Supreme Court liquidated Belarusian Association of Journalists

Inde­pen­dent media orga­ni­za­tions and jour­nal­ists in Belarus have faced unprece­dent­ed repres­sion from the state since the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) has doc­u­ment­ed more than 500 deten­tions, hun­dreds of arrests and fines, and dozens of crim­i­nal cas­es and prison sen­tences direct­ed against reporters, edi­tors and media man­agers. Almost every inde­pen­dent news and socio-polit­i­cal out­let from the local to the nation­al lev­el has expe­ri­enced police pres­sure, search­es and con­fis­ca­tions of their pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment. Many have been forced to stop pub­lish­ing or to flee the coun­try in order to work from exile.

In July 2021, the state launched a new wave of repres­sion against inde­pen­dent media out­lets and orga­ni­za­tions. Over ten days, secu­ri­ty forces car­ried out more than 70 search­es of edi­to­r­i­al offices and pri­vate homes of employ­ees of nation­al and region­al media. As a result, dozens more jour­nal­ists, edi­tors and media man­agers joined their col­leagues already in cus­tody.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties began the process of liq­ui­dat­ing the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, one of Belarus’s lead­ing NGOs. BAJ is a vol­un­tary, non­govern­men­tal, non­par­ti­san asso­ci­a­tion that includes more than 1,300 media pro­fes­sion­als from across the coun­try. BAJ assists its mem­bers in real­iz­ing and devel­op­ing their pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties. Through­out its 25 years of its exis­tence, BAJ has also be a leader in pro­mot­ing free­dom of expres­sion and defend­ing media rights.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has been inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for its work. In 2004, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment award­ed BAJ with the Sakharov Prize for Free­dom of Thought, the EU’s high­est human rights trib­ute. In 2011, BAJ received the Atlantic Council’s Free­dom Award. In 2020, BAJ was the first recip­i­ent of the Canada‑U.K. Media Free­dom Award, which rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions advo­cat­ing for media free­dom.

Over the past year, BAJ has focused on defend­ing and assist­ing its mem­bers whose pro­fes­sion­al and human rights have been vio­lat­ed by the state’s search­es, deten­tions, beat­ings, legal and crim­i­nal per­se­cu­tion, arrests and prison terms. So it is not sur­pris­ing that the author­i­ties have launched a repres­sive cam­paign tar­get­ing BAJ itself.

On June 9, the Min­istry of Jus­tice launched a major audit of BAJ’s activ­i­ties. On June 21, BAJ received an offi­cial request that required the orga­ni­za­tion to pro­vide thou­sands of admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial doc­u­ments on its activ­i­ties, includ­ing lists of its mem­bers, cov­er­ing the last three years, on that same day of June 21. The Min­istry of Jus­tice lat­er extend­ed the dead­line to July 1. Despite the short time frame, BAJ sub­mit­ted all the request­ed doc­u­ments, with the excep­tion of those seized from the BAJ office dur­ing a search by secu­ri­ty forces in Feb­ru­ary 2021.

On July 14, in the absence of BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives, secu­ri­ty forces raid­ed, searched and sealed BAJ’s office. The next day, on July 15, BAJ received an offi­cial warn­ing from the Min­istry of Jus­tice on the grounds that its region­al branch­es in Brest and Mal­adzech­na had alleged­ly car­ried out their activ­i­ties with­out hav­ing legal address­es. How­ev­er, this is not true. Nev­er­the­less, the Min­istry of Jus­tice con­sid­ered the fail­ure of BAJ to sub­mit all of the required audit doc­u­ments, as well as the absence of legal address­es of the region­al branch­es, to be a vio­la­tion of the country’s leg­is­la­tion and BAJ’s char­ter. The Min­istry demand­ed that the alleged vio­la­tions be rec­ti­fied by the next day.

On July 16, BAJ informed the Min­istry of Jus­tice that the organization’s office had been sealed by the state and that its rep­re­sen­ta­tives had no access to its doc­u­ments. BAJ there­fore request­ed more time to ful­fill the Ministry’s demands after gain­ing access to its premis­es.

Nev­er­the­less, on July 21, the Min­istry of Jus­tice report­ed via its social net­works that it had already sub­mit­ted a claim for the liq­ui­da­tion of BAJ to the Supreme Court, alleged­ly due to the organization’s fail­ure to rec­ti­fy the vio­la­tions and the offi­cial warn­ing for repeat­ed vio­la­tions of the law.

As of the date of this state­ment, BAJ has not received any fur­ther writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion or deci­sion from either the Min­istry of Jus­tice or the Supreme Court.

Despite the state’s unjust per­se­cu­tion, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists con­tin­ues to serve its mem­bers and ful­fil its mis­sion.

On July 30, BAJ received a let­ter from the Supreme Court with the date of the pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing on the liq­ui­da­tion of BAJ.

The Min­istry of Jus­tice filed the case to liq­ui­date the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. The pre­lim­i­nary ses­sion open for pub­lic is sched­uled for 11:00 on August 11 in the Supreme Court (Min­sk, Arlouskaya str., 76, entrance 1).

 The doc­u­ments on the civ­il claim were signed by the judge of the Supreme Court Inesa Laza­viko­va. The for­mal rea­son for the liq­ui­da­tion is  BAJ “fail­ure to cor­rect the vio­la­tions revealed by the Min­istry of Jus­tice dur­ing the inspec­tion, which began in June 2021”.  BAJ lead­er­ship cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dis­agree with that.

On August 23, the Supreme Court of Belarus con­sid­ered the appeal of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) against the warn­ing issued by the Min­istry of Jus­tice fol­low­ing an inspec­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion’s records.

The warn­ing point­ed out that the office lease con­tracts of the orga­ni­za­tion’s branch­es in Homel and Mal­adzech­na had expired. BAJ firm­ly dis­agreed with this and pre­sent­ed argu­ments and evi­dence of its right­ness in its appeal to the Supreme Court.

On August 23, Judge of the Supreme Court Valiantsi­na Kulik con­sid­ered the appeal of the jour­nal­ist orga­ni­za­tion and upheld the warn­ing of the Min­istry of Jus­tice. BAJ intends to appeal the deci­sion.

On August 27, accord­ing to the deci­sion of the Supreme Court, BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tive «mis­un­der­stood the law», and all their argu­ments as to no legal grounds to sus­tain the liq­ui­da­tion claim should be con­sid­ered unim­por­tant.

Judge of the Supreme Court Inesa Laza­viko­va.

«BAJ is not a sim­ple entry in the reg­is­ter of legal enti­ties. It’s almost 1500 mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion, unit­ed by the aware­ness of their mis­sion: to expand the space of free­dom of speech in Belarus. Sor­ry for the pathos and a quote from the BAJ Strat­e­gy.

These are friends and col­leagues. It’s about US, not the legal sta­tus and office. And WE will con­tin­ue to do our work regard­less of the deci­sions of courts and admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies, by all legal means,» said BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets.

BAJ oper­ates since the fall of 1995. It unites more than 1,300 media work­ers. BAJ is an influ­en­tial orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nized by the inter­na­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty.