018, a crim­i­nal case was insti­tut­ed against Ales Lipaj, the head of the lead­ing Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN, on inten­tion­al income tax eva­sion on an espe­cial­ly large scale in 2016–2017 (Arti­cle 243 (Part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus). A search was con­duct­ed in the apart­ment of Ales Lipaj, dur­ing which doc­u­ments and pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment were seized. Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions have declared the polit­i­cal back­ground of the case and asso­ci­at­ed it with the gen­er­al trend of increas­ing pres­sure on non-state media and online resources in Belarus.

In ear­ly August, the insti­ga­tion of the “BelTA case”, in which two lead­ing Bela­PAN employ­ees were charged, con­firmed this con­clu­sion.

Soon, on August 23, Ales Lipaj died at the age of 52. On Sep­tem­ber 12, the crim­i­nal case against him was dis­con­tin­ued in con­nec­tion with his death.

“The BelTA case” and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of the edi­tor-in-chief of the TUT.by por­tal Mary­na Zolata­va

On August 7–9, the edi­to­r­i­al offices of the news agency Bela­PAN, the por­tal TUT.BY and sev­er­al oth­er media out­lets, as well as the apart­ments of some of their employ­ees were searched. Dur­ing the search­es, pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and stor­age media were seized. About twen­ty jour­nal­ists were detained and ques­tioned by inves­ti­ga­tors; eight of them were sent to the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter for up to three days.

The rea­son for the large-scale “spe­cial oper­a­tion” was the unau­tho­rized use by some jour­nal­ists of the pass­words to the sub­scrip­tion-based news feed of the web­site of the state news agency BelTA. It should be not­ed that the mate­ri­als of the BelTA web­site are in free pub­lic access, and the media used them in accor­dance with the rules set by BelTA.

Nev­er­the­less, crim­i­nal cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed against fif­teen jour­nal­ists under Arti­cle 349 (Part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code (unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion, while act­ing out of oth­er per­son­al inter­est, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age).

The actions of the inves­ti­ga­tors drew protests from human rights activists, jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies includ­ing the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Union, and the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media.

At the end of 2018, crim­i­nal cas­es against four­teen jour­nal­ists were dropped. The admin­is­tra­tive action was brought against them in the form of large fines and an actu­al coer­cion to pay com­pen­sa­tion to the state-owned media – BelTA and the news­pa­per of the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion, SB Belarus Segod­nya. The com­pen­sa­tion amounts ranged from 3,000 to 17,000 rubles (1,250 to 7,000 euros). BAJ regards the pay­ment of com­pen­sa­tion as a forced step on the part of jour­nal­ists in order to avoid a much tougher pun­ish­ment under the crim­i­nal arti­cle and oth­er adverse con­se­quences asso­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty.

Mary­na Zolata­va, the edi­tor-in-chief of the online por­tal TUT.BY was the only defen­dant charged in the “BelTA case”. More­over, she was charged under anoth­er arti­cle — the omis­sion to act (Arti­cle 425 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

On March 4, the Zavod­s­ki dis­trict court in Min­sk found Mary­na Zolata­va guilty and sen­tenced her to a fine of 7,650 rubles (more than 3,000 euros); it also ordered the col­lec­tion of court fees in the amount of 6,000 rubles (2,500 euros) in favor of BelTA.

“Con­vic­tion & fin­ing of Mari­na Zolo­to­va, edi­tor of @tutby, along with dis­pro­por­tion­ate mea­sures of law enforce­ment against @belapan & @tutby agen­cies in 2018, may exert chill­ing effect on inde­pen­dent media in #Belarus”, twit­ted Harlem Désir, the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media.

“The way the author­i­ties per­sist­ed with this case, which was out of all pro­por­tion from the out­set, shows their deter­mi­na­tion to under­mine the state media’s rivals”, said Reporters With­out Bor­ders after the con­vic­tion of Mary­na Zolata­va.

RESTRICTION ON ONLINE FREEDOM

On Jan­u­ary 24, 2018, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion decid­ed to restrict access to the pop­u­lar online resource charter97.org.

The Min­istry jus­ti­fied this deci­sion by an alleged pub­li­ca­tion of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion on the web­site. By the “pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion” the Min­istry meant some “mate­ri­als con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which could harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus, … arti­cles indi­cat­ing the date and venue of a mass event, a per­mis­sion to hold which was not received at the time of pub­li­ca­tion, … the dis­tri­b­u­tion through the web­site charter97.org of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts of a resource, which was rec­og­nized as an extrem­ist mate­r­i­al by a court deci­sion and includ­ed in the Repub­li­can list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als.”

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists not­ed that the block­ing of charter97.org was the sec­ond deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion with­in a month to restrict access to pop­u­lar infor­ma­tion resources in Belarus (at the end of Decem­ber 2017, it decid­ed to block belaruspartisan.org). In both cas­es, the deci­sions to restrict access to the web­sites were tak­en in a non-trans­par­ent, out-of-court way, with­out dis­clos­ing which mate­ri­als pro­vid­ed the rea­sons for block­ing.

Using “anti-extrem­ist” leg­is­la­tion to restrict free­dom of expres­sion

In 2018, the impo­si­tion of admin­is­tra­tive sanc­tions against jour­nal­ists and activists for pub­lish­ing on social net­works became more fre­quent. For this, they used Arti­cle 17.11. of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, which pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts that con­tain appeals for extrem­ist activ­i­ties or pro­mote such activ­i­ties.

The free­lance jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Dzian­isau was fined 612.5 Belaru­sian rubles for repost­ing two videos about the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Brest anar­chists in a protest ral­ly, the «March of par­a­sites», in 2017.

Alexan­der Hor­bach and Mikalaj Dzi­adok were fined for post­ing sym­bols rec­og­nized as extrem­ist on social net­works. Mean­while, on the con­trary, in their mate­ri­als, both of them crit­i­cized man­i­fes­ta­tions of neo-Nazism. So, Mikalaj Dzi­adok was fined for a post in which he con­demned the fact that some peo­ple who were well-known in Belarus had tak­en pho­tos with mem­bers of a group whose emblem was rec­og­nized as extrem­ist in Belarus (these pho­tos were giv­en as an illus­tra­tion).

FINES FOR COOPERATION WITH FOREIGN MEDIA

The pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs has inten­si­fied. The courts used Arti­cle 22.9 (Part 2) of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code to fine jour­nal­ists.

Arti­cle 22.9 (Part 2) of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for the ille­gal pro­duc­tion and / or dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts. Accord­ing to BAJ, jour­nal­ists can­not be held account­able under this arti­cle, since the liable par­ty under it is not jour­nal­ists, but the edi­to­r­i­al staff of the media.

In 2018, jour­nal­ists were held liable under this arti­cle at least 118 times (which is more than in the pre­vi­ous four years tak­en togeth­er). The total amount of fines exceed­ed 100,000 rubles (about 43,000 euros).

In 2018, in most cas­es, the jour­nal­ists who col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bel­sat TV chan­nel were per­se­cut­ed. Bel­sat forms a part of the Pol­ish tele­vi­sion but posi­tions itself as the first inde­pen­dent tele­vi­sion chan­nel in Belarus.      

INCREASE IN THE STATE MEDIA FUNDING

On Decem­ber 30, 2018, the law “On the repub­li­can bud­get for 2019” was signed. In accor­dance with it, 151,211,151 rubles (about 63 mil­lion euros) were allo­cat­ed to finance state-owned media in 2019. This is almost one third more than in pre­vi­ous years. The allo­ca­tion of funds occurs on a non-com­pet­i­tive basis.

RATINGS, INDICES, STATISTICS

The inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Free­dom House in its rank­ing of free­dom in the world in 2018 ranked Belarus among the non-free coun­tries and assessed the degree of media free­dom and Inter­net free­dom in the coun­try as the low­est (1 point out of 4). At the same time, “Press Free­dom Sta­tus” and “Net Free­dom Sta­tus” of the state were defined as “Not Free”.

In the lat­est press free­dom rat­ing of the inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion Reporters With­out Bor­ders, pub­lished in April 2018, Belarus ranked 155th among 180 states https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2018, down two posi­tions from the pre­vi­ous rat­ing.