Stop crackdown on Belarus independent media

State­ment of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists       

Stop crackdown on Belarus independent media

On the morn­ing of July 8, offi­cers of the law enforce­ment agen­cies raid­ed the office of Nasha Niva and the homes of its staff. NN staff stopped respond­ing to phone calls, some of their homes were searched.

After the search, NN chief edi­tor Yahor Martsi­novich and edi­tor Andrei Skurko were tak­en away for ques­tion­ing.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion blocked the NN.BY web­site, «on the basis of the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s notice due to the place­ment of infor­ma­tion, dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is pro­hib­it­ed by Arti­cle 38 para­graph 1 of the Law «On Mass Media». Access to the web­site is restrict­ed not only in the coun­try, but also abroad.

The police also raid­ed the offices of region­al news­pa­pers Intex-press and Brest­skaya Gaze­ta (which have been recent­ly thrown out of the state sys­tem of dis­tri­b­u­tion and print­ing), as well as the homes of a jour­nal­ist and the edi­tor of Orsha.eu web­site.

The author­i­ties also con­tin­ue to put pres­sure on TUT.BY. Just yes­ter­day, the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk had a closed ses­sion uphold­ing the deci­sion of the extra-judi­cial com­mis­sion to rec­og­nize the mate­ri­als of the por­tal as extrem­ist. 15 employ­ees TUT.BY and part­ner orga­ni­za­tions are behind bars.

Alto­geth­er, 25 jour­nal­ists and media employess are in jail or under house arrest in Belarus today (not inl­cud­ing NN staff whose fate is still unknown).

In Hrod­na, a court is con­sid­er­ing the case to rec­og­nize the mate­ri­als of Hrodna.life Telegram chan­nel as extrem­ist.

In Brest, news edi­tor of 1reg.by Aleh Supruniuk is tried for «spread­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als».

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists points out:

- under the guise of fight­ing extrem­ism, the author­i­ties are try­ing to destroy the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers;

- the result of repres­sion against inde­pen­dent media and jour­nal­ists will be the oppo­site of what its ini­tia­tors hope for. Instead of ver­i­fied infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed under the stan­dards of jour­nal­ism ethics, peo­ple will seek and obtain infor­ma­tion that does not meet even the min­i­mal pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists demands to stop the crack­down of free speech in Belarus.