Attacks on journalists, bloggers and media workers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine: 2017–2019

1/ MAIN CONCLUSIONS 

1,079 inci­dents of attacks/threats in rela­tion to pro­fes­sion­al and cit­i­zen media work­ers and edi­to­r­i­al offices of tra­di­tion­al and online pub­li­ca­tions in Belarus were iden­ti­fied and analysed in the course of the study. The data were obtained from open sources in the Russ­ian, Belaru­sian, and Eng­lish lan­guages using the method of con­tent analy­sis. A list of the main sources is pre­sent­ed in Annex 2.

1. Attacks via judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means are the most wide­spread form of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and media work­ers in Belarus. 957 inci­dents in this cat­e­go­ry were record­ed.

2. The most preva­lent method of attack via judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means is fines for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out For­eign Min­istry accred­i­ta­tion. The num­ber of inci­dents in this sub-cat­e­go­ry is 236.

3. The num­ber of phys­i­cal attacks in Belarus is very low in com­par­i­son with oth­er coun­tries in the post-Sovi­et space. 26 attacks in this cat­e­go­ry were record­ed over the peri­od cov­ered in this study.

4. The BelTA case is the most high-pro­file crim­i­nal case to be brought against a media work­ers in Belarus in the years 2017–2019.

5. Most often it was free­lance jour­nal­ists work­ing for the satel­lite tele­vi­sion chan­nel Bel­sat who were sub­ject­ed to attacks – in 623 of the 1,079 record­ed cas­es.

2/ THE MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS. THE BRIEF OVERVIEW. 

Reg­is­tra­tion of print media in Belarus, just like tele­vi­sion and radio broad­cast­ers, is manda­to­ry and by license, and is exer­cised by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. Accord­ing to data pro­vid­ed by the agency, 1,614 print media out­lets were reg­is­tered in Belarus as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2020. Of these, 435 print pub­li­ca­tions are state-owned, which allows the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to state that pri­vate media pre­dom­i­nate in the coun­try. How­ev­er, the vast major­i­ty of non-state-owned print media are strict­ly enter­tain­ment and adver­tis­ing. Accord­ing to the data of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), there are no more than 30 reg­is­tered non-state-owned media out­lets of a socio-polit­i­cal nature. Near­ly half of these were removed from the state’s news­pa­per sub­scrip­tion and retail dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works as far back as 2005, and only in 2017 were they put back on the dis­tri­b­u­tion lists of the state monop­oly dis­tri­b­u­tion enter­pris­es (approx­i­mate­ly 15 pub­li­ca­tions had ceased pub­li­ca­tion by this time).

At the same time, state-owned media receive not only admin­is­tra­tive sup­port and var­i­ous kinds of pref­er­ences, but also pub­lic fund­ing giv­en out on a non-com­pet­i­tive basis. In 2019, the sum of such fund­ing exceed­ed 72 mil­lion US dol­lars. The bulk of these funds (over 50 mil­lion dol­lars) were ear­marked for the fund­ing of the Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny [the state-owned broad­cast­er].

The sit­u­a­tion with tele­vi­sion and radio broad­cast­ing in Belarus meets demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards even less. Of the 270 reg­is­tered tele­vi­sion and radio pro­grammes, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty (188) belong to the state. The remain­ing 82 non-state-owned tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions are under the com­plete con­trol of the author­i­ties, both local and nation­al, by virtue of the reg­is­tra­tion and licens­ing sys­tem.

For­eign sta­tions dis­rupt the state’s monop­oly on broad­cast­ing. Radio Lib­er­ty, Euro­pean Radio for Belarus, Radio Racy­ja, and the satel­lite tele­vi­sion chan­nel Bel­sat play a par­tic­u­lar role (the lat­ter three media out­lets list­ed are reg­is­tered in Poland). Their pro­grammes are aimed at Belaru­sians and are pre­pared pri­mar­i­ly by Belaru­sians. How­ev­er, nei­ther Bel­satnor Radio Racy­ja have legal sta­tus in Belarus, despite efforts to open news offices and obtain accred­i­ta­tion for their jour­nal­ists. Free­lancers work­ing with them come under con­stant pres­sure on the part of the author­i­ties. Since 2014, they are being fined for “vio­la­tion of the order for pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media out­put” (Arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences). Based on police reports, in the years 2017–2019 free­lance jour­nal­ists were fined 231 times for work­ing with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion, for an over­all sum equiv­a­lent to near­ly 100 thou­sand US dol­lars. For ref­er­ence, the aver­age month­ly salary in Belarus is around 500 dol­lars.

The inter­net remains the freest infor­ma­tion space in Belarus. Accord­ing to data from a study con­duct­ed by the Infor­ma­tion­al-and-Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­tre under the president’s admin­is­tra­tion, in 2017–2018 around 60 per­cent of respon­dents were receiv­ing their news from the inter­net (72% from tele­vi­sion), while among young peo­ple this per­cent­age was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er. More­over, the major­i­ty of the ten most pop­u­lar inter­net sites is made up of non-state-owned sites.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties react­ed to the grow­ing sig­nif­i­cance of the Inter­net by tight­en­ing con­trol over it. At the end of 2017 and the start of 2018, by deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, two pop­u­lar news sites in Belarus were blocked: Belorussky par­ti­zan [Belaru­sian Par­ti­san] and Khar­tiya 97 [Char­ter 97]. In 2018, crim­i­nal cas­es were opened against key play­ers in this sphere (most notably the “BelTA case”; see Sec­tion 5 “Attacks via judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means”), and sev­er­al pop­u­lar region­al blog­gers came under pres­sure (in the form of crim­i­nal cas­es, admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion, and threats). Changes were intro­duced to leg­is­la­tion to tight­en state reg­u­la­tion of the Belaru­sian seg­ment of the World Wide Web. In par­tic­u­lar, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of users of inter­net sites was made manda­to­ry, pre-mod­er­a­tion of com­ments was effec­tive­ly intro­duced, and the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of web­site own­ers was increased. The new law allows for the vol­un­tary reg­is­tra­tion of inter­net sites as media out­lets (online pub­li­ca­tions), but this reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure has remained cost­ly and com­pli­cat­ed. Despite the fact that inter­net sites not reg­is­tered as online pub­li­ca­tions are not now con­sid­ered media out­lets, and their jour­nal­ists can­not enjoy the cor­re­spond­ing sta­tus, only 6 non-state-owned sites had gone through reg­is­tra­tion at the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2020 due to the com­plex­i­ty of the reg­is­tra­tion require­ments and the unclear ben­e­fits to be gained from this reg­is­tra­tion in the cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

In the annu­al World Press Free­dom Index of Reporters With­out Bor­ders for 2020, Belarus ranks 153rd out of 180 coun­tries.

3/ GENERAL ANALYSIS OF ATTACKS

Fig­ure 1 presents a quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis of the three main types of attack per­pe­trat­ed against jour­nal­ists in Belarus in the peri­od from 2017 to 2019. The prin­ci­pal type of attack against jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and media work­ers were attacks via judi­cial and/or eco­nom­ic means. These com­prised 88% of the over­all num­ber of attacks cap­tured in this study: 957 out of 1079.

The num­ber of attacks of this type cor­re­lat­ed with the change in the country’s polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. The increase in protest sen­ti­ments and mass demon­stra­tions in Belarus also gave rise to inten­si­fied pres­sure on the media, jour­nal­ists, and blog­gers cov­er­ing them. Thus, the peak of short-term deten­tions of jour­nal­ist (93 peo­ple) in the peri­od cov­ered in this study occurred in 2017, when mass demon­stra­tions against an unpop­u­lar pres­i­den­tial decree regard­ing the estab­lish­ment of a spe­cial tax for unem­ployed peo­ple took place in all of the regions of the coun­try.

Dur­ing the peri­od cov­ered in this study, it was most often jour­nal­ists from the satel­lite tele­vi­sion chan­nel Bel­sat who were the tar­get of attacks – 623 out of the 1,079 record­ed inci­dents. A num­ber of jour­nal­ists from the tele­vi­sion chan­nel expe­ri­enced sys­tem­at­ic pres­sure on the part of the author­i­ties: Kon­stan­tin Zhukovsky (76), Olha Chay­chits (59), Andrey Kozel (40), Alexan­dr Levchuk (36), Andrey Tolchin (34), Eka­te­ri­na Andreye­va (33), Dmit­ry Lupach (32), Milana Kharitono­va (31), Lar­isa Shchiryako­va (29), Sergey Kovalev (22), Lyubov Buryano­va (Lune­va) (19), Sergey Kvarchuk (16), Iri­na Orekhovskaya (13), Ali­na Skrabuno­va (12), and Alexan­dr Borozenko (11).

4/ PHYSICAL ATTACKS AND THREATS TO LIFE, LIBERTY, AND HEALTH 

he num­ber of phys­i­cal attacks on jour­nal­ists in the peri­od cov­ered in this study was com­par­a­tive­ly low at 26. As has already been not­ed, the major­i­ty of them (16) occurred dur­ing 2017, when mass protest actions were tak­ing place in Belarus.

Most often, the jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to vio­lence dur­ing short-term deten­tion or obstruc­tion of their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty. Appear­ing as the main aggres­sors were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties (in 84% of the inci­dents), first and fore­most police per­son­nel. Thus, in Min­sk on March 25, 2017, dur­ing the tra­di­tion­al Free­dom Day oppo­si­tion demon­stra­tion, 5 jour­nal­ists were beat­en up by secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, includ­ing a British jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing the protest action.

Most often, the vic­tims of phys­i­cal attacks became jour­nal­ists work­ing with the Bel­sat tele­vi­sion chan­nel – 15 of the 25 cas­es. Sub­ject­ed to phys­i­cal pres­sure five times dur­ing the peri­od cov­ered in this study was Kon­stan­tin Zhukovsky, a jour­nal­ist from Gomel, who holds the record for the num­ber of fines issued to him:

• In July 2017, Zhukovsky was detained short-term by employ­ees of the traf­fic police (the state auto­mo­bile inspec­torate) when he was return­ing from a court where he had been cov­er­ing the pro­ceed­ings. The jour­nal­ist was hand­cuffed to a tree.

• In August 2017, dur­ing a video shoot, he was sprayed in the face with an aerosol sub­stance by a per­son who turned out to be a man­age­ment employ­ee of a local pig farm. Zhukovsky was hos­pi­talised.

• In July 2018, the jour­nal­ist suf­fered a hyper­ten­sive cri­sis after being detained short-term on a charge of pet­ty hooli­gan­ism and tak­en to the local police sta­tion and then to court.

• In Novem­ber 2018, the jour­nal­ist was sum­moned to the mil­i­tary draft com­mis­sari­at for a med­ical exam­i­na­tion. He had already under­gone a med­ical exam­i­na­tion less than six months ear­li­er but nev­er had been sub­se­quent­ly called up for train­ing.

• In Jan­u­ary 2019, Zhukovsky was, in his words, assault­ed by uniden­ti­fied per­sons on a road in Gomel Oblast.

At the end of Jan­u­ary 2019, Zhukovsky fled Belarus and request­ed polit­i­cal asy­lum in one of the coun­tries of West­ern Europe.

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the jour­nal­ist Andrei Kozel, who like­wise worked with the Bel­sat tele­vi­sion chan­nel and had been charged with admin­is­tra­tive offens­es on numer­ous occa­sions, was beat­en up for attempt­ing to film the vote-count­ing at a polling sta­tion. The jour­nal­ist was bru­tal­ly detained short-term and placed in deten­tion, where he con­tin­ued to get beat­en up, and was sub­se­quent­ly charged with an admin­is­tra­tive offence, alleged­ly for resist­ing employ­ees of the police.

At the start of 2020, Kozel was forced to leave Belarus due to the con­stant pres­sure.

5/ NON-PHYSICAL AND/OR CYBER-ATTACKS AND THREATS