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  • «Independent media is experiencing a business model collapse, and society is subjecting itself to self-censorship.» Highlights from the Freedom House report

    Internet freedom in Belarus deteriorated further during the coverage period. The government intensified its suppression of online critical voices, blocking of independent media outlets and information sources, and use of legislation to criminalize online materials produced by what it deemed to be “extremist” or “terrorist” groups. Although virtually all nonstate media outlets are now operating from exile, they continue to disseminate content via social media and messaging applications.

    In the con­text of the ongo­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis and the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment increased its arbi­trary arrests of media work­ers, online activists, and ordi­nary users, impos­ing lengthy prison sen­tences on those detained. Secu­ri­ty forces con­duct­ed raids, employed tor­ture, and released forced-con­fes­sion videos to deter and silence crit­i­cal speech. The impact of war and inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions has com­pelled the gov­ern­ment to sharply increase its pro­pa­gan­da and oth­er efforts to manip­u­late the infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment.

    Belarus is a con­sol­i­dat­ed author­i­tar­i­an state ruled by Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, who first took office as pres­i­dent in 1994. Elec­tions are open­ly orches­trat­ed, and civ­il lib­er­ties are tight­ly restrict­ed. Since 2020, when Lukashenka’s fraud­u­lent reelec­tion prompt­ed mass protests, the regime has depend­ed on sup­port from Moscow to main­tain its grip on pow­er and the country’s over­all human rights sit­u­a­tion has declined pre­cip­i­tous­ly. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been arrest­ed, and as many as 250,000 Belaru­sians, includ­ing most of the country’s inde­pen­dent media work­ers, may have emi­grat­ed since the crack­down began. By the end of May 2023, approx­i­mate­ly 3,300 peo­ple had been con­vict­ed in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal crimes, and the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, a Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion, had rec­og­nized 1,496 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in the coun­try, includ­ing at least 33 media work­ers.

    Key Developments, June 1, 2022 — May 31, 2023

    • The mass block­ing of websites—including those of news out­lets that now oper­ate from abroad (see B1)—and increased use of laws on extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism to restrict online con­tent (see B2) result­ed in greater gov­ern­ment con­trol over and less diver­si­ty in the country’s online infor­ma­tion space (see B7).

    • Dur­ing its domes­tic crack­down and the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment inten­si­fied its use pro­pa­gan­da, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to manip­u­late the online infor­ma­tion space (see B5 and B7).

    • Harsh new laws result­ed in increased penal­ties met­ed out to jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, activists, and ordi­nary users for their online activ­i­ty (see C2 and C3), and fur­ther decreased the capac­i­ty for online orga­niz­ing with­in the coun­try (see B8).

    • The gov­ern­ment intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to fur­ther lim­it online jour­nal­ism and activism, includ­ing a law crim­i­nal­iz­ing the “prop­a­ga­tion of ter­ror­ism,” “dis­cred­it­ing the army” and “breach­ing the rules to pro­tect state secrets,” as well as intro­duc­ing the death penal­ty for mil­i­tary and state offi­cials con­vict­ed of high trea­son (see C2).

    • The author­i­ties arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed hun­dreds of media work­ers, blog­gers, and ordi­nary inter­net users, impos­ing prison sen­tences exceed­ing 10 years in some cas­es. One impris­oned blog­ger died while in state cus­tody (see C3 and C7).

    • Secu­ri­ty forces raid­ed the homes of jour­nal­ists, online activists, and their fam­i­lies; con­tin­ued to employ tor­ture against those detained for crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment online; and increased their use of forced “repen­tant videos” to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize dis­si­dents and crit­ics (see C7).

    A Obstacles to Access

    Users in Belarus ben­e­fit from the country’s well-devel­oped infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) infra­struc­ture. Access to the inter­net has increased in recent years.

    Accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics, 89.5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion was online by the end of 2022, an increase of almost three per­cent over the pre­vi­ous year.1

    Belarus main­tains high fixed- and mobile-broad­band pen­e­tra­tion rates. Accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics from the begin­ning of 2023, the num­ber of sub­scribers access­ing the inter­net via these con­nec­tions num­bered 3.1 and 9.3 mil­lion, respec­tive­ly, out of the country’s approx­i­mate­ly 9.4 mil­lion peo­ple.2 The gov­ern­ment also report­ed a fixed-broad­band pen­e­tra­tion rate of 33.8 per­cent and a mobile broad­band inter­net pen­e­tra­tion rate of 101 per­cent.3 Belarus had one of the high­est mobile inter­net pen­e­tra­tion rates of any coun­try in cen­tral and east­ern Europe in 2022.4

    As of March 2023, the medi­an mobile-broad­band down­load speed was 12.1 Megabits per sec­ond (Mbps), and the medi­an fixed-broad­band down­load speed was 53.4 Mbps. Both speeds showed improve­ment over the last report­ing peri­od, accord­ing to the speed-test­ing com­pa­ny Ook­la.5

    Sec­ond and third-gen­er­a­tion (2G and 3G) mobile net­works cov­er 99.3 per­cent and 98.6 per­cent of the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus, respec­tive­ly.6 4G long-term evo­lu­tion (LTE) ser­vices, offered by mobile providers via the state-run Belaru­sian Cloud Tech­nolo­gies (beCloud),7 the sole own­er of the country’s 4G infra­struc­ture, cov­er 83.2 per­cent of the country’s ter­ri­to­ry.8 Fifth-gen­er­a­tion (5G) net­works were still in the test­ing phase dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od.

    Among fixed-broad­band con­nec­tions, giga­bit pas­sive opti­cal net­work (GPON) fiber-optic tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to replace old­er DSL (dig­i­tal sub­scriber line) tech­nol­o­gy. Belarus is among Europe’s lead­ers in terms of pen­e­tra­tion rates for house­hold fiber-optic com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines.9 The num­ber of GPON sub­scribers topped 2.9 mil­lion by the end of 2022.10

    Inter­net access in Belarus became more afford­able dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. In 2022, the ITU found that 2 GB of mobile data cost 0.62 per­cent of the gross nation­al income (GNI) per capi­ta, and 5 GB of fixed broad­band data cost 0.73 per­cent of GNI per capi­ta;11 both were improve­ments over 2021. Belarus reg­u­lar­ly ranks among the top coun­tries with the cheap­est inter­net.12

    Some dig­i­tal inequal­i­ties per­sist, but they are nar­row­ing. Near­ly 92.5 per­cent of urban res­i­dents are inter­net users, com­pared with 79.7 per­cent of rur­al res­i­dents.13 Min­sk, the cap­i­tal city, remains bet­ter con­nect­ed than the rest of the coun­try.14 The urban-rur­al dig­i­tal divide is reflect­ed more strong­ly among cer­tain seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion. In cities and towns, for exam­ple, 53.4 per­cent of cit­i­zens aged 65 and over used the inter­net in 2021; in vil­lages, how­ev­er, the num­ber was only 28.2 per­cent.15

    More Belaru­sian women than men are online.16 In 2022, 89.5 per­cent of Belaru­sian women aged 16–72 used the inter­net, and 88.7 per­cent used it every day.17 The per­cent­age of Belaru­sian women using the inter­net is high­er than both the Euro­pean and Com­mon­wealth of Inde­pen­dent States (CIS) aver­ages.18

    The gov­ern­ment did not shut down inter­net ser­vice dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, as it did in 2020 and 2021. In August 2023, after the cov­er­age peri­od, local dis­rup­tions in mobile inter­net cov­er­age were report­ed near the camp of Wag­n­er para­mil­i­tary forces in Tsel fol­low­ing the death of Yevge­ny Prigozhin, the head of the Wag­n­er mil­i­tary forces, in a plane crash.19

    The gov­ern­ment owns and over­sees the back­bone con­nec­tion to the inter­na­tion­al inter­net and con­trols much of the infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) sec­tor. 20 There are approx­i­mate­ly 18 inter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) in Belarus,21 but only two state-run enti­ties, the Nation­al Cen­ter for Traf­fic Exchange (NTEC) and Bel­t­ele­com, are per­mit­ted to han­dle con­nec­tions with ISPs out­side the coun­try.22 The NTEC pro­vides peer­ing ser­vices through the BY-IX inter­net exchange point (IXP). Bel­t­ele­com, the country’s largest telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, owns and oper­ates Belarus’s back­bone net­work, upon which all oth­er ISPs depend. Through these enti­ties, the gov­ern­ment can throt­tle or cut con­nec­tions at will.

    In 2020 and 2021, the author­i­ties ini­ti­at­ed a nation­wide inter­net shut­down dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in August 202023 and then ordered local­ized and inter­mit­tent inter­net out­ages over the sub­se­quent months, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing fre­quent Sun­day protests.24 In March 2022, the Open Soci­ety Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive filed a com­plaint with the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD) against A1, an Aus­tri­an telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm that has a sub­sidiary in Belarus, for its role in facil­i­tat­ing the Belaru­sian government’s inter­net shut­downs in 2020.25 Fol­low­ing the Russ­ian regime’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, A1 con­tin­ued work­ing in Belarus and increased its invest­ment in the coun­try.26

    Inter­net con­nec­tions were report­ed­ly jammed at protests and ral­lies that took place in June 2020, ahead of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.27 The inter­net had pre­vi­ous­ly been jammed in May and Novem­ber 2019.

    In 2021, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Law to allow it to shut down or lim­it the oper­a­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works and facil­i­ties in response to alleged threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty involv­ing the inter­net.28 The revised leg­is­la­tion pro­vides the author­i­ties with offi­cial grounds to imple­ment inter­net shut­downs.

    Arti­cle 13 of the Media Law per­mits the gov­ern­ment to block web­sites “in the event of a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.”29

    By law, all enti­ties oper­at­ing with .by and .бел domain names must use Belaru­sian host­ing ser­vices (see C6).

    The gov­ern­ment strives to con­nect cit­i­zens for the pur­pose of eco­nom­ic growth, while strict­ly lim­it­ing the auton­o­my of ser­vice providers.30

    By the end of 2022, 178 com­pa­nies were pro­vid­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices in Belarus, a decrease from 2021.31 How­ev­er, the state-owned Bel­t­ele­com remains dom­i­nant. Belarus had 3.1 mil­lion fixed-broad­band sub­scribers in 2022; of that num­ber, 2.5 mil­lion (more than 80 per­cent) were through Bel­t­ele­com.32

    At the start of 2023, Belarus had three mobile ser­vice providers. The largest is MTS Belarus, a joint ven­ture of Bel­t­ele­com and Russia’s Mobile TeleSys­tems that had 5.7 mil­lion sub­scribers as of the fourth quar­ter of 2022.33 A1, which is part of the Telekom Aus­tria Group, had more than 4.9 mil­lion mobile sub­scribers by the end of 2022.34 In Decem­ber 2022, Turk­cell acquired the remain­ing 20 per­cent stake in the Belaru­sian Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (BeST), brand­ed as “Life,” which it did not already own, from the government’s State Asset Com­mit­tee.35 As of April 2023, Life had 1.5 mil­lion sub­scribers.36

    In Jan­u­ary 2022, the gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed a license allow­ing Bel­t­ele­com itself to pro­vide mobile ser­vices; the com­pa­ny began offer­ing pack­ages in Decem­ber of that year.37 By April 2023, it had more than 1,000 sub­scribers.38

    The government’s post-2020 crack­down and its assis­tance with Moscow’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine led to a sig­nif­i­cant out­flow of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and spe­cial­ists from Belarus. The depar­tures are dri­ven by gov­ern­ment repres­sion tar­get­ing the sec­tor, includ­ing ISPs, inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions against Belarus and its lead­er­ship, and the fear that IT work­ers could be draft­ed into the mil­i­tary. For exam­ple, after the 2020 events, sev­er­al employ­ees from A1 and Bel­t­ele­com were arrest­ed and impris­oned.39 One expert esti­mat­ed that, by June 2022, one-fifth to one-third of Belarus’s tech indus­try work­force had emi­grat­ed.40

    There is no inde­pen­dent reg­u­la­tor for ICTs in Belarus. The gov­ern­ment estab­lished Bel­t­ele­com in 1995 and con­tin­ues to over­see the com­pa­ny via the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion. In addi­tion, the pres­i­den­tial administration’s Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter (OAC),41 which ini­tial­ly was a sub­di­vi­sion of the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee (KGB), has the author­i­ty to over­see ISPs, set stan­dards for infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty, con­duct online sur­veil­lance, and man­age Belarus’s top-lev­el domains. A 2019 pres­i­den­tial decree pro­vid­ed the OAC with addi­tion­al pow­ers relat­ed to inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion on mat­ters of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty and called for it to serve as a nation­al cen­ter for respond­ing to com­put­er-relat­ed inci­dents.42 Oth­er gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies with author­i­ty over ICTs include the State Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Inspec­torate, State Con­trol Com­mit­tee, State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee (KGB), and Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office.

    While Belarus is home to a few ICT-relat­ed busi­ness groups, such as the Infopark Asso­ci­a­tion and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Dig­i­tal Busi­ness, they were found­ed by, are sup­port­ed by, and coop­er­ate close­ly with the gov­ern­ment. The Belin­fo­com Asso­ci­a­tion, a non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion (NGO), has the mis­sion of rep­re­sent­ing and pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of the pri­vate­ly-owned ICT com­pa­nies it counts as mem­bers. In the past, it lob­bied against Beltelecom’s monop­o­lis­tic posi­tion, but it now appears to act more as an advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion that works on behalf of its mem­bers with the gov­ern­ment to advance the devel­op­ment of the ICT sec­tor.43

    B Limits on Content

    The gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued block­ing online news sites and infor­ma­tion resources, includ­ing vir­tu­al­ly all inde­pen­dent media and civ­il soci­ety web­sites. The Belaru­sian Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry, estab­lished to mon­i­tor the block­ing of web­sites in the Belaru­sian seg­ment of the inter­net, found that more than 9,000 sites were blocked as of ear­ly June 2023.44 Experts sug­gest that about one-fifth of the sites are blocked for polit­i­cal rea­sons.45

    The gov­ern­ment began restrict­ing access to news web­sites in 2014,46 and dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ed efforts to block crit­i­cal news, human rights, civ­il soci­ety, and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion sites since the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and ensu­ing protests.47 The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists report­ed that the gov­ern­ment restrict­ed access to more than 100 online news resources in 2020 and 2021.48 The full-scale mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, which Belaru­sian author­i­ties assist­ed with by allow­ing the use of Belaru­sian ter­ri­to­ry as a launch­ing ground for attacks, fur­ther spurred the block­ing cam­paign.

    Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment tar­get­ed and blocked many of the country’s remain­ing inde­pen­dent region­al, local and niche web­sites. The web­sites of at least three inde­pen­dent news media—‎Babruisk Kuri­er, Belprauda.com, and s13.ru—as well as those of the eco­nom­ic news­pa­per Belarusy i Rynok, the infor­ma­tion and analy­sis group Ref­or­ma­tion, the envi­ron­men­tal news Green Por­tal, the urban lifestyle City­Dog, and the cul­tur­al site ARCHE, were all blocked, for exam­ple.49 By autumn 2022, the web­sites of 44 Belaru­sian media offices were blocked.50 As of Decem­ber 2022, the government’s list of restrict­ed web­sites includ­ed 491 inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion sources and news aggre­ga­tors, and their mir­ror sites.51 Changes to the country’s media leg­is­la­tion in 2021 had autho­rized the restric­tion of “mir­ror” web­sites, lead­ing to the block­ing of dif­fer­ent sites linked to inde­pen­dent online media that pub­lish from out­side Belarus.52 By spring 2023 vir­tu­al­ly all major inde­pen­dent media and NGO web­sites remained blocked, with the excep­tion of the Onlin­er web por­tal.

    The gov­ern­ment is also restrict­ing web­sites periph­er­al­ly con­nect­ed to inde­pen­dent online infor­ma­tion sources. In Octo­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the author­i­ties blocked Marketing.by, the web­site of the country’s old­est firm focused on dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing.53 In Decem­ber 2022, the gov­ern­ment blocked the TGStat web­site, which tracks the sta­tis­tics and rank­ings of Telegram chan­nels.54 In May 2023, it blocked Dev.by, which cov­ers Belarus’s tech sec­tor; the site had an aver­age month­ly audi­ence of one mil­lion unique view­ers.55

    The crack­down that began in 2020 has led to an exo­dus of inde­pen­dent media from Belarus (see B7). As they depart­ed, the sites left the nation­al .by domain and rereg­is­tered their web­sites abroad, prompt­ing Belaru­sian author­i­ties to block the new for­eign-based sites. For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Belaru­sian web­site (b‑g.by) of Brest­skaya Gaze­ta, a pop­u­lar online region­al news­pa­per, in March 2023. After part of the edi­to­r­i­al team work­ing out­side of Belarus resumed pub­lish­ing on BG.Media.site, the gov­ern­ment blocked it as well.56

    In 2021, Lukashen­ka launched a “clean-up” of “ban­dit” and “for­eign agent” NGOs in Belarus, includ­ing media, think tank, and human rights orga­ni­za­tions. In 2021 and 2022, the gov­ern­ment shut down more than 750 NGOs; anoth­er 400 decid­ed to cease func­tion­ing due to offi­cial pres­sure.57 By the end of 2021, no pub­licly work­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion was left in Belarus. The ter­mi­na­tion of at least 1,315 inde­pen­dent groups from Sep­tem­ber 2020 to the end of May 202358 also includ­ed the loss of their news, infor­ma­tion, research, ana­lyt­i­cal and cul­tur­al web­sites and online pub­li­ca­tions in Belarus.59 While some NGOs con­tin­ue their activ­i­ties from abroad, their new web­sites are rou­tine­ly blocked. In Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Belaru­sian site of Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance (J4T.by); when the NGO reg­is­tered a new site out­side of the .by domain, it (J4T.info) was also blocked.60 By Feb­ru­ary 2022, more than 1,300 inter­net resources crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment had been blocked, includ­ing 76 focus­ing on human rights and assis­tance to the repressed, accord­ing to the rights orga­ni­za­tion Human Con­stan­ta.61

    In Decem­ber 2022, the gov­ern­ment began block­ing Patre­on, a pop­u­lar crowd-fund­ing plat­form used by Belaru­sians to sup­port cre­ative con­tent pro­duced by blog­gers, writ­ers, and pod­cast­ers.62

    The author­i­ties have also focused on restrict­ing Belaru­sian-lan­guage web­sites, since they con­sid­er Belaru­sian to be the lan­guage of the oppo­si­tion. For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Audiobooks.by web­site, which includes links to 500 Belaru­sian-lan­guage books, in April 2023.63

    In May 2021, the gov­ern­ment blocked the domain por­tal of TUT.by, the country’s most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial online news source.64 At the time of its block­ing, TUT.by had 3.3 mil­lion dai­ly users.65 In July 2021, part of the TUT.by team launched a suc­ces­sor to the site, Zerkalo.io, that is based out­side of Belarus. The gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly blocked Zerkalo.io.66

    The gov­ern­ment also blocks the web­sites of for­eign news orga­ni­za­tions that cov­er Belarus, includ­ing the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty (RFE/RL), Deutsche Welle (DW), and the Voice of Amer­i­ca (VOA) net­work Cur­rent Time.67

    Fol­low­ing the Kremlin’s 2022 full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment began restrict­ing access to Ukrain­ian web­sites report­ing on the war. At least nine Ukrain­ian media out­lets had been blocked as of Feb­ru­ary 2023,68 after Belaru­sian con­sump­tion of Ukrain­ian news con­tent increased in the wake of the Russ­ian inva­sion. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties have sim­i­lar­ly blocked Russ­ian web­sites whose cov­er­age of the inva­sion devi­ates from the Kremlin’s line.69 Sep­a­rate­ly, in April 2022, the web­site of Human Rights Watch (HRW) was blocked after the group pub­lished a report doc­u­ment­ing appar­ent war crimes by Russ­ian forces in Ukraine.70

    As of Jan­u­ary 2023, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment had blocked 27 inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian news web­sites since its sec­ond inva­sion of Ukraine.71

    The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also increased its block­ing of mes­sag­ing chan­nels dur­ing this report­ing peri­od. Accord­ing to offi­cial sources, the author­i­ties restrict­ed access either ful­ly or par­tial­ly to more than 3,000 such resources, pri­mar­i­ly Telegram chan­nels, from Jan­u­ary to Novem­ber 2022; dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sev­en years, approx­i­mate­ly 5,000 resources had suf­fered the same fate.72 Most of the indi­vid­ual groups and accounts have been blocked due to alleged “extrem­ist” con­tent (see B2). Social media and mes­sag­ing plat­forms them­selves remain avail­able, though Lukashen­ka has dis­cussed fol­low­ing the Kremlin’s lead in block­ing them.73

    Research indi­cates that both gov­ern­ment bod­ies and state-owned and pri­vate ISPs car­ry out inter­net block­ing in Belarus.74 The NTEC has the capac­i­ty to block 40 per­cent of all incom­ing and out­go­ing inter­net traf­fic and to restrict access to up to 150 mil­lion URLs.75 A1, the largest pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm in Belarus, has active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the block­ing of oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal media web­sites.76 State offices, orga­ni­za­tions, and companies—which employ more than half of the country’s workforce—reportedly use inter­net fil­ters.77

    In addi­tion to its use of deep pack­et inspec­tion (DPI) tech­nol­o­gy, the gov­ern­ment employs basic tech­niques such as IP (inter­net pro­to­col) fil­ter­ing and dis­abling domain name sys­tem (DNS) records to block web­sites. It also uses oth­er com­mer­cial fil­ter­ing tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing some pro­duced in the Unit­ed States, for this pur­pose.78

    Since the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the gov­ern­ment has sought to upgrade its block­ing capa­bil­i­ties. In March 2022, Bel­t­ele­com announced a $4.25 mil­lion ten­der to mod­ern­ize exist­ing hard­ware and soft­ware “that col­lects and stores infor­ma­tion about the user’s vis­it to inter­net resources and blocks inter­net resources.«79 The gov­ern­ment is look­ing to the Krem­lin for the tech­nol­o­gy to block social media plat­forms.80

    Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment expand­ed its “antiex­trem­ism” leg­is­la­tion and invoked it more fre­quent­ly to cen­sor online con­tent and lim­it free­dom of expres­sion (see C2, B6, and B7). When the author­i­ties label orga­ni­za­tions, infor­mal groups, indi­vid­u­als, activ­i­ties, or con­tent as “extrem­ist,” the des­ig­na­tion bars all online media and users in the coun­try from refer­ring to them. Users of web­sites, social media plat­forms, and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions who access, share, or repost “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als can and are pros­e­cut­ed in both admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal courts (see C3). Oth­er media out­lets and users are required to delete such materials—and remove them retroactively—from their pub­li­ca­tions (see B3).81 A 2023 UN report con­clud­ed that the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment equates inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism as a whole with extrem­ism.82

    The gov­ern­ment main­tains a Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als83 that iden­ti­fies banned con­tent. Pri­or to the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, a major­i­ty of items on the list prop­a­gat­ed racism or reli­gious extrem­ism. By 2022, more than 90 per­cent were relat­ed to oppo­si­tion pol­i­tics, inde­pen­dent media, civ­il soci­ety, and oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es.84 By the end of May 2023, the list includ­ed more than 3,000 mate­ri­als, includ­ing the web­sites and social media and mes­sen­ger chan­nels of almost all inde­pen­dent media out­lets.85 While rough­ly one-third of the mate­ri­als banned as “extrem­ist” appear to be Telegram resources,86 they also include Tik­Tok, Face­book, VKon­tak­te (VK), OK, YouTube, Insta­gram and Twit­ter accounts.87

    The gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to force indi­vid­ual out­lets still in Belarus to delete con­tent. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the author­i­ties blocked the socioe­co­nom­ic out­let Blizko.by fol­low­ing its men­tion of an inde­pen­dent blog­ger includ­ed on the offi­cial list of “ter­ror­ists” (see B6). The fol­low­ing month, it became acces­si­ble, but only after delet­ing its polit­i­cal news and archives sec­tions.88

    Since the Russ­ian military’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has sought to lim­it the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, includ­ing the move­ments of Russ­ian troops in Belarus, espe­cial­ly in inde­pen­dent media and Telegram chan­nels.89

    In March 2022, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment signed a decree that pro­hibits news aggre­ga­tors from coop­er­at­ing with sites blocked in Belarus. As a result, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media out­lets and their con­tent are exclud­ed from the list of part­ners of Yandex.News (now Zen.Novosti).90 Fol­low­ing its inva­sion of Ukraine, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment forced Yandex.Zen (now Zen), an auto­mat­ed per­son­al-rec­om­men­da­tion ser­vice that pre­vi­ous­ly drove traf­fic to Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media sites, to drop all for­eign con­tent, includ­ing from Belaru­sian media. The ser­vice has been shut down in Belarus.91 Todah, Zen.Novosti and Zen are owned by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled VK.

    To fur­ther lim­it access to inde­pen­dent news and infor­ma­tion sites via social media, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment request­ed that VK (which is pop­u­lar in Belarus) restrict some pages and groups of the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian out­lets Char­ter 97 and Flagsh­tok, both of which are based out­side the coun­try.92 VK com­plied in August 2022.93 In 2023, VK also blocked the pages of RFE/RL’s Belarus Ser­vice and a num­ber of oth­er inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­lets, human rights groups, and civic ini­tia­tives with­in Belarus.94

    The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has also forced the dele­tion of con­tent relat­ed to its inva­sion of Ukraine on the Belaru­sian inter­net. Roskom­nad­zor suc­cess­ful­ly had arti­cles removed from Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent and state media out­lets, as well as NGOs and state agen­cies.95 In mid-August 2022, Russia’s gen­er­al prosecutor’s office ordered VK to block the pages of the exile Belaru­sian pub­li­ca­tion Zerka­lo, which had 257,000 fol­low­ers, over its cov­er­age of the war.96

    Some social media plat­forms act­ed to lim­it inva­sion-relat­ed con­tent from the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment that they deemed to be dis­in­for­ma­tion, in light of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties’ assis­tance with the ille­gal attack. In March 2022, Twit­ter began label­ing and lim­it­ing the spread of posts from Belaru­sian state media, includ­ing the news agency BelTA and the broad­cast­er BT, and their senior staff.97 Insta­gram reg­u­lar­ly blocks and deletes accounts that pro­mote the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment, large­ly because they vio­late the platform’s terms of ser­vice.98

    Like­wise, in June 2022, Telegram began block­ing the pop­u­lar Yel­low Plums site, which seeks to intim­i­date oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal voic­es through “con­fes­sion­al videos” (see C7) and dox­ing, at the request of a Belaru­sian human rights group.99 In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Telegram blocked five pop­u­lar pro­gov­ern­ment chan­nels, with a total of more than 86,000 sub­scribers, on Apple devices for vio­lat­ing Apple’s rules con­cern­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion.100 In Jan­u­ary 2023, Telegram blocked a swath of chan­nels used by the secu­ri­ty forces to pub­li­cize “con­fes­sion­al videos.”101

    In the first half of 2022, Meta did not remove any con­tent at the request of the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment.102 Twit­ter did not pro­duce a trans­paren­cy report on con­tent-removal requests that cov­ered the report­ing peri­od.103 Google received two requests in 2022, but took no action.104 The social media plat­forms VK and OK are also pop­u­lar in Belarus, but they do not release trans­paren­cy reports.

    The government’s inter­net restric­tions, which con­tin­ued to expand dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, are opaque, often invoked arbi­trar­i­ly, and lack an inde­pen­dent appeals process.

    The 2008 Media Law secures the state’s con­trol over the country’s infor­ma­tion space. Suc­ces­sive amend­ments have repeat­ed­ly tight­ened that con­trol. New amend­ments approved in May 2023 con­tin­ued this trend (see B6).

    Amend­ments that took effect in 2021105 made it more dif­fi­cult for indi­vid­u­als to reg­is­ter out­lets and enabled the gov­ern­ment to sus­pend media out­lets. They also allowed the gov­ern­ment to restrict online media for pub­lish­ing mate­r­i­al con­sid­ered pro­pa­gan­da, harm­ful to nation­al secu­ri­ty, or extrem­ist, and ban the pub­li­ca­tion of pub­lic opin­ion polls on sociopo­lit­i­cal issues con­duct­ed with­out offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion.106

    Amend­ments that came into effect in 2018 empow­ered the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to warn, sus­pend, block, and close reg­is­tered and unreg­is­tered online out­lets with­out warn­ing or judi­cial over­sight.107 The amend­ments also let the min­istry block social media plat­forms and hold web­site own­ers liable for host­ing con­tent that is deemed false, defam­a­to­ry, or harm­ful to the nation­al inter­est.108

    In 2021, Lukashen­ka issued a decree expand­ing the author­i­ty of the Com­mis­sion on Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty, allow­ing it to restrict access to domes­tic and for­eign web­sites and close media out­lets if it finds that their con­tent is harm­ful to nation­al inter­ests. The list of the poten­tial threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty is exten­sive and can be inter­pret­ed broad­ly. Offens­es include man­i­fes­ta­tions of sociopo­lit­i­cal, reli­gious, or eth­nic extrem­ism; pro­mo­tion of pol­i­tics con­trary to nation­al inter­ests; calls for riots; the destruc­tive impact of infor­ma­tion on an indi­vid­ual, soci­ety, or state insti­tu­tion; attempts to destroy nation­al spir­i­tu­al and moral tra­di­tions; the biased revi­sion of his­to­ry; and attempts to under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in state insti­tu­tions.109

    In March 2022, Lukashen­ka signed a decree that allowed the gov­ern­ment to block news aggre­ga­tors that dis­sem­i­nat­ed mate­ri­als from sites restrict­ed by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion.110

    In Sep­tem­ber 2022, new leg­is­la­tion required ISPs to more strin­gent­ly adhere to the government’s block­ing poli­cies.111 Pre­vi­ous­ly, ISPs were required to check the list of web­sites to be banned once a day; now they are required to do so every three hours dur­ing the day and block access four hours after the site appears on the list.112 There is no appeal process to a court; how­ev­er, out­lets can cor­re­spond with the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and, after delet­ing cer­tain mate­ri­als, have the deci­sion reversed. The list of banned web­sites, to which any gov­ern­ment body may con­tribute, is com­piled by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and main­tained by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.113 Only gov­ern­ment agen­cies and ISPs have access to the list.114

    The country’s increas­ing­ly repres­sive laws; fre­quent block­ing of web resources; expand­ing def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes “extrem­ism”; and pros­e­cu­tions against jour­nal­ists, civ­il soci­ety activists, oppo­si­tion fig­ures, cul­tur­al work­ers, and ordi­nary inter­net users have togeth­er con­tributed to sig­nif­i­cant online self-cen­sor­ship.

    Since the 2020 protests, the esca­la­tion in gov­ern­ment repres­sion, includ­ing unprece­dent­ed crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion and phys­i­cal vio­lence (see C3 and C7), has height­ened self-cen­sor­ship among edi­tors, reporters, and web­site own­ers. Any media orga­ni­za­tion oper­at­ing in Belarus must either prac­tice self-cen­sor­ship or expect to be shut­tered.115 The last major inde­pen­dent out­let still func­tion­ing inside the coun­try, Onliner.by, has adopt­ed a “com­mon sense” approach and reduced its news and polit­i­cal cov­er­age.116 Belaru­sian media pro­fes­sion­als who refuse to self-cen­sor either have left the coun­try or are in prison.

    Self-cen­sor­ship extends beyond jour­nal­ism. Attempt­ing to “pre­serve and sur­vive,” inde­pen­dent cul­tur­al work­ers “com­bine self-cen­sor­ship and anonymi­ty inside the coun­try with trans­fer­ring prod­ucts of Belaru­sian cul­ture abroad,” accord­ing to a March 2023 report from PEN Belarus.117

    In a Feb­ru­ary 2023, a UN report found that “sys­temic human rights vio­la­tions and impuni­ty for those crimes have engulfed Belarus in a cli­mate of arbi­trari­ness and fear.”118 The atmos­phere of fear has led to few­er Belaru­sians seek­ing out inde­pen­dent media—in oth­er words, the pub­lic is self-cen­sor­ing its con­sump­tion.119 In August 2022, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial claimed that, after 372 inter­net resources had been rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als,” 500,000 peo­ple had unsub­scribed from “destruc­tive” Telegram chan­nels.120 Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media, even those not yet labelled “extrem­ist,” are find­ing it hard­er to car­ry out inter­views with experts and cit­i­zens due to grow­ing self-cen­sor­ship.121

    The government’s prac­tice of pub­lic sham­ing via videos of forced con­fes­sions of arrest­ed individuals—including jour­nal­ists, media work­ers, and inter­net users who had post­ed com­ments crit­i­cal of the government—is a pow­er­ful dri­ver of self-cen­sor­ship. After being record­ed, the videos are dis­sem­i­nat­ed on state media and social media plat­forms (see C7). The num­ber of such forced con­fes­sions has increased since the inva­sion of Ukraine.122 In March 2022, state-run media broad­cast 38 con­fes­sion­al videos in one day alone, all from rail­road employ­ees who had con­fessed to sub­scrib­ing to a banned Telegram chan­nel.123

    Some jour­nal­ists who remain in Belarus have opt­ed to stop report­ing due to the dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment. For exam­ple, free­lancer Lar­isa Shchyrako­va, who had been fined more than 40 times her work with­out accred­i­ta­tion for the Poland-based Bel­sat, ceased prac­tic­ing jour­nal­ism in Feb­ru­ary 2022 because of the increased risks.124 Despite this pub­licly announced deci­sion, she was arrest­ed in Decem­ber 2022 on undis­closed charges.125 Even jour­nal­ists work­ing out­side of Belarus may cen­sor them­selves out of fear of being abduct­ed and returned to Belarus by force.126 Jour­nal­ists in exile may also engage in self-cen­sor­ship to pro­tect their col­leagues or fam­i­ly mem­bers in Belarus.127

    From Sep­tem­ber 2020 to the end of May 2023, at least 470 NGOs chose to liq­ui­date their orga­ni­za­tions and dis­con­tin­ue their online presence—a form of pre­ven­ta­tive self-censorship—mainly due to pres­sure from the author­i­ties and the country’s hos­tile legal and polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment.128

    Chal­lenged by a polar­ized soci­ety, inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions, and the con­se­quences of sup­port­ing the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Lukashen­ka regime has tight­ened its con­trol over the country’s infor­ma­tion land­scape. Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment and state media boost­ed their use of pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion to counter and dis­cred­it domes­tic and for­eign crit­ics.129 A 2023 report by Media IQ stat­ed that con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries had shift­ed from a “tool” of gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da to the “basis of the world con­struct­ed by the state media.”130 The author­i­ties have also expand­ed an “infor­ma­tion war” designed to back the Kremlin’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    Belaru­sian state pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion con­tin­ue to pro­mote claims of a for­eign-backed “col­or rev­o­lu­tion” around the 2020 elec­tion. It also demo­nizes the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal voic­es oper­at­ing out­side of Belarus, includ­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets and jour­nal­ists,131 by labelling them extrem­ists or ter­ror­ists.132 The cam­paign against alleged exter­nal ene­mies became harsh­er after the Feb­ru­ary 2022 Ukraine inva­sion.

    Pri­or to the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, there were notable dif­fer­ences in focus between Belaru­sian and Russ­ian state pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion, espe­cial­ly dur­ing peri­ods when Lukashen­ka sought clos­er ties with the Unit­ed States and Euro­pean Union. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing Russia’s polit­i­cal, media, and secu­ri­ty sup­port to Lukashen­ka to counter the 2020–21 protests, and the Kremlin’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, these dif­fer­ences have large­ly been erased. Since 2022, Belaru­sian “state media have effec­tive­ly aban­doned a nation­al infor­ma­tion pol­i­cy, rebroad­cast­ing Russ­ian nar­ra­tives on many issues,” accord­ing to Media IQ.133 Belaru­sian state media are also increas­ing­ly par­rot­ing Russia’s “tra­di­tion­al val­ues” and anti-LGBT nar­ra­tives,134 and empha­siz­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives meant to stress Belarus-Rus­sia uni­ty and inte­gra­tion.135

    Belaru­sian state out­lets not only echo Russia’s denial of war crimes but also con­tribute to the Kremlin’s dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns about them. For exam­ple, state out­lets shared Lukashenka’s claims that the Bucha mas­sacre was staged by the British, and Belaru­sians pro­pa­gan­dists blamed Russ­ian war crimes on the Ukraini­ans them­selves.136 A “spe­cial troll fac­to­ry” over­seen by the Belaru­sian Spe­cial Oper­a­tion Forces is report­ed­ly work­ing to rein­force the offi­cial Krem­lin nar­ra­tive, accord­ing to a March 2022 RFE/RL report.137

    The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also echoes the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrain­ian nar­ra­tives; state media declares that Ukraini­ans are “nation­al­ists,” “fas­cists,” “Nazis,” “Rus­so­pho­bic,” and are fight­ing a civ­il war rather than an ille­gal Russ­ian inva­sion. State out­lets per­son­al­ly attack Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky as “evil,” “a drug addict,” and “a clown.” Ukraine is por­trayed as a “pup­pet of the West” and an aggres­sor against Belarus.138

    Belaru­sian state media has also devot­ed resources to pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion tar­get­ing the country’s west­ern and north­ern neigh­bors. State out­lets reg­u­lar­ly denounce the alleged revan­chist plans of Poland and the Baltic states, which are, like Ukraine, also “Rus­so­pho­bic,” “Nazis” and “pup­pets” of the Unit­ed States, Euro­pean Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion (NATO).139 Anoth­er pre­vail­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tive is that inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions hurt the Unit­ed States and EU more than they do Belarus.140

    Mean­while, actors affil­i­at­ed with Rus­sia have increased their own dis­sem­i­na­tion of Krem­lin-spon­sored dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da inside Belarus. Sev­er­al Russ­ian media out­lets, web­sites, and social media groups pro­mote the ide­ol­o­gy of the “Russ­ian World,” which denies the exis­tence of Belaru­sian his­to­ry and cul­ture. They also pro­mote oth­er vit­ri­olic cam­paigns in the coun­try. One seeks to dis­cred­it the Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion, espe­cial­ly those who came to the fore around the 2020 elec­tion, by por­tray­ing oppo­si­tion leader Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya and her allies as pup­pets con­trolled by the West.141

    Krem­lin-run and ‑linked media out­lets, social net­works, mes­sen­ger chan­nels, influ­encers, and gov­ern­ment-orga­nized non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (GON­GOs) are wide­ly active inside Belarus.142 The num­ber and activ­i­ties of Russ­ian-backed news and infor­ma­tion web­sites in the coun­try have increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years, includ­ing at the region­al lev­el.143 While the sites’ audi­ences are not always large, their con­tent is ampli­fied via social net­works and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions.

    Belaru­sian state media’s echo­ing of Russ­ian nar­ra­tives is hav­ing an impact on the domes­tic front.144 As pro­gov­ern­ment media seek to tie the 2020 protests with the 2022 war, and claim that the West’s alleged med­dling in Belarus was a pre­cur­sor to it start­ing a war in Ukraine,145 pub­lic sur­veys indi­cate that among ordi­nary Belaru­sians sym­pa­thy for Ukraine has decreased and sup­port for Russia’s aggres­sion has risen.146 Sur­veys also indi­cate that sup­port for Rus­si­a’s actions cor­re­lates with con­sump­tion of infor­ma­tion from Belaru­sian and Russ­ian state media.147

    In March 2023, the state press agency BelTA announced that it will inten­si­fy coop­er­a­tion with China’s state news agency Xin­hua, with a focus on the inter­net and social media, as well as best prac­tices and skills train­ing for jour­nal­ists and edi­tors.148

    Inter­nal and exter­nal crises have led to the col­lapse of the busi­ness mod­el that pre­vi­ous­ly sus­tained inde­pen­dent media in Belarus. In addi­tion to sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion has forced almost all online out­lets crit­i­cal of the regime to close or leave the coun­try.

    Apo­lit­i­cal inde­pen­dent out­lets remain­ing in Belarus face a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment. The pan­dem­ic, the 2020–21 polit­i­cal cri­sis, and inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions have all harmed Belarus’s already-strug­gling econ­o­my, which has not grown in absolute terms since 2013. Fur­ther sanc­tions in response to Lukashenka’s facil­i­ta­tion of Moscow’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in 2022 caused the econ­o­my to decline sharply,149 pos­ing fur­ther chal­lenged to the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial media in the coun­try. At the same time, the gov­ern­ment is pri­or­i­tiz­ing the expan­sion of its polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic con­trol at the expense of eco­nom­ic growth.150

    The eco­nom­ic down­turn led to a 25 per­cent decline in total adver­tis­ing in 2022. Online adver­tis­ing declined less—only 10 per­cent. Most of this rev­enue went to large glob­al or Russ­ian plat­forms, rather than Belaru­sian firms.151 In May 2022, a gov­ern­ment decree intro­duced a 10-to-20 per­cent tax on adver­tis­ing with the goal of help­ing state and oth­er “patri­ot­ic” media sur­vive eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.152 Adver­tis­ers on state web­sites and media are not required to pay the tax. An April 2023 decree fur­ther refined the law and list­ed some of the recip­i­ents.153 The tax was met with uncer­tain­ty and some neg­a­tive reac­tions from busi­ness­es, con­tribut­ing to the decline in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing.154

    The media mar­ket remains dis­tort­ed by oth­er gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for state-owned media, and most state out­lets would not sur­vive with­out this assis­tance.155 In 2022, the gov­ern­ment planned to spend 151 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles ($59 mil­lion) on state media,156 though this fig­ure was slight­ly increased dur­ing the year. The author­i­ties allo­cat­ed slight­ly more fund­ing in 2023—162 mil­lion rubles (almost $60 mil­lion). Of the total planned, almost 20 mil­lion rubles (almost $8 mil­lion) will be for state online media, includ­ing pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram and YouTube chan­nels.157

    In July 2023, after this report’s cov­er­age peri­od, Lukashen­ka signed new amend­ments to the country’s Media Law. The leg­is­la­tion expand­ed the cri­te­ria that state can use to restrict access to online pub­li­ca­tions, news aggre­ga­tors, and oth­er inter­net resources under the guise of pro­tect­ing “state and pub­lic inter­ests” and “nation­al secu­ri­ty.”158 In addi­tion, the law pro­hibits the pub­lish­ing of the results of pub­lic opin­ion polls that relate to the country’s sociopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, as well as those relat­ing to elec­tions and ref­er­en­dums, if they were con­duct­ed with­out offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion.159 Final­ly, the amend­ments make it pos­si­ble to ban the work of for­eign out­lets in the coun­try due to the «anti-Belaru­sian» attacks of “for­eign mass media, inter­net resources and jour­nal­ists,” as defined by the gov­ern­ment.160 Banned out­lets will be deprived of accred­i­ta­tion, see their bureaus closed, and have their con­tent pro­hib­it­ed across Belarus.161

    Pro­vi­sions of the Media Law enact­ed in 2021 lim­it the abil­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als or legal enti­ties to start and oper­ate media out­lets; cre­ate expan­sive grounds on which the state can refuse to reg­is­ter out­lets, or revoke jour­nal­ist accred­i­ta­tion; and allow an outlet’s sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing two writ­ten warn­ings in 12 months, or imme­di­ate­ly if it is deemed a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat.153 The gov­ern­ment has a long record of using arbi­trary laws and reg­u­la­tions regard­ing the accred­i­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists to sti­fle media free­dom, which it con­tin­ued to do dur­ing the cov­er­age period.154 In 2020, the gov­ern­ment can­celled the accred­i­ta­tions of all for­eign jour­nal­ists work­ing in Belarus, and adopt­ed rules that forced them to reap­ply under a new, more com­pli­cat­ed process.162 Those who have since been accred­it­ed are from “friend­ly coun­tries” and tend to fol­low the government’s line.

    The extrem­ism law (see B2 and B3) also places reg­u­la­to­ry restric­tions on the media. In 2021, the author­i­ties began clas­si­fy­ing entire media out­lets as “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions” and “extrem­ist for­ma­tions.”163 The list of orga­ni­za­tions and for­ma­tions deemed to be “extrem­ist” num­bered 122 by the end of April 2023,164 and as of mid-April, includ­ed 16 inde­pen­dent media out­lets.165 The vast major­i­ty of the orga­ni­za­tions and cit­i­zen groups on the list are linked to banned web­sites, online infor­ma­tion sources, and Telegram chats and chan­nels.

    The gov­ern­ment also main­tains a watch list of alleged­ly extrem­ist indi­vid­u­als,166 includ­ing jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es, and bans them from pub­lish­ing.167 By the end of May 2023, it totaled 2,868 indi­vid­u­als.168 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment also began label­ing the per­son­al social media accounts of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists as “extrem­ist.” The goal is to dis­cred­it both the out­let and its jour­nal­ists, there­by reduc­ing their reach and influ­ence.169

    The gov­ern­ment main­tains a sep­a­rate list of indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions alleged­ly involved in “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.” By the end of May 2023, the list of indi­vid­u­als num­bered more than 1,050 names, includ­ing 308 Belaru­sians.170 More than 100 media out­lets, online sources of infor­ma­tion, and NGOs—including NEXTA, the country’s most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel, and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Journalists—are on the list,171 as are at least a dozen jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and oth­er media work­ers. The government’s deci­sions regard­ing the dif­fer­ent “extrem­ism lists” are made behind closed doors and can­not be appealed.172

    Exiled media out­lets face dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic con­straints. Pub­lish­ing costs have typ­i­cal­ly dou­bled or tripled due to the high­er salaries, tax­es, and oth­er costs in neigh­bor­ing EU coun­tries, but com­mer­cial rev­enues have col­lapsed. Adver­tis­ing rev­enue is scant: Cen­tral Euro­pean adver­tis­ers are not inter­est­ed in work­ing with media that tar­get com­par­a­tive­ly small audi­ences of Belaru­sians abroad or in Belarus. While some media out­lets receive dona­tions, they are not enough to cov­er even basic oper­at­ing costs. It has become more dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous for Belaru­sians in the coun­try to donate to “extrem­ist” media abroad, while Belaru­sian exiles are gen­er­al­ly too poor to donate exten­sive­ly. Out­lets now work­ing out­side the coun­try have gone from being par­tial­ly- or self-sus­tain­ing busi­ness­es to exile orga­ni­za­tions depen­dent on for­eign gov­ern­ment or pri­vate donors.

    Favor­able con­nec­tions to the gov­ern­ment are nec­es­sary for non­state online media out­lets to suc­ceed polit­i­cal­ly and finan­cial­ly. Restric­tive amend­ments to the Law on Pub­lic Asso­ci­a­tions and the crim­i­nal code that were passed secret­ly in 2011 bar organizations—including online media outlets—from receiv­ing for­eign fund­ing with­out state approval.

    The government’s con­tin­ued crack­down after the events of 2020 has rad­i­cal­ly restrict­ed Belarus’s infor­ma­tion land­scape. Few­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and ana­lysts are pub­lish­ing, and, since Russia’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine, the media space has been flood­ed with pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion (see B5). Restric­tions on con­tent from inde­pen­dent media in Ukraine, Europe, and else­where have also reduced diver­si­ty. How­ev­er, inde­pen­dent Belaru­sians out­lets and think tanks con­tin­ue to work from exile and some inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists still oper­ate anony­mous­ly in the coun­try, though they face the risk of arrest and harsh per­se­cu­tion (see C3 and C7). These jour­nal­ists and think tanks oper­ate large­ly through social media and mes­sag­ing plat­forms. Despite the degra­da­tion of the online infor­ma­tion land­scape, there is evi­dence that many Belaru­sians con­tin­ue to active­ly seek out inde­pen­dent news on plat­forms where it is still avail­able.

    The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has not only moved to dis­cred­it and mar­gin­al­ize inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion but also to intim­i­date con­sumers of this infor­ma­tion (see B5).173 Few­er Belaru­sians are search­ing out news from inde­pen­dent sources and more are rely­ing on state media.174 Trust in state media increased from August 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 2023,175 accord­ing to polls, while Belaru­sians read and trust­ed inde­pen­dent media less between 2022 and 2023.176

    The gov­ern­ment crack­down has forced the vast major­i­ty of inde­pen­dent news out­lets, think tanks, and NGOs rep­re­sent­ing diverse inter­ests and com­mu­ni­ties to leave the BYnet, regroup in exile, and pub­lish online from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. The author­i­ties have blocked vir­tu­al­ly all of these for­eign-based Belaru­sian web­sites (see B1) and crim­i­nal­ized their social media chan­nels (see B2 and B6). The last large inde­pen­dent media out­let in the coun­try, Onliner.by, reduced its focus on news in gen­er­al and on pol­i­tics in par­tic­u­lar in order to sur­vive (see B4). The government’s block­ing of news sites from the EU, Ukraine, and Rus­sia has also adverse­ly impact­ed online diver­si­ty (see B1).

    Pri­or to 2021, the rank­ings of pop­u­lar media and news web­sites in Belarus were dom­i­nat­ed by inde­pen­dent out­lets. This envi­ron­ment has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the clam­p­down. Many out­lets have been banned, and only about half of the 1,300 mem­bers of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) remained in Belarus by June 2022.177 Many have ceased prac­tic­ing their pro­fes­sion due to safe­ty con­cerns,178 though oth­ers con­tin­ue to work for their pre­vi­ous out­lets that have reestab­lished them­selves out­side of the coun­try, or have launched new projects.179 The few still oper­at­ing in the coun­try work anony­mous­ly in a heav­i­ly restrict­ed envi­ron­ment. At the same time, the crack­down has encour­aged the devel­op­ment of cit­i­zen and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry jour­nal­ism.180

    New and osten­si­bly pri­vate media out­lets indi­rect­ly linked to the state have also dam­aged the diver­si­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of online con­tent. These out­lets offer a mix of enter­tain­ment items and news that both favors the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment and the Kremlin’s line on the Ukraine inva­sion. The Smartpress.by por­tal, which gen­er­ates 3.7 mil­lion vis­its a month, pio­neered this strat­e­gy. Anoth­er such por­tal, Tochka.by was launched in 2022; it gen­er­at­ed 2.4 mil­lion vis­its in Feb­ru­ary 2023. Its edi­tor is the for­mer press sec­re­tary of the Russ­ian-owned out­let Sput­nik Belarus.

    Belaru­sians’ use of vir­tu­al pri­vate net­works (VPNs) and the government’s efforts to arti­fi­cial­ly inflate fol­low­ers and views181 com­pli­cate efforts to deter­mine the real pop­u­lar­i­ty of state-run or inde­pen­dent chan­nels. How­ev­er, there is evi­dence that inde­pen­dent news and infor­ma­tion out­lets by many mea­sures remain more pop­u­lar than their state-con­trolled coun­ter­parts.

    For exam­ple, fol­low­ing the government’s block­ing of almost all inde­pen­dent news and ana­lyt­i­cal web­sites, users migrat­ed to the social media and mes­sag­ing app chan­nels of these orga­ni­za­tions. Use of such plat­forms is wide­spread: the inde­pen­dent inter­net mea­sure­ment source Datare­por­tal iden­ti­fied 4.27 mil­lion social media users in Belarus in Jan­u­ary 2023, rep­re­sent­ing almost 45 per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion.182 The most pop­u­lar social net­works in Belarus for con­sum­ing news and infor­ma­tion are YouTube, Insta­gram, Tik­Tok, Face­book, and VK. Telegram is the most pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing app for news and pol­i­tics. Inde­pen­dent out­lets and crit­i­cal blog­gers dom­i­nate the rank­ings of the top Telegram183 and Insta­gram184 chan­nels, though on Tik­Tok, the dif­fer­ence in the num­ber of users from the prodemoc­ra­cy and pro­gov­ern­ment camps is notice­ably small­er.185 On Face­book, state-run media have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of sub­scribers but low read­er engage­ment.

    Dur­ing the report­ing peri­od, many of the most pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nels in Belarus were linked to inde­pen­dent news out­lets and oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal sites. In Decem­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the top 20 most pop­u­lar YouTube sites in Belarus by views includ­ed those of sev­en state-run media, five inde­pen­dent media out­lets, four inde­pen­dent blog­gers, and one oppo­si­tion politi­cian.186 How­ev­er, since the gov­ern­ment has declared many inde­pen­dent YouTube chan­nels “extrem­ist,” the chan­nels of state-run sites have seem­ing­ly made some inroads. Experts also sug­gest, though, that some of the appar­ent suc­cess of state-run YouTube chan­nels is due to manip­u­la­tion of algo­rithms and pur­chased views.187

    A com­par­i­son of the lead­ing inde­pen­dent media pub­li­ca­tion and the government’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion also illus­trates the dom­i­nance of inde­pen­dent media when con­sid­er­ing all online plat­forms. Zerka­lo, the exile suc­ces­sor to TUT.by, Belarus’s most pop­u­lar inde­pen­dent media out­let before it was blocked and closed down (see B1), aver­ages more than 5 mil­lion web­site views per month, despite being blocked in Belarus. The outlet’s Telegram chan­nel num­bers 273,000 sub­scribers, its Insta­gram chan­nel 643,000 fol­low­ers, its Face­book page 253,000 fol­low­ers, and its YouTube chan­nel 203,000 sub­scribers and over 265 mil­lion views, despite it being labelled a “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion.”188 In con­trast, the state’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion Belarus Today, with all of its advan­tages, has a web­site that aver­ages more than 5 mil­lion views per month, but counts only 6,100 sub­scribers on Telegram, 4,400 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram, and 34,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book. It has 430,000 sub­scribers but only 283,000 views on YouTube.189

    While Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media are post­ing strong num­bers on social media and mes­sag­ing apps, the nature of these plat­forms adverse­ly impacts the qual­i­ty of their report­ing and reduces diver­si­ty: the con­tent tends to short­er, less detailed, and more repet­i­tive due to the report­ing for­mats. The country’s repres­sive envi­ron­ment also sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects cov­er­age.190

    Russ­ian news and infor­ma­tion out­lets remain influ­en­tial in Belarus. Four of the most pop­u­lar web­sites in Belarus—Yandex.ru, VK.com, OK.ru and Mail.ru—are Russ­ian-owned.191 The online broad­casts of Russ­ian tele­vi­sion chan­nels are pop­u­lar among Belaru­sian users.192 With its 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine, the Krem­lin has lim­it­ed the diver­si­ty of news and infor­ma­tion offered by Russ­ian sources by impos­ing a tight­ly-con­trolled, sin­gle nar­ra­tive regard­ing any war-relat­ed top­ic.

    The two most pop­u­lar search engines and a state-linked con­tent aggre­ga­tor also lim­it diver­si­ty in the Belaru­sian online infor­ma­tion land­scape. Both Google and Yan­dex heav­i­ly pro­mote the con­tent of Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ment web­sites,193 accord­ing to Media IQ, as does the pop­u­lar state-linked Bel­novosti aggre­ga­tor, which pos­es as an inde­pen­dent news por­tal.194

    Belaru­sians uti­lize proxy servers and oth­er meth­ods to cir­cum­vent state cen­sor­ship and sur­veil­lance.195 With the onset of the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the use of Tor and Psiphon surged, and as of ear­ly June 2023 remained among the top 21 com­mu­ni­ca­tions apps in Belarus.196

    After the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the Belaru­sian nation­al domain zones stopped grow­ing for the first time. The num­ber of active sites fell in 2021; at the same time, Belaru­sians reg­is­tered 13 per­cent more names in inter­na­tion­al domain zones.197 This trend con­tin­ued in 2022, when the num­ber of domains in the .BY and .БЕЛ domains fell by 6,000 and the num­ber of reg­is­tra­tions in inter­na­tion­al zones grew by 25 per­cent.198

    Pri­or to the events of 2020, inter­net-based platforms—especially social net­works, mes­sag­ing apps, crowd­fund­ing ser­vices, and online petitions—had been the main tools for advanc­ing civic and polit­i­cal activism in author­i­tar­i­an Belarus. Cit­i­zens had access to and active­ly used a wide range of dig­i­tal resources to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties and orga­nize issue-based cam­paigns. How­ev­er, post-2020 gov­ern­ment block­ing, legal restric­tions, and repres­sion have sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed Belaru­sians’ abil­i­ty to orga­nize polit­i­cal, civic, and cul­tur­al online cam­paigns inside the coun­try. For exam­ple, a 2022 law now requires all online peti­tions to the gov­ern­ment to be sub­mit­ted via a state por­tal that can gath­er and track the peti­tion­ers, sig­na­to­ries and issues.199 Vir­tu­al­ly all inde­pen­dent civ­il soci­ety ini­tia­tives, includ­ing more than 1,300 NGOs, have been closed down (see B6 and B7). Most online activism now takes place out­side of Belarus or involves groups in exile work­ing under the radar with cit­i­zens still in the coun­try.

    Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, Belaru­sian activists and civ­il soci­ety groups con­tin­ued to use the inter­net from abroad to self-orga­nize, car­ry out sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns, mon­i­tor and report on human rights vio­la­tions, fundraise for and pro­vide sup­port to polit­i­cal refugees and pris­on­ers, and mobi­lize com­mu­ni­ties for polit­i­cal change. How­ev­er, they oper­at­ed on a small­er scale than in the pre­vi­ous cov­er­age peri­od due to fear and repres­sion. Many of the groups and indi­vid­u­als car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal, civic, or cul­tur­al work online from abroad have been labelled as “extrem­ist” and their work crim­i­nal­ized (see B4 and B6).

    The group of ICT pro­fes­sion­als who devel­oped the crowd­sourced elec­tion-mon­i­tor­ing plat­form Golos (Voice) that had exposed large-scale fraud dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion launched sev­er­al impor­tant online prod­ucts for demo­c­ra­t­ic activists in 2021. These includ­ed the Dig­i­tal Sol­i­dar­i­ty app, which iden­ti­fies peo­ple in need of help, and BY_MAPKA, an inter­ac­tive map that helps peo­ple to locate and pro­mote busi­ness­es run by Belaru­sians abroad.200 In Decem­ber 2022, the group launched a beta ver­sion of a new app, New Belarus,201 that aims to help exiles to remain in con­tact with peo­ple in Belarus, build com­mu­ni­ties in their cur­rent coun­tries of res­i­dence, and bol­ster the demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment.202 By ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2023, the app had been down­loaded over 20,000 times.203

    The Kremlin’s 2022 inva­sion pre­cip­i­tat­ed sev­er­al online civic ini­tia­tives focused on the war. The most pop­u­lar and pub­li­cized is Belaru­sian Hajun (Spir­it), which uses open-source mate­ri­als to track and report on Russ­ian and Belaru­sian mil­i­tary move­ments and relat­ed issues in Belarus. Found­ed by a pop­u­lar polit­i­cal blog­ger, the “Belaru­sian Belling­cat” has col­lect­ed, fact-checked, and pub­lished over 3,400 pic­tures and 800 videos relat­ed to the war.204 More than 30,000 peo­ple have pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to the ini­tia­tive; at least six Belaru­sians have been arrest­ed and con­vict­ed for doing so (see C3).205 With more than 525,000 sub­scribers (despite the gov­ern­ment labelling it “extrem­ist”), Hajun over­sees the sec­ond-most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel in Belarus.206

    The BYSOL Foun­da­tion is a crowd­fund­ing plat­form that was cre­at­ed in 2020 to assist indi­vid­u­als who had lost their jobs for polit­i­cal rea­sons and those who had been forced to leave the coun­try. Today the Foun­da­tion sup­ports ini­tia­tives that help repressed and vic­tim­ized Belaru­sians both inside and out­side Belarus.207 In 2022, BYSOL raised over €1.1 mil­lion to assist polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and their fam­i­lies, facil­i­tate emer­gency relo­ca­tions from the coun­try, and con­duct oth­er civic ini­tia­tives.208 Over three years, the foun­da­tion has assist­ed thou­sands of Belaru­sians209 and more than 90,000 peo­ple have donat­ed to it.210 Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, BYSOL has also been also assist­ing Ukraini­ans in need.

    C Violations of User Rights

    While the rights to free­dom of expres­sion, access to infor­ma­tion, and press free­dom are nom­i­nal­ly guar­an­teed by the Belaru­sian con­sti­tu­tion, the gov­ern­ment does not respect them in prac­tice. The coun­try has no inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry to defend these free­doms. To the con­trary, the judi­cial branch plays a key role in the government’s strat­e­gy for restrict­ing inde­pen­dent media and crit­i­cal voic­es in Belarus.211 The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was closed down by the Min­istry of Jus­tice and the Supreme Court in 2021, for exam­ple.

    In Feb­ru­ary 2022, under heav­i­ly repres­sive con­di­tions, the gov­ern­ment held a con­sti­tu­tion­al ref­er­en­dum that fur­ther con­sol­i­dat­ed Lukashenka’s auto­crat­ic pow­er.212

    In Octo­ber 2022, Lukashen­ka signed into law Belarus’s denun­ci­a­tion of the First Option­al Pro­to­col to the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights, block­ing the UN Human Rights Committee’s man­date to receive and review human rights com­plaints from indi­vid­u­als in Belarus. The man­date rep­re­sent­ed one of the last remain­ing inter­na­tion­al mech­a­nisms by which indi­vid­u­als could chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment. The order came into effect in Feb­ru­ary 2023.213

    Online jour­nal­ists are not pro­tect­ed by Belaru­sian law (see C2 and B6). A report by the UN Human Rights Coun­cil found that the gov­ern­ment employed unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of force; tor­ture and oth­er cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment or pun­ish­ment; arbi­trary arrest and deten­tion; vio­la­tions of due process and a fair tri­al; and infringe­ments of the free­doms of expres­sion, peace­ful assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion against crit­i­cal voic­es in Belarus in 2020–2022 (see C3 and C7). These vio­la­tions were of a “wide­spread and sys­tem­at­ic nature.”214

    Since the prodemoc­ra­cy protests and gov­ern­ment crack­down that began in August 2020, the author­i­ties have made no attempt to inves­ti­gate the arbi­trary deten­tion of reporters or ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal cas­es in response to jour­nal­ists’ com­plaints about police vio­lence. Impuni­ty for crimes against crit­i­cal online voic­es has become the norm in post-2020 Belarus.215 The UN spe­cial rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus found that sys­temic impuni­ty and lack of account­abil­i­ty for tor­ture and ill-treat­ment are part of a “delib­er­ate gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of deter­ring or silenc­ing dis­sent.”216

    A flur­ry of new laws intro­duced in the wake of the post-2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis crim­i­nal­izes legit­i­mate forms of free expres­sion, includ­ing online, and have been invoked fre­quent­ly. Recent laws also allow death sen­tences for indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism and trea­son. While no such penal­ty has yet been imposed, author­i­ties have pre­vi­ous­ly applied broad def­i­n­i­tions for such crimes, and the intro­duc­tion of such harsh sen­tences appears designed to intim­i­date dis­si­dents and poten­tial crit­ics.

    At the start of 2021, Lukashen­ka declared that the author­i­tar­i­an country’s laws were too “lib­er­al” and that they had facil­i­tat­ed the 2020 protests.217 The gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly approved more than a dozen new laws, amend­ments, decrees, and res­o­lu­tions218 that it uses to restrict crit­i­cal online voic­es and crim­i­nal­ize free­dom of expres­sion. Sev­er­al new amend­ments or revised amend­ments were passed or came into force dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. Of note are a rash of pro­vi­sions designed to counter what the gov­ern­ment defines broad­ly as “extrem­ism.”219 In May 2023, the rap­por­teur of the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe (OSCE) fact-find­ing mis­sion on Belarus con­duct­ed via the Moscow Mech­a­nism found that “the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment now has a full arse­nal of leg­is­la­tion designed to hin­der any form of oppo­si­tion.”220 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the author­i­ties applied laws against alleged extrem­ism, ter­ror­ism, and trea­son, often retroac­tive­ly, to the activ­i­ties of online media out­lets, jour­nal­ists, human rights and oth­er NGOs, and inter­net users.

    In May 2023, the gov­ern­ment banned cit­i­zens fac­ing «polit­i­cal charges,» lead­ing offi­cials, and law enforce­ment offi­cers from trav­el­ing abroad. The part of the law ban­ning cit­i­zens’ trav­el will come into effect in Decem­ber. The law also bans per­sons whose trav­el abroad «con­tra­dicts the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty» from leav­ing Belarus.221

    In Jan­u­ary 2023, the gov­ern­ment adopt­ed new amend­ments to the Law on Cit­i­zen­ship that came into force in July 2023. The amend­ed law allows the gov­ern­ment to strip Belaru­sians of their cit­i­zen­ship fol­low­ing a court ver­dict con­firm­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in “extrem­ist activ­i­ties” or caus­ing “grave harm to the inter­ests of Belarus,” even while resid­ing abroad.222 The new law threat­ens thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing jour­nal­ists and activists, who have already been labelled as “extrem­ists” or con­vict­ed for “extrem­ism” since August 2020. The leg­is­la­tion also oblig­es cit­i­zens to noti­fy the author­i­ties about their for­eign cit­i­zen­ship, res­i­dence per­mit, or oth­er doc­u­ments giv­ing them the right to receive ben­e­fits and advan­tages in a for­eign state.

    In July 2022, Belaru­sian author­i­ties amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to allow “spe­cial pro­ce­dures,” amount­ing to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and tri­als held with­out the defen­dant present. The code allows for tri­als in absen­tia for those charged with one or more offense under 43 arti­cles of the crim­i­nal code, includ­ing “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus, “high trea­son,” and acts of terrorism—all arti­cles under which online jour­nal­ists and social media and inter­net users have already been charged. As of the end of the cov­er­age peri­od, “spe­cial pro­ce­dures” had already been launched against at least five online jour­nal­ists and Telegram admin­is­tra­tors (see C3).223

    The author­i­ties began bring­ing ter­ror­ism charges against oppo­si­tion fig­ures after the events of 2020, and in May 2022, amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to include the death penal­ty among the pun­ish­ments pre­scribed for attempt­ed ter­ror­ism con­vic­tions.224 As of May 2023, the Belaru­sian KGB’s offi­cial list of those charged for involve­ment “in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties” num­bered more than 1,051 Belaru­sian and for­eign indi­vid­u­als,225 includ­ing at least 10 media work­ers and activists who were jailed for alleged inter­net-relat­ed crimes.226 Pos­si­ble “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty” is also used as a pre­text to raid media out­lets.227 The gov­ern­ment has labeled a num­ber of crit­i­cal Telegram chan­nels as “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions” (see B6).228

    In April 2022, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to pro­vide for the death penal­ty or life impris­on­ment for cas­es of trea­son against the state com­mit­ted by a gov­ern­ment offi­cial or mil­i­tary offi­cer. Lukashen­ka signed the leg­is­la­tion in March 2023. Experts believe the amend­ments are designed to deter the dox­ing of offi­cials and leak­ing of infor­ma­tion.229 The amend­ments also cre­at­ed new offens­es includ­ing «prop­a­gat­ing ter­ror­ism» and «dis­cred­it­ing the armed forces.«230 Since 2021, the gov­ern­ment has applied Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code, which con­cerns trea­son, to jour­nal­ists and inter­net-relat­ed activ­i­ties. Three jour­nal­ists have been con­vict­ed of trea­son.231

    An amend­ment to the crim­i­nal code that came into effect in Jan­u­ary 2022 recrim­i­nal­ized indi­vid­ual activ­i­ties in unreg­is­tered NGOs under Arti­cle 193–1. The amend­ment pro­vides that par­tic­i­pa­tion in unreg­is­tered or liq­ui­dat­ed NGOs—including those whose work relates to media or online activities—can be pun­ished with up to two years in prison.232

    In 2021, Lukashen­ka signed into law a pack­age of “amend­ments to laws on the pro­tec­tion of sov­er­eign­ty and the con­sti­tu­tion­al order,” which includ­ed revi­sions to the law on states of emer­gency. They added new restric­tions on free­dom of expres­sion and infor­ma­tion by allow­ing the sus­pen­sion of pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts (includ­ing for­eign media), estab­lish­ing tougher pro­ce­dures for accred­it­ing jour­nal­ists, and restrict­ing access to inter­net resources and online pub­li­ca­tions.233 Experts not­ed that the amend­ments effec­tive­ly legal­ized mea­sures that the gov­ern­ment had already been wide­ly prac­tic­ing since 2020.234

    In 2021, revi­sions to the 2007 Law on Coun­ter­ing Extrem­ism came into force.235 These broad­ened the government’s author­i­ty to per­se­cute those express­ing dis­sent­ing views by expand­ing the list of “extrem­ist activ­i­ties and mate­ri­als” and intro­duc­ing crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for relat­ed offens­es. The updat­ed leg­is­la­tion tar­gets indi­vid­u­als, polit­i­cal par­ties, or domes­tic or inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing media groups, that “plan, orga­nize, pre­pare, and com­mit encroach­ments on the inde­pen­dence, ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, the foun­da­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al order, and pub­lic secu­ri­ty” of Belarus.236 The amend­ments pun­ish the dis­sem­i­na­tion “of know­ing­ly false infor­ma­tion about the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, mil­i­tary, or inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus;” the insult of “a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the author­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the per­for­mance of offi­cial duties”; and the incite­ment of “var­i­ous types of hatred” with up to six years in prison.237 Since the 2020 protests, the author­i­ties have used antiex­trem­ist leg­is­la­tion to remove online con­tent, per­se­cute jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and ordi­nary users, and close media out­lets (see B2 and C3).

    Crim­i­nal code amend­ments that came into force in 2021 increased penal­ties for the «dis­tri­b­u­tion of false infor­ma­tion» which dis­cred­its the state on the inter­net and for par­tic­i­pa­tion in and col­lab­o­ra­tion with «extrem­ist» groups.238 The leg­is­la­tion also increased pun­ish­ments for libel and calls for actions deemed harm­ful to nation­al inter­ests, and they specif­i­cal­ly crim­i­nal­ized the defama­tion of law enforce­ment and oth­er offi­cials.239 Accord­ing to human rights activists, some of the most com­mon­ly used arti­cles in the crim­i­nal code relate to defama­tion: those for insult­ing the pres­i­dent, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and judges, as well as those for des­e­crat­ing state sym­bols (Arti­cles 368, 369, 370, and 391).240 One arti­cle crim­i­nal­izes the pub­li­ca­tion of the per­son­al infor­ma­tion of police and their fam­i­ly mem­bers. The revi­sions sub­stan­tial­ly increased crim­i­nal penal­ties for oth­er exist­ing crimes, which were already seen by OSCE experts as dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly severe. Prac­ti­cal­ly all of the amend­ments allow prison sen­tences for speech-relat­ed offens­es.241

    The 2008 Media Law was amend­ed in 2021 to add repres­sive mea­sures that fur­ther sti­fle expres­sion online (see B3 and B6).242 Along with it, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the Law on Mass Events to ban the live stream­ing or real-time cov­er­age of unsanc­tioned protests, includ­ing by media out­lets, so as not to pop­u­lar­ize them or pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da.243 Jour­nal­ists were barred from act­ing as orga­niz­ers or par­tic­i­pants in mass events “while per­form­ing their duties,” and activists were pro­hib­it­ed from rais­ing, receiv­ing, or using funds to pay fines or oth­er expens­es incurred by reporters and oth­ers who are pros­e­cut­ed for vio­lat­ing the law.244

    In 2021, the gov­ern­ment enact­ed a revised admin­is­tra­tive code.245 The code fea­tured the new offense of “insult” against a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a state orga­ni­za­tion per­form­ing his or her offi­cial duty in the mass media or in infor­ma­tion dis­trib­uted online.246

    Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued its per­se­cu­tion of media work­ers, oppo­si­tion fig­ures, blog­gers, social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nel admin­is­tra­tors, cul­tur­al fig­ures, and ordi­nary inter­net users for their online activ­i­ties.247 Scores of media pro­fes­sion­als were arrest­ed or sen­tenced for their inde­pen­dent report­ing. Hun­dreds of the country’s 1,496 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers (as count­ed by the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter),248 were impris­oned for their online activ­i­ties. One died while behind bars. The author­i­ties con­tin­ue to sti­fle free­dom of expres­sion under the guise of com­bat­ing alleged defama­tion, extrem­ism, and ter­ror­ism. A 2023 UN report spot­light­ed “the instru­men­tal­iza­tion and abuse of the jus­tice sys­tem against oppo­si­tion fig­ures, blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, human rights defend­ers” and oth­ers.249

    Since the August 2020 elec­tion, some 38,000 Belaru­sians have been arrest­ed on polit­i­cal grounds250 and more than 5,500 crim­i­nal cas­es have been opened in con­nec­tion with the post­elec­tion protests;251 by the end of May 2023, almost 3,300 peo­ple had been con­vict­ed in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es.252 From Jan­u­ary to March 2023, there were at least 201 new crim­i­nal cas­es, 58 sen­tences and 123 new admin­is­tra­tive cas­es relat­ed to “extrem­ism.”253 Some 1,000 Belaru­sians are still want­ed on charges of “extrem­ism” or “ter­ror­ism.”254 Emblem­at­ic of the unre­lent­ing crack­down was the March 2023 con­vic­tion and 10-year prison sen­tence for “smug­gling by an orga­nized group” and “financ­ing of group actions gross­ly vio­lat­ing the pub­lic order” hand­ed down against Nobel Peace Prize Lau­re­ate Ales Biali­ats­ki, head of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter and a lead­ing voice on free­dom of expres­sion.255

    Most of these alleged “crimes” that the gov­ern­ment has pros­e­cut­ed since 2020 have been for inter­net-relat­ed activ­i­ties.256 Many of the admin­is­tra­tive cas­es involved “dis­sem­i­nat­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als” online. A major­i­ty of the crim­i­nal con­vic­tions involved defama­tion cases—insulting a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, Lukashen­ka or state sym­bols257 —also like­ly to have tak­en place online.

    The gov­ern­ment claimed that more than 11,000 “extrem­ist crimes” had been record­ed from August 2020 to Novem­ber 2022.258 Of the approx­i­mate­ly 8,500 “extrem­ist crimes” iden­ti­fied by the author­i­ties between August 2020 and April 2022, 41 per­cent involved free­dom of expres­sion issues such as slan­der and defama­tion of offi­cials and the online dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about pri­vate life and per­son­al data.259 Of the more than 5,000 “extrem­ist crimes” record­ed in 2022, the gov­ern­ment alleged that 76 per­cent were com­mit­ted on the inter­net.260 Even sub­scrib­ing to pro­hib­it­ed mate­ri­als is an admin­is­tra­tive offence, sub­ject to a fine, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, up to 15 days in prison, and the con­fis­ca­tion of the device with the extrem­ist mate­r­i­al.261

    The fla­grant repres­sion of inde­pen­dent media work­ers that began with the 2020 elec­tion con­tin­ued unabat­ed in 2022 and the first half of 2023. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists report­ed 17 crim­i­nal and 20 admin­is­tra­tive sen­tences met­ed out and 11 new crim­i­nal cas­es ini­ti­at­ed against media work­ers in 2022. That same year, the gov­ern­ment detained jour­nal­ists 43 times and con­duct­ed 55 media-relat­ed search­es. Many of the jour­nal­ists tried and sen­tenced in 2022 and 2023 had orig­i­nal­ly been arrest­ed and jailed on remand since 2021.

    From Jan­u­ary through May 2023, the gov­ern­ment arrest­ed 27 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers, sen­tenced 9 in crim­i­nal cas­es, launched 3 more crim­i­nal cas­es, and con­duct­ed 21 search­es of their premis­es;262 by the end of that peri­od, 33 jour­nal­ists remained behind bars.263 From 2022, experts not­ed that media-relat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es increased.264 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, more than a dozen online media work­ers and activists received sen­tences of ten years or more; one was con­vict­ed of anoth­er charge while already serv­ing time in prison, bring­ing her total sen­tence to more than 10 years.

    A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ordi­nary users also received lengthy prison terms for their online activ­i­ties. The KGB has includ­ed many of those con­vict­ed on its list of those car­ry­ing out “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.”

    In June 2023, after the cov­er­age peri­od, a court sen­tenced Yana Pinchuk to 12 years in prison for incit­ing social hatred, cre­at­ing an extrem­ist and ter­ror­ist group, call­ing for the dis­rup­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al order, and harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty for admin­is­ter­ing the Telegram chan­nel Vitebsk97%.265 She had been arrest­ed by Russ­ian author­i­ties in St. Peters­burg in Novem­ber 2021 and lat­er extra­dit­ed to Belarus.

    In Feb­ru­ary 2023, blog­ger Myko­la Klimovich was sen­tenced to a year behind bars after post­ing a “fun­ny” emoti­con in response to a car­i­ca­ture of Lukashen­ka on the OK social net­work. In May, Klimovich died while in prison.266 The gov­ern­ment attrib­uted the death of Klimovich, who suf­fered from heart dis­ease, to his “gen­er­al state of health.”267

    In May 2023, cul­tur­al activist Pavel Belavus was sen­tenced to 13 years in prison on four crim­i­nal charges, includ­ing trea­son. Accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, Belavus was pro­mot­ing Belaru­sian nation­al­ism on social net­works and web­sites, “the pur­pose of which was to change the state pow­er in Belarus.”268

    In March 2023, a court sen­tenced media pro­fes­sion­als Mary­na Zolata­va and Liud­mi­la Chek­ina to 12 years each in prison for “incit­ing hatred” and “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus. Zolata­va was edi­tor in chief and Chek­ina direc­tor gen­er­al of TUT.by, Belarus’s largest inde­pen­dent news web­site, which was closed down by the gov­ern­ment and declared a “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion” in 2021–22 (see B1 and B6). Both had been detained since 2021. Zolata­va had been pre­vi­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed in 2019.269

    In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the gov­ern­ment put on tri­al Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, Jan Rudzik, and Raman Prata­se­vich, the founders and edi­tors of the Nex­ta online project, which over­sees the country’s most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel and a pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel. The defen­dants were charged under sev­er­al crim­i­nal arti­cles and were accused of com­mit­ting at least 1,586 crimes. Only Prata­se­vich is in the coun­try and in cus­tody.270 In May 2023, Prata­se­vich was sen­tenced to eight years in prison; Put­si­la and Rudzik received terms of 20 and 19 years in absen­tia, respec­tive­ly.271 Lat­er that month, Prata­se­vich was par­doned by the gov­ern­ment.272

    In March 2023, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, founder and edi­tor of the think tank Nashe Mneniye (Our Opin­ion), edi­tor of the online Belaru­sian Year­book, and head of the Belarus in Focus online think tank, was con­vict­ed of “con­spir­ing to seize state pow­er, call­ing for actions aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty, and incite­ment to hatred,” and sen­tenced to 10 years.273 Human rights defend­ers sug­gest that the ver­dict is designed to intim­i­date the think tank com­mu­ni­ty.274

    Detained in 2021, jour­nal­ist Andrzej Poc­zobut was charged with “incit­ing hatred” and “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus. He is a promi­nent mem­ber of the Pol­ish minor­i­ty in Belarus. In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Poc­zobut was sen­tenced to eight years in prison.275

    In Feb­ru­ary 2023, for­mer secu­ri­ty offi­cial Alexan­der Sumar was to nine years in prison for admin­is­ter­ing the “Long Live Luninets!” Telegram chan­nel.276

    In Jan­u­ary 2023, Vik­tor Sava­she­vich was sen­tenced to 11 years in prison for cre­at­ing and over­see­ing the Telegram chan­nel “23.34”, which post­ed infor­ma­tion about Belaru­sian judges.277 In Novem­ber 2022, Stan­silav Kuzmit­sky was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison for admin­is­ter­ing 30 Telegram chan­nels and chats, and Vadim Vasilev received a sen­tence of 12 years behind bars for admin­is­ter­ing two Telegram chan­nels.278

    Siarhei Sat­suk, edi­tor of the Ezhed­nevnik news web­site, was arrest­ed under mul­ti­ple charges relat­ed to his inves­tiga­tive report­ing on alleged cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In Octo­ber 2022, he was sen­tenced to eight years in prison for “incit­ing hatred”, “abuse of pow­er” and “tak­ing a bribe.”279

    Arrest­ed in 2021, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist for the news­pa­per Novy Chas and edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ver­sion of the Ukrain­ian web­site Informnapalm.org, was charged with high trea­son under Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Ivashyn was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 13 years and one month in jail.280

    Jour­nal­ist Kse­nia Lut­ski­na, who for­mer­ly worked for state tele­vi­sion and joined the oppo­si­tion after the 2020 elec­tion, endeav­ored with oth­er for­mer state jour­nal­ists to cre­ate an “alter­na­tive tele­vi­sion” chan­nel on YouTube. Arrest­ed in late 2020, she was con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and sen­tenced to eight years in prison in Sep­tem­ber 2022.281

    In July 2022, jour­nal­ist Ekata­ri­na Andree­va was sen­tenced to eight years and three months in prison for on charges of trea­son.282 She had pre­vi­ous­ly been serv­ing a term of two years in jail since 2021 for “orga­niz­ing pub­lic events aimed at dis­rupt­ing civ­il order;” she had report­ed live from a protest in mem­o­ry of a cit­i­zen who died after being beat­en, alleged­ly by gov­ern­ment agents. In April 2022, five months before her sched­uled release, the author­i­ties intro­duced the new charge of trea­son.283

    Sev­er­al crim­i­nal cas­es regard­ing online activ­i­ties dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od includ­ed mul­ti­ple or mass defen­dants. In Jan­u­ary 2023, the Min­sk City Court sen­tenced five Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and activists—Dzmitry Navosha, Yan­i­na Sazanovich, Danil Bah­danovich, Vol­ha Vysot­skaya and Valeryya Zanyamonskaya—to 12 years in prison in absen­tia for each on charges of incit­ing social hatred and ille­gal­ly reveal­ing per­son­al data. The team had over­seen the Black Book of Belarus Telegram chan­nel, which revealed the iden­ti­ties and per­son­al data of law enforce­ment offi­cers involved in the crack­down on protests fol­low­ing 2020 elec­tion.284

    In 2021, police arrest­ed Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, a high-pro­file online media work­er and jour­nal­ist, and his part­ner (lat­er his wife), Iry­na Zlobi­na. The author­i­ties charged them under Arti­cles 342 and 243 of the crim­i­nal code. They were accused of ille­gal­ly pay­ing the fines of 250 arrest­ed demon­stra­tors through an inde­pen­dent crowd­fund­ing plat­form.285 The gov­ern­ment lat­er added an addi­tion­al charge of trea­son under Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code against Ali­ak­san­drau, alleg­ing that he took part in “betray­ing state secrets” to a “for­eign state, inter­na­tion­al or for­eign orga­ni­za­tion, or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”286 In Octo­ber 2022, Ali­ak­san­drau was sen­tenced to 14 and Zlobi­na to nine years in prison. They were part of a group of four media pro­fes­sion­als asso­ci­at­ed with the Bela­PAN inde­pen­dent news agency, who were sen­tenced to a total of 33 years in prison.287

    In 2021, KGB troops stormed the apart­ment of tech spe­cial­ist Andrei Zeltser. Dur­ing the raid, a KGB offi­cer and Zeltser died in a shootout. In the after­math, police arrest­ed some 200 peo­ple for their online com­ments regard­ing the inci­dent. From the start of 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 2023, at least 114 were con­vict­ed and 98 sen­tenced to prison time. At least 35 defen­dants were includ­ed on the KGB’s list of ter­ror­ists.288

    In August 2021, Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion politi­cians in exile announced a strat­e­gy to oust Lukashen­ka, known as the Pier­amo­ha (Vic­to­ry) Plan. Some 200,000 Belaru­sians reg­is­tered for the ini­tia­tive online. In response, secu­ri­ty forces cre­at­ed fake accounts and a chat­bot to infil­trate the plan.289 Human rights defend­ers report­ed more than 80 crim­i­nal cas­es being opened against those reg­is­ter­ing.290 Cas­es were pur­sued “almost dai­ly” to the end of the report­ing peri­od ;291 more than 60 were opened on one day on March 12, 2023.292

    The Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter report­ed that at least 30 Belaru­sians were con­vict­ed for shar­ing pho­tos or videos of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment in Belarus with inde­pen­dent media out­lets and social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nels in 2022. Those con­vict­ed of report­ing the move­ments of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary face between 2 and 15 years in prison. Scores of Belaru­sians were also arrest­ed, impris­oned, or fined for express­ing anti­war opin­ions, or pro-Ukraine or anti-Rus­sia sen­ti­ment in the con­text of the war, as well as try­ing to sign up to fight for Ukraine, online.293 From Jan­u­ary to March 2023, for exam­ple, there were at least 26 arrests and three con­vic­tions for con­demn­ing Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine via social net­works.294

    Dozens of admin­is­tra­tors of social media chan­nels and mes­sen­ger groups deemed “extrem­ist” have been repressed by the gov­ern­ment. For instance, In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Aleh Kanavalau, the cre­ator of the YouTube chan­nel «Third Region of Belarus,» was sen­tenced to five years in jail for vio­lat­ing five arti­cles of the crim­i­nal code relat­ing to “extrem­ism.”295

    Hun­dreds of Belaru­sians were per­se­cut­ed for their online activ­i­ties, includ­ing dox­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing pub­lic offi­cials, and sub­scrib­ing to, com­ment­ing on, or repost­ing mate­ri­als from web­sites and social media and mes­sen­ger chan­nels deemed to be “extrem­ist” by the gov­ern­ment. For exam­ple, from July to Decem­ber 2022, there were at least 70 cas­es opened and 50 crim­i­nal sen­tences imposed on cit­i­zens who alleged­ly doxed offi­cials. Dur­ing the same peri­od, there were at least 40 cas­es open and 30 sen­tences for crit­i­cal com­ments against offi­cials. One Belaru­sian indi­vid­ual was arrest­ed and 58 crim­i­nal cas­es opened against him for writ­ing 43,000 alleged­ly “extrem­ist” com­ments.

    From July to Decem­ber 2022, there were 245 admin­is­tra­tive arrests for the online dis­tri­b­u­tion of “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” and sub­scrib­ing to “extrem­ist” Telegram chan­nels, as well as for leav­ing com­ments in such chan­nels. In many cas­es, pros­e­cu­tion often took place before the online sites or mate­ri­als were actu­al­ly declared “extrem­ist.”296

    For more than a decade, the gov­ern­ment has tar­get­ed lawyers who defend polit­i­cal, media, and civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Since 2020, the author­i­ties have revoked the licens­es of or expelled from the bar more than 100 lawyers—including between 30 to 40 dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. as of ear­ly June 2023, sev­en lawyers were in prison.297 The state actions against some of them, includ­ing Alexan­der Danile­vich, Artem Semyanov, and Ines­sa Olen­skaya were like­ly relat­ed to their defense of jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, human rights advo­cates, and polit­i­cal fig­ures.298 A num­ber of lawyers were per­se­cut­ed for dis­trib­ut­ing “extrem­ist mate­ri­als;” in June 2022, for exam­ple, five lawyers were arrest­ed over a legal-advice mes­sen­ger chat.299 Lawyer Vitaly Braginets was sen­tenced to 8 years in prison for “cre­at­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” the Telegram chat “Belaru­sian Lawyers,” in which lawyers dis­cussed and coor­di­nat­ed their activ­i­ties.300

    A num­ber of legal pro­vi­sions, appar­ent­ly enact­ed in part to dis­cour­age online crit­i­cism of the author­i­ties,301 lim­it users’ abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate anony­mous­ly.

    Under 2018 amend­ments to the Media Law, any­one post­ing mate­ri­als and com­ments online must iden­ti­fy them­selves to the own­ers of the Belaru­sian web­sites on which they are post­ing. Res­o­lu­tion 850,302 issued that year, spec­i­fies that com­men­ta­tors should reg­is­ter with the web­sites using their mobile devices.303 Only one account can be cre­at­ed on a giv­en site for each mobile phone num­ber. Web­site own­ers must store the per­son­al data they col­lect on reg­is­tered users—including name, gen­der, date and place of birth, mobile phone num­ber, email address, and IP address—for one year.304 Users of pub­lic Wi-Fi hotspots must sub­mit their mobile phone num­bers.305

    Through a sys­tem known as Pass­port, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs links mobile ser­vice sub­scribers to their real-world iden­ti­ties.306

    Belarus has blocked the use of VPNs and Tor since 2015, though they remain acces­si­ble in prac­tice.307 In 2020, the gov­ern­ment blocked addi­tion­al cir­cum­ven­tion tools, includ­ing the proxy ser­vice Psiphon.308 Under Res­o­lu­tion 218 (1997) of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, the import and export of encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy is pro­hib­it­ed with­out a license from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs or the Com­mis­sion on Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty.309

    Dur­ing a peri­od of polit­i­cal crack­down, eco­nom­ic cri­sis and war in Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment increased its sur­veil­lance of the country’s online space.

    In Belarus, there is no inde­pen­dent judi­cial or oth­er over­sight of the gov­ern­men­t’s elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance prac­tices. The result­ing lack of trans­paren­cy makes it dif­fi­cult to assess the state’s full sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties and activ­i­ties. How­ev­er, since at least 2010, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment is known to have employed sur­veil­lance to mon­i­tor its cit­i­zens and con­trol crit­i­cal expres­sion online. Leg­is­la­tion grants the author­i­ties the “unlim­it­ed right” to under­take sur­veil­lance of per­sons sus­pect­ed of plan­ning to com­mit a crime or offense, with no judi­cial autho­riza­tion or over­sight.310 Activists and jour­nal­ists have expressed fears that their offices are bugged, their phone calls are mon­i­tored, their loca­tions are tracked, and their online com­mu­ni­ca­tions are at risk of being hacked.311 Lukashen­ka has pub­licly boast­ed about the government’s wire­tap­ping prac­tices.312

    The gov­ern­ment mon­i­tors email and inter­net chat rooms; it like­ly tracks oppo­si­tion activists’ emails and oth­er web-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Author­i­ties con­duct raids and con­fis­cate com­put­er equip­ment and mobile phones to col­lect per­son­al infor­ma­tion on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. State-run tele­vi­sion and online media have aired “leaked” tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions, video mes­sages, audio record­ings, and per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence that appear to have been obtained via sur­veil­lance.313

    As Telegram’s pop­u­lar­i­ty surged in 2020, the gov­ern­ment ramped up efforts to mon­i­tor and infil­trate chats, includ­ing closed groups, on such mes­sag­ing apps. Secu­ri­ty forces use Kotatogram, a third-par­ty appli­ca­tion that inter­acts with Telegram, to mon­i­tor and export chats, includ­ing the com­ments and IDs of par­tic­i­pants.314 The gov­ern­ment also main­tains and uti­lizes data­bas­es of accounts, names, IDs, user­names, tele­phone num­bers, pho­tos, and avatars to mon­i­tor users. The author­i­ties employ fake bots, links, sites and files to iden­ti­fy users.315 Secu­ri­ty forces have installed bots on the cell phones of detainees that col­lect Telegram-relat­ed infor­ma­tion from the devices, which like­ly trans­fer the infor­ma­tion to a cen­tral­ized data­base.316

    In March 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs not­ed the cre­ation of a new inter­net intel­li­gence divi­sion, osten­si­bly for com­bat­ting eco­nom­ic crimes.317

    The gov­ern­ment has sought to devel­op and enhance its video sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties. Decree No. 187, which Lukashen­ka issued in the wake of mass demon­stra­tions in 2017,318 estab­lished a cen­tral­ized real-time video-mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem.319 In ear­ly 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs report­ed that all shop­ping cen­ters and pub­lic places in Min­sk are now cov­ered by CCTV cam­eras.320 The sur­veil­lance sys­tem appears to be oper­a­tional; in August 2022, the author­i­ties claimed that inves­ti­ga­tors in Min­sk had man­aged to cre­ate “a crim­i­nal­is­tic video library,” which was used to iden­ti­fy 1,400 indi­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the protests in 2020 and 2021.321

    The gov­ern­ment has acquired sur­veil­lance hard­ware and soft­ware from Chi­nese, Russ­ian, US, and Israeli com­pa­nies. The Chi­nese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm Huawei has been sup­ply­ing video sur­veil­lance sys­tems to the gov­ern­ment since 2011.322 Bel­t­ele­com is work­ing with Huawei on its devel­op­ment of 5G tech­nol­o­gy, which includes facial recog­ni­tion for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a “smart mobile check­point.”323 Meiya Pico, the Chi­nese dig­i­tal foren­sics and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, has trained Belaru­sian offi­cials.324

    Since 2010, the gov­ern­ment has been using the Russ­ian-devel­oped Sys­tem of Oper­a­tive Inves­tiga­tive Mea­sures (SORM),325 which pro­vides the author­i­ties with direct, auto­mat­ed access to com­mu­ni­ca­tions data from land­line tele­phone net­works, mobile ser­vice providers, and ISPs.326 The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also uses Seman­tic Archive, a soft­ware pack­age devel­oped in Rus­sia that mon­i­tors open-source data such as blogs, news out­lets, and social media.327

    Grayshift, a US com­pa­ny, and Cellebrite, an Israel-based dig­i­tal intel­li­gence com­pa­ny, have sup­plied the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with tools for hack­ing into locked mobile devices.328 Experts believe that Cellebrite’s tech­nol­o­gy was used by secu­ri­ty forces to hack smart­phones dur­ing the post­elec­tion crack­down that start­ed in 2020.329 In response, Cellebrite announced in 2021 that it would no longer sell its prod­ucts in Belarus.330

    Belarus has also devel­oped a domes­tic capac­i­ty to pro­duce sur­veil­lance tools. The Belaru­sian com­pa­ny Syne­sis is a lead­ing pro­duc­er of intel­li­gent video-sur­veil­lance sys­tems. It over­sees a nation­wide net­work of video cam­eras that was pro­ject­ed to num­ber 13,000 by 2021.331 Fol­low­ing the Belaru­sian government’s sup­port for the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, the US gov­ern­ment sanc­tioned Syne­sis due to its links with the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs and the use of its tech­nol­o­gy to sup­press protests.332 The EU sanc­tioned Syne­sis because “Syne­sis has pro­vid­ed the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with a sur­veil­lance plat­form capa­ble of ana­lyz­ing video using facial-recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy.”333

    All telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors are required to install sur­veil­lance equip­ment, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to mon­i­tor traf­fic in real time and to obtain relat­ed meta­da­ta and data—such as users’ brows­ing his­to­ry, includ­ing domain names and IP address­es visited—without judi­cial over­sight.

    Since 2016, all ISPs have been required to retain infor­ma­tion about their cus­tomers’ brows­ing his­to­ries for one year.334 Com­pa­nies are also required to pre­serve iden­ti­fy­ing data regard­ing their cus­tomers’ devices and inter­net activ­i­ties for at least five years and to turn over this infor­ma­tion at the government’s request.335 Accord­ing to Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, how­ev­er, iden­ti­fy­ing data may some­times be pre­served for up to 10 years.336

    In Octo­ber 2022, Lukashen­ka signed Decree 368, which requires all online ser­vices to store user data and pro­vide author­i­ties with direct access to it.337 While the author­i­ties have long had access to telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions data, the new decree will now allow them to com­pare this data with that from online ser­vices. Inter­net resources that refuse to allow access by secu­ri­ty forces may be blocked in Belarus.338

    Pur­suant to Res­o­lu­tion 850 (see C4), web­site own­ers are required to store the per­son­al data of all reg­is­tered com­menters.

    A 2021 per­son­al data pro­tec­tion law,339 on paper, offers many of the same rights accord­ed to EU cit­i­zens by the bloc’s Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR).340 How­ev­er, inde­pen­dent experts have not­ed that the leg­is­la­tion, which uses ter­mi­nol­o­gy sim­i­lar to Russ­ian leg­is­la­tion, could be employed by the state to lim­it the activ­i­ties of online actors such as blog­gers, free­lance jour­nal­ists, and inves­tiga­tive NGOs, as well as oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment.341 The law gives the state-run Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter (OAC), which over­sees and mon­i­tors the Belaru­sian inter­net space, the pow­er to obtain data on peo­ple using online ser­vices from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers.342

    The Nation­al Cen­ter for Per­son­al Data Pro­tec­tion, estab­lished by decree in 2021, is osten­si­bly an inde­pen­dent pub­lic body343 but in prac­tice has helped enforce the government’s crack­down on inde­pen­dent media. In Jan­u­ary 2022, the cen­ter asked Twit­ter to remove or delete infor­ma­tion from the accounts of four inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­lets based out­side the coun­try, for exam­ple.344 The issue of data pro­tec­tion has become more promi­nent since the 2020 events because of the repeat­ed dox­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials by cit­i­zens (see C3) and antigov­ern­ment hack­ers (see C8). Belarus is not a par­ty to the Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of Indi­vid­u­als with regard to Auto­mat­ic Pro­cess­ing of Per­son­al Data.

    Hotels, restau­rants, and oth­er enti­ties are oblig­ed to reg­is­ter guests before pro­vid­ing them with wire­less access, whether free or paid.345

    Web­sites on the nation­al .by and .бел domains must be phys­i­cal­ly host­ed in Belarus.346

    Gov­ern­ment intim­i­da­tion of and attacks against online jour­nal­ists and com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. Since the 2020 elec­tion and protests, state agents have employed threats, arbi­trary deten­tion, tor­ture, ill-treat­ment and phys­i­cal vio­lence in an attempt to sup­press crit­i­cal voic­es.347 The Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion report­ed that there have been approx­i­mate­ly 2,800 attacks against jour­nal­ists, includ­ing legal harass­ment and oth­er attacks, in Belarus since 2020, includ­ing 300 in 2022.348 Belarus led all coun­tries in Europe in terms of abus­es against jour­nal­ists in 2022 and since 2020, accord­ing to press free­dom groups.349

    The ongo­ing cli­mate of fear and repres­sion has led to 100,000 to 300,000 Belaru­sians leav­ing the coun­try. Among those who have depart­ed are some 400 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers.350 Since the 2020 events, the gov­ern­ment has placed dif­fer­ent forms of trav­el restric­tions on those it con­sid­ers its oppo­nents.351 It has also encour­aged crit­i­cal voic­es to leave Belarus, and Lukashen­ka has open­ly stat­ed that their depar­ture was good for the coun­try.352 Some dis­si­dents, like the jour­nal­ist Aleh Hruzdzilovich were informed that, if they did not leave, they would be impris­oned for a longer peri­od.353 In 2021 and 2022, media rights activists record­ed 21 cas­es of the forced emi­gra­tion of jour­nal­ists.354

    Since 2020, Lukashen­ka has both threat­ened not to read­mit Belaru­sians who have left as well as encour­aged them to return. The government’s “Road Home” pro­gram is for “repen­tant” polit­i­cal emi­gres who wish to return to Belarus. How­ev­er, human rights groups say that the pro­gram is designed to lure crit­ics back only to imprison them.355 In July 2023, amend­ments to the Law on Cit­i­zen­ship came into effect, allow­ing the gov­ern­ment to strip Belaru­sians of their cit­i­zen­ship for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in “extrem­ist” activ­i­ties or caus­ing “grave harm to the inter­ests of Belarus (see C2).”356

    Some émi­grés have expressed fears that their fam­i­ly mem­bers who remained in Belarus were being harassed or intim­i­dat­ed by the author­i­ties.357 Human rights experts have doc­u­ment­ed that the author­i­ties retal­i­ate against fam­i­ly mem­bers through arbi­trary search­es, deten­tions, inter­ro­ga­tions, and arrests. For exam­ple, Daria Losik, the wife of impris­oned Telegram blog­ger Ihar Losik and moth­er of their four-year old daugh­ter, was arrest­ed and impris­oned for two years over an inter­view she gave about her husband’s case. Dur­ing her tri­al, Daria not­ed that her whole fam­i­ly was being pun­ished.358

    In 2022, the gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed 55 searches—which are often essen­tial­ly pre­texts to ran­sack offices or residences—targeting jour­nal­ists and at times their rel­a­tives or asso­ciates.359 At least 21 such search­es took place in 2023.360 In June 2022, police destroyed the Min­sk apart­ment of the moth­er of Anton Motolko, a blog­ger and ana­lyst who has been abroad for two years.361 The police air videos with “before and after” scenes of the trashed apartments—in vio­la­tion of Belaru­sian law—to intim­i­date oppo­nents.362 The gov­ern­ment has also seized the prop­er­ty of those who emi­grat­ed.363

    Dur­ing the report­ing peri­od, the gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ed a new strat­e­gy of intim­i­da­tion via fol­low-up vis­its, checks, and search­es of those who had pre­vi­ous­ly served sen­tences for com­mit­ting «offens­es of an extrem­ist and protest nature.«364

    Dis­si­dents and crit­ics who were impris­oned con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence tor­ture and intim­i­da­tion. In a report cov­er­ing the peri­od from 2020 to the end of 2021, the UN Human Rights Coun­cil found that “sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence, includ­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence, was reg­u­lar­ly used against both women and men in deten­tion to intim­i­date and pun­ish those per­ceived as pro-oppo­si­tion.”365 A fol­low-on report cov­er­ing the peri­od through 2022 spot­light­ed ongo­ing “unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of force,” “tor­ture and oth­er cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment or pun­ish­ment” and “sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence.”366

    Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, online media work­ers were sub­ject to inhu­man con­di­tions. For exam­ple, impris­oned blog­ger Ihar Losik367 has repeat­ed­ly been placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment. His cor­re­spon­dence has been restrict­ed and his lawyer has not been allowed to see him. His pre­vi­ous lawyer was arrest­ed. On March 15, 2023, it was report­ed that Losik, who was on a hunger strike, had slit his wrists and neck to protest his mis­treat­ment. He sur­vived the inci­dent.368

    The rel­a­tives and lawyers of jailed jour­nal­ists are pres­sured by the gov­ern­ment to sign nondis­clo­sure agree­ments bar­ring them from talk­ing about the cas­es or the con­di­tions under which the jour­nal­ists are being held.369

    Secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ued to pro­duce and pub­li­cize so-called “repen­tant” or “con­fes­sion­al” videos that are designed to humil­i­ate those arrest­ed, force them to con­fess to alleged crimes, intim­i­date oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es, and rein­force the coer­cive pow­er of the state.370 The videos appear not only on gov­ern­ment-linked social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nels and but also pro­mot­ed on state media.371 Since 2021, this prac­tice has accel­er­at­ed and become more inhu­mane. The sub­jects of the videos have been “dressed up” with props, accom­pa­nied by degrad­ing spe­cial effects and music, and their appear­ance demeaned. The detainees were forced to dis­close per­son­al information—some of it incrim­i­nat­ing, such as drug use—and sex­u­al prac­tices.372 Sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als have been forced to appear in such videos over their oppo­si­tion to war in Ukraine.

    The war has also led to a hard­en­ing of the rhetoric and tone of state media.373 The author­i­ties have employed online forms of intim­i­da­tion against crit­ics and dis­si­dents that are aggres­sive and demean­ing. The state-linked Zhel­tye Slivy (Yel­low Plums) and oth­er social media chan­nels (see B2) use hate speech to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize any per­ceived oppo­si­tion.374 The gov­ern­ment also main­tains online data­bas­es and lists, some of them pub­lic, of and pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion about per­sons accused of “extrem­ism” in order to stig­ma­tize and intim­i­date them375

    Online hate speech against LGBT+ peo­ple has increased. Mon­i­tor­ing of web­sites and Telegram chan­nels by the local orga­ni­za­tion Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance (J4T) from Jan­u­ary to Octo­ber 2022 found sig­nif­i­cant growth in pub­li­ca­tions using incor­rect lan­guage and hate speech in com­par­i­son to 2021. Approx­i­mate­ly every fourth pub­li­ca­tion on LGBT+ top­ics in the Belaru­sian media in 2021 con­tained man­i­fes­ta­tions of hate speech, 376 it was every sec­ond pub­li­ca­tion in 2022. 377 In Octo­ber 2022, the J4T web­site was blocked by the gov­ern­ment.378 In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the gov­ern­ment closed down MAKEOUT, an NGO focused on gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and gay rights in Belarus; the project includ­ed an online mag­a­zine.379

    Some of the “repen­tant” videos have tar­get­ed sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize detainees. Arrest­ed for sup­port­ing Ukraine on his social net­works, Igor Koro­lik was forced by secu­ri­ty forces to “con­fess” on video to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The video was post­ed in Igor’s Tik­Tok account.380 Oth­er “repen­tant” videos of LGBTQ+ detainees have includ­ed inti­mate pho­tos and dis­closed the names of roman­tic part­ners.381

    Pri­or to the 2020 elec­tion, tech­ni­cal attacks were not per­va­sive in Belarus. In the wake of the polit­i­cal cri­sis, how­ev­er, the quan­ti­ty of cyber­at­tacks car­ried out by both the gov­ern­ment and inde­pen­dent groups increased. Exist­ing attacks against gov­ern­ment enti­ties by dis­si­dent mem­bers of the country’s ICT com­mu­ni­ty increased after the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment helped facil­i­tate Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Mean­while, dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, gov­ern­ment cyber­at­tacks against inde­pen­dent groups declined sharply.382

    Mem­bers of Belarus’s ICT com­mu­ni­ty played a promi­nent role in the 2020–21 protests, and the gov­ern­ment tar­get­ed them dur­ing the ensu­ing crack­down. In response, an anony­mous group of ICT spe­cial­ists known as the Cyber Par­ti­sans began retal­i­at­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2020, mount­ing hack­ing attacks against the state.383 This group of self-described “hack­tivists” uses web­site deface­ment, dox­ing, leak­ing, and irony to weak­en and dis­cred­it the Lukashen­ka gov­ern­ment.384 The Cyber Par­ti­sans385 released secret police archives, lists of alleged police infor­mants, per­son­al infor­ma­tion about top gov­ern­ment offi­cials and spies, video footage gath­ered from police drones and deten­tion cen­ters, and record­ings of phone calls from a gov­ern­ment wire­tap­ping sys­tem.386 In 2021, the group launched “Oper­a­tion Heat,” a broad cyber­at­tack on the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment, which includ­ed the pub­li­ciz­ing of phone calls that were secret­ly record­ed by the gov­ern­ment and the dox­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials.387 The Cyber Par­ti­sans work with BYPOL, an oppo­si­tion group made up of cur­rent and for­mer secu­ri­ty per­son­nel that pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion relat­ed to vio­la­tions of human rights by secu­ri­ty forces and leaks data about law enforce­ment offi­cers via Telegram and YouTube chan­nels.388

    In 2021, the author­i­ties rec­og­nized the Cyber Par­ti­sans as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion.” By Octo­ber 2022, the group claimed to have hacked 21 gov­ern­ment data­bas­es, includ­ing the Belarus pass­port sys­tem and traf­fic police data­base, all the phone num­bers in the coun­try, flight tick­ets, reg­is­tered cars and hous­ing, per­son­nel files of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the ministry’s video data­base, and more.389 In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the Cyber Par­ti­sans was report­ed to have hacked into a data­base of all crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive legal cas­es in Belarus.390 The group is using this infor­ma­tion to assist the work of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists from inde­pen­dent media orga­ni­za­tions,391 includ­ing those report­ing on cor­rup­tion.392 One expert called the work of the Cyber Par­ti­sans “as com­pre­hen­sive of a hack of a state as one can imag­ine.”393

    The scope of the group’s work increased around the time the Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine was launched. Begin­ning in Jan­u­ary 2022, the Cyber Par­ti­sans repeat­ed­ly hacked the sys­tems of Belaru­sian Rail­ways, sig­nif­i­cant­ly slow­ing the move­ment of Russ­ian troops and mil­i­tary sup­plies across Belaru­sian ter­ri­to­ry ahead of and dur­ing the inva­sion.394 The Cyber Par­ti­sans have also tar­get­ed the Russ­ian state. In Novem­ber 2022 and Feb­ru­ary 2023, the group hacked into parts of Rus­si­a’s state media watch­dog, Roskom­nad­zor. The group report­ed that it was able to pen­e­trate a sub­sidiary’s inner net­work, down­load more than two ter­abytes of doc­u­ments and emails, and share data show­ing how the Russ­ian author­i­ties cen­sor infor­ma­tion on the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian inter­net about the war in Ukraine.395

    Ghost­writer, an inter­na­tion­al hack­ing and psy­ops group that is like­ly linked to the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments, has pro­mot­ed anti-US nar­ra­tives and oppo­si­tion to NATO among Belarus’s imme­di­ate neigh­bors since 2016. Ukrain­ian offi­cials blamed Ghost­writer for attack­ing more than 70 Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment web­sites in Feb­ru­ary 2022.396 One report linked the group to a cam­paign designed to com­pro­mise Euro­pean offi­cials work­ing with Ukrain­ian refugees.397 In Feb­ru­ary 2022, Meta blocked domains used by Ghost­writer to hack the social media accounts of Ukraine’s troops (see B5).398 The fol­low­ing month, Google’s Threat Analy­sis Group report­ed that Ghost­writer was con­duct­ing phish­ing cam­paigns against Pol­ish and Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials.399 The Pol­ish gov­ern­ment also spot­light­ed a Ghost­writer cam­paign to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion in April 2023 in Poland with fab­ri­cat­ed mes­sages via SMS, Telegram chan­nels, and email.400 A 2023 report found that Ghost­writer has “impact­ed thou­sands of email users, has hacked dozens of social media accounts and media web­sites, pub­lished hun­dreds of false blog posts and oth­er fal­si­fied con­tent, and imper­son­at­ed mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment offi­cials, NATO rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and jour­nal­ists in Europe.”401

    In the wake of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, inter­na­tion­al hack­ers, includ­ing the group Anony­mous, launched a sus­tained attack against web­sites, includ­ing gov­ern­ment and state media pages, in Belarus and Rus­sia.402 Anony­mous claimed to have hacked more than 2,500 web­sites linked to the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments.403 The attacks con­tin­ued dur­ing this report’s cov­er­age peri­od.404

    A 2021 report found that the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment employed DNS spoof­ing to cen­sor the inter­net.405 Civ­il soci­ety researchers doc­u­ment­ed how the author­i­ties inject­ed “fake entries into DNS servers, caus­ing users to be direct­ed to fake and mali­cious web­sites.” When indi­vid­u­als attempt­ed to access prodemoc­ra­cy web­sites, the DNS response would be sub­sti­tut­ed, and the con­nec­tion inter­rupt­ed. Accord­ing to the joint report from the civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions Access Now, Arti­cle 19, Human Con­stan­ta, and Inter­na­tion­al Media Sup­port (IMS), the state-owned NTEC was respon­si­ble for the dis­rup­tions.406

    Belarus is not a par­ty to the Budapest Con­ven­tion on Cyber­crime. Dig­itCert, one of the largest web­site-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pa­nies;407 Avast,408 a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny; and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies decid­ed to cease work­ing in Belarus after the Russ­ian military’s inva­sion of Ukraine, and this with­draw­al of secu­ri­ty prod­ucts and ser­vices may result in more hack­ing, cyber­crime, and gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance in the coun­try.

    Footnotes

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