As before, the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were per­se­cut­ed for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty. The space for inde­pen­dent media oper­a­tion was fur­ther shrink­ing.

32 media work­ers were impris­oned as of the end of Octo­ber 2022.

• 9 sen­tences were pro­nounced to jour­nal­ists in crim­i­nal cas­es with prison terms rang­ing from 3 to 14 years with­in the peri­od under review. New crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against five jour­nal­ists at that.

• jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to deten­tions, admin­is­tra­tive charges, and oth­er kinds of pres­sure.

• As before, anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion was used as a weapon in the fight against the inde­pen­dent press. It was pri­mar­i­ly applied as a basis for block­ing access to online media and hold­ing media work­ers account­able for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion. The first crim­i­nal case under the new arti­cle of the Crim­i­nal Code 130–2 (denial of geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple) was filed in con­nec­tion with pub­li­ca­tions in inde­pen­dent media.

• As a result of gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, the reduc­tion of inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion inside Belarus con­tin­ued. The media were forced to ter­mi­nate their activ­i­ty.

• There exists cen­sor­ship of media pub­li­ca­tions in Belarus, includ­ing the pub­li­ca­tions, pro­duced by state-owned media.

Criminal prosecution of journalists

On August 3, 2022, Homiel Region­al Court sen­tenced Iry­na Slau­nika­va, a jour­nal­ist of Pol­ish tele­vi­sion, a for­mer employ­ee of Bel­sat TV chan­nel, to five years in prison under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: part 1 of Arti­cle 342 (‘arrange­ment of group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’) and part 1 of Arti­cle 361–1 (‘cre­ation of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it’)[1].

On Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022, Brest Region­al Court pre­sent­ed charges to Inna Mozhchanka, a for­mer jour­nal­ist of BelTA News Agency, who was accused of insult­ing a gov­ern­men­tal offi­cer (Arti­cle 369 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and incit­ing social hatred (Part 1 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Con­se­quent­ly, she was sen­tenced to three years of impris­on­ment in a strict regime colony with a gen­er­al regime in force. Inna Mozhchenko was detained in Sep­tem­ber 2021 in con­nec­tion with her neg­a­tive state­ment about the deceased KGB offi­cer in social media[2].

On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was con­vict­ed in a closed tri­al under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: Arti­cle 365 (‘inter­fer­ence in the activ­i­ties of an inter­nal affairs offi­cer’) and part 1 of Arti­cle 356 (high trea­son). The KGB accused the jour­nal­ist of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence through Ukrain­ian diplo­mats.

The media work­er was sen­tenced to 13 years and 1 month in prison and fined 4800 Belaru­sian rubles (approx­i­mate­ly, EUR 1845). Also, the jour­nal­ist was oblig­ed to reim­burse moral dam­ages in the amount of 2000 Belaru­sian rubles to each of nine offend­ed peo­ple. The per­son­al­i­ties of the alleged ‘vic­tims’ remain unknown to the pub­lic. All in all, the media work­er will have to pay over USD 9000 in dam­ages[3].

On Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, Min­sk City Court pro­nounced a sen­tence of eight years of impris­on­ment to Kseniya Lut­ski­na, a for­mer jour­nal­ist of Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny and a lau­re­ate of gov­ern­men­tal awards for achieve­ments in her trade.

She was detained on Decem­ber 22, 2020. On the same day, the employ­ees of Press Club Belarus were tak­en into cus­tody.

Ini­tial­ly, all these peo­ple were accused of tax eva­sion. How­ev­er, as soon as the Press Club case was closed and all its defen­dants who wrote pleas for mer­cy, were released, Lut­ski­na was pre­sent­ed oth­er charges. This time, she was blamed for ‘plot­ting con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means (Arti­cle 357 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Alleged­ly, she ‘head­ed a media sup­port group, aimed at coun­ter­ac­tion to the state media’ in the Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil of the Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion[4].

After four months of court hear­ings behind the closed doors, the tri­al on the Bela­PAN case end­ed. (Bela­PAN is an inde­pen­dent news agency that was ruined by the secu­ri­ty forces in the sum­mer of 2021 and lat­er rec­og­nized as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion”.). Media man­ag­er Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau was sen­tenced to 14 years of impris­on­ment in a penal colony. His wife Iry­na Zlobi­na was sen­tenced to 9 years in prison. Dzmit­ry Navazy­lau, for­mer direc­tor of the Bela­PAN News Agency and Iry­na Leushy­na, the edi­tor-in-chief and direc­tor of Bela­PAN were sen­tenced to 6 and 4 years in prison respec­tive­ly:

Ivan Murauy­ou, a jour­nal­ist, a cam­er­ap­er­son, and a pho­to reporter was detained by the Legal Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Min­sk on August 29, 2022. He was pre­sent­ed charges upon Arti­cle 361–1, part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’). The jour­nal­ist is being held in pre-tri­al deten­tion[8].

A free­lance jour­nal­ist Yauhien Merkis was detained in Homiel on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022.

Ini­tial­ly, it was report­ed that his case con­cerned alleged calls for sanc­tions. Lat­er it appeared that the jour­nal­ist was charged under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘assis­tance to extrem­ist activ­i­ties’)[9].

A jour­nal­ist cou­ple, Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Sni­azhana Inanets, were detained on Octo­ber 6, 2022. They were pre­sent­ed charges under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘arrange­ment and prepa­ra­tion of actions gross­ly vio­lat­ing pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’) in con­nec­tion with par­tic­i­pa­tion in protests in 2020 and sub­scrip­tion to «destruc­tive» Telegram chan­nels[10].

A crim­i­nal case has been filed against Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka, a for­mer ANT TV employ­ee, for ‘incit­ing hatred’ (part 1 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code). On Sep­tem­ber 16, 2022, he was detained and sen­tenced twice to admin­is­tra­tive arrest. Con­se­quent­ly, he was pre­sent­ed the crim­i­nal charges. In August 2020, Sem­chanka resigned from the state-owned ANT TV chan­nel in protest against vio­lence. He used to lead the pres­i­den­tial pool of jour­nal­ists there[11].

In August 2022, Andrzej Pac­zobut, a jour­nal­ist and an activist of the Union of Poles of Belarus, was pre­sent­ed addi­tion­al charges of ‘call­ing for restric­tive mea­sures (sanc­tions), aimed at caus­ing harm to nation­al secu­ri­ty’ (Arti­cle 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Ini­tial­ly, he had been accused of ‘incit­ing hatred’ (Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code)[12].

Pressure on journalists and mass media

The BAJ record­ed 13 deten­tions and 12 search­es that affect­ed jour­nal­ists in August – Octo­ber 2022. The jour­nal­ists were sen­tenced 8 times to dif­fer­ent terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest and once fined. More­over, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies sum­moned jour­nal­ists for ques­tion­ing, and vis­it­ed the homes of jour­nal­ists, who had left Belarus[13].

On August 23, 2022, Siarhei Serabro, the edi­tor of ‘Vit­seb­sk People’s News’ Web­site was sum­moned to the Viteb­sk Region­al Depart­ment of the GUBOPiK (Main Depart­ment for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs), where he was inter­ro­gat­ed for an hour. Then he was forced to pro­vide expla­na­tions in the writ­ten form about his cov­er­age of protest ral­lies after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020[14].

The ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ inde­pen­dent online pub­li­ca­tion and its edi­tor-in-chief Ana­tol Sanat­sen­ka suf­fered from large-scale per­se­cu­tion at the begin­ning of autumn 2022. Ana­tol Sanat­sen­ka was detained and sen­tenced twice to admin­is­tra­tive arrest in mid-Sep­tem­ber 2022. His pri­vate apart­ment as well as the apart­ments of his col­leagues were searched. And the tech­ni­cal equip­ment was seized.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022, the author­i­ties blocked pub­lic access to the ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ Web­site. Con­se­quent­ly, on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, Babruysk Munic­i­pal and Dis­trict Court rec­og­nized its con­tent as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’.

On Octo­ber 6, 2022, a defam­a­to­ry five-minute sto­ry about the ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ news­pa­per

its employ­ees appeared on the Telegram chan­nel of ZefirFM, a local state-owned radio sta­tion in Babruysk. Its text was read by Mikalai Silk­ou, the edi­tor-in-chief of pro-gov­ern­men­tal ‘Babruyskaye Zhyt­st­sio’ news­pa­per. The main atten­tion in the sto­ry was giv­en to Ana­toly Sanat­sen­ka, who was serv­ing an admin­is­tra­tive arrest at that moment of time. In par­tic­u­lar, he was ground­less­ly accused of ‘beg­ging for mon­ey’ from the Unit­ed States and Ger­many, pub­lish­ing ‘fakes’ about the ter­ror­ist attack in the Min­sk metro, and his con­nec­tion with the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel, rec­og­nized as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion» by Belaru­sian author­i­ties[15].

A media work­er Andrei Famin was detained at the end of Octo­ber 2022. He pub­licly admit­ted being the edi­tor and author of pub­li­ca­tions for for the ‘Vest­ni­ki’ protest news­pa­per net­work, pro­duced and dis­trib­uted by activists of local ini­tia­tives. (The net­work merged into the ‘Belaru­sian Ves­nik’ news­pa­per in March 2022.)[16]

Application of anti-extremist legislation

On August 26, 2022, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties filed the first crim­i­nal case in the coun­try under the new Arti­cle 130–2 (‘denial of geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple’) against the Flag­pole and Zerkalo.io online media. The crim­i­nal per­se­cu­tion was rea­soned by a pub­li­ca­tion, which stat­ed that on one of the maps of Homiel, pub­lished on the web­site of local author­i­ties, there is a note about the place of mass graves of vic­tims of polit­i­cal repres­sions in 1937, while, accord­ing to the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor’s office, the Nazi vic­tims are buried there. The ‘res­o­nant’ map was delet­ed short­ly after­wards. How­ev­er, the crim­i­nal case was filed against two media out­lets at that[17].

A mil­i­tary expert Yahor Lebi­adok was ini­tial­ly detained in Smali­avichy (Min­sk region) on July 13, 2022 and arrest­ed for 15 days on admin­is­tra­tive charges. How­ev­er, he was pre­sent­ed crim­i­nal charges under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code for the alleged facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ties for his com­ments to the ‘Euro­pean Radio for Belarus’, which had been rec­og­nized as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to include the Web­sites of inde­pen­dent peri­od­i­cals and their pages in social media in the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als. At the same time, their employ­ees, who have been sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and con­vic­tion under cer­tain arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code, were con­tin­u­ous­ly includ­ed in the lists of ‘extrem­ists’ and ‘ter­ror­ists’.

The ‘mir­ror’ Web­site and social media of the Charter’97 Web-resource, the Face­book group and the YouTube chan­nel of Hrodna.life online pub­li­ca­tion, the Web­site Borisov-info, the ‘page of EX-PRESS.BY in the Odnok­lass­ni­ki social media, the Telegram chat and social media of Flag­pole online pub­li­ca­tion, Telegram chan­nels of Media Palessie and Pier­shy Region online peri­od­i­cal edi­tions, the Web­site of Babruys­ki Kury­er online news­pa­per as well as the ТОК | TALK chan­nel that belons to the Nasha Niva peri­od­i­cal edi­tion and pub­lish­es inter­views with the civ­il soci­ety mem­bers, were rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.

Bobruisk Couri­er web­site, as well as a chan­nel belong­ing to the Nasha Niva pub­li­ca­tion «‎TOK | TALK, which fea­tures inter­views with mem­bers of civ­il soci­ety.

The list also includes two Web­sites of the Pol­skieRa­dio radio broad­cast­er from Poland. A Web­site that pub­lish­es a feed of region­al news that can be seen in the Belaru­sian seg­ment of Telegram, while not sub­scrib­ing to the chan­nels them­selves, has been banned, too.

The video footage of Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter about the ‘case of ortho­pe­dists’, the Telegram chan­nel of Ekodom envi­ron­men­tal NGO, and the Green Por­tal News Web­site were clas­si­fied as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with­in the peri­od under review.[19]

The Min­istry of Inte­ri­or of Belarus took a deci­sion on rec­og­niz­ing ‘a group of cit­i­zens unit­ed through Web-sites, Telegram chan­nels and social media of the Charter’97 Web-resource’, as well as ‘a group of cit­i­zens unit­ed, among oth­er, through the Bel­sa­taushchy­na Telegram chat’, which is appar­ent­ly linked to the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ dur­ing the report­ing peri­od.

The jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va and the philoso­pher Uladz­imir Matske­vich were clas­si­fied as “per­sons involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ty” with­in the peri­od under review.[20]

The KGB includ­ed Andrzej Pac­zobut, a jour­nal­ist and one of the lead­ers of the Union of Poles in Belarus, as well as for­mer TUT.BY employ­ees under inves­ti­ga­tion: Edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va, Direc­tor Lyud­mi­la Chek­ina, jour­nal­ists Vol­ha Loi­ka and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va in the list of ‘per­sons involved in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.’[21]

Restriction of access to information

The peri­od was marked by changes in the pro­ce­dure for block­ing access to the unde­sired Web­sites well as in arrang­ing the access of spe­cial ser­vices to the con­tent of Inter­net resources. On Sep­tem­ber 23, 2022, a res­o­lu­tion of the Oper­a­tional and Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­ter under the Pres­i­dent (OAC) was pub­lished. (It came into force a month after its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion). If ear­li­er Inter­net providers checked the list of Web-resources with restrict­ed access once a day, now they are required to do so every three hours dur­ing the day. More­over, they are oblig­ed to restrict access to the ‘for­bid­den’ Web resource with­in four hours from the moment they were added to the list.[22].

On Octo­ber 18, 2022, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka signed Decree No. 368 “On the inter­ac­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion oper­a­tors, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers and own­ers of Inter­net resources with oper­a­tional and search bod­ies”, which pro­vides for the cre­ation of a spe­cial infor­ma­tion sys­tem for elec­tron­ic inter­ac­tion with spe­cial ser­vices.

The OAC and the KGB have been empow­ered to fol­low Web-users. If ear­li­er real-time sur­veil­lance was car­ried out only in rela­tion to the users of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors, now it will become manda­to­ry in rela­tion to telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers and own­ers of Inter­net resources. Those of them who are deter­mined by the OAC and the KGB will be required to reg­is­ter in the sys­tem and set up their resources for the unim­ped­ed online access of secu­ri­ty forces with­in three months of the moment of their noti­fi­ca­tion by the lat­ter[23].

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued block­ing access to inde­pen­dent online media and Web­sites of non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and civ­il soci­ety groups. Thus, there was blocked access to the Web-sites of ‘Viach­erni Babruysk’, ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’, ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’, CityDog.io, the news Web­sites belprauda.соm and s13.ru, the Web­site of ‘Pol­ish Radio’ as well as a Web-site of ‘Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance’ Human Rights Ini­tia­tive (j4t.info) and a ‘mir­ror’ Web­site of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists[24].

The news Web­site about Min­sk and Belarus ‎Blizko.by was tem­porar­i­ly blocked by the deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus due to men­tion­ing a blog­ger Anton Matol­ka in one of their pub­li­ca­tions. (Anton Matol­ka has been includ­ed in the list of ‘ter­ror­ists’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.) As soon as the ban was lift­ed, the Web­site lacked all polit­i­cal news, includ­ing archival pub­li­ca­tions[25].

The VKon­tak­tie social media blocked access to a num­ber of pages and groups of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media. Thus, they blocked pub­lic access to ‘Charter’97’ and ‘Flag­pole’ pages, hav­ing received a com­plaint from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus with­in the peri­od under review. Also, they dis­abled access to the ‘Zerka­lo’ and Belaru­sian ‘Medi­a­zone’ pages at the request of the Russ­ian Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office[26].

The Bel­Busi­ness­Chan­nel TV broad­cast­er ter­mi­nat­ed its oper­a­tion with­out expla­na­tion or motives on August 1, 2022. The cor­re­spond­ing post appeared on the com­pa­ny page in Face­book. It was the only TV chan­nel about busi­ness in Belarus, which dealt with rebroad­cast­ing the pro­grams of the RBC TV (Rus­sia) and film­ing its own pro­grams on Belaru­sian top­ics[27].

The last issue of ‘UzHo­rak’ news­pa­per (Hor­ki, Mahilou region) was pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022. The edi­to­r­i­al decid­ed to sus­pend the pub­li­ca­tion of the local peri­od­i­cal edi­tion after 12 years of work. The rea­sons for the clo­sure were not pub­licly dis­closed at that[28].

Events in the state-owned media sector

On August 26, 2022, Uladz­imir Piart­sou, Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus stat­ed that the expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing a media hold­ing in the Min­sk region would be imple­ment­ed in all regions of the coun­try, since, accord­ing to his words, «it is the only way to keep the audi­ence of respec­tive dis­tricts under the cur­rent con­di­tions of trans­for­ma­tion.» Accord­ing­ly, the edi­to­r­i­al offices of dis­trict state-owned news­pa­pers will be enlarged. They will have cen­tral­ized man­age­ment and a uni­fied edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy for all[29].

The noto­ri­ous­ly odi­ous Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­dists were sub­ject­ed to restric­tions by Apple, which blocked access through the App Store to the Telegram chan­nels of CTV employ­ee Ryhor Azaron­ak and ‘Belarus‑1’ TV employ­ee Kse­nia Lebedzie­va due to the pres­ence of “slan­der­ous, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry or vile con­tent” there. Also, Meta com­pa­ny blocked Ryhor Azaronak’s page on Face­book.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus, which con­stant­ly ini­ti­ates the block­ing of web­sites of inde­pen­dent media, regard­ed these actions as “the smoth­er­ing of free­dom of speech” in a spe­cial state­ment[30].

The ‘Hrod­na Plus’ TV broad­cast­er apol­o­gized to the view­ers on the same occa­sion. The TV chan­nel report­ed that on Octo­ber 11, 2022, the video edit­ing engi­neer aired an archival record­ing of 2019 about Yuri Dud in the ‘Per­son­al­i­ty of the Day’ sec­tion. The TV chan­nel expressed grat­i­tude to the view­ers ‘for their vig­i­lance’, since, accord­ing to the TV broad­cast­er, ‘such infor­ma­tion has no place on the air of the state TV chan­nel’[33].