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  • “We don’t want Belarus to become an information black hole.” Discussions at Free Journalism Forum

    Despite all repressions, the second Free Journalism Forum was held in Vilnius and attended by Belarusian media experts and reporters. Although the news setting is now imbued with pessimistic reports, the present and future of independent media were extensively discussed at the event, which was definitely encouraging.

    “It is a collective journalistic mind that keeps on working”

    Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, some 400 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives have fled the coun­try for safe­ty rea­sons in recent years. Relo­cat­ing whole edi­to­r­i­al boards has become com­mon­place.

    “In Belarus, jour­nal­ism and media keep fac­ing crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for reporters’ activ­i­ties,” acknowl­edged Tere­sa Ribeiro, OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media. “Cas­es of harass­ment are sys­tem­at­ic. This is unac­cept­able. My col­leagues and I con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.”

    “I left Belarus by acci­dent and couldn’t return – while I was away, my home and edi­to­r­i­al office were searched, the equip­ment was seized, and cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed against me and my son,” says Svi­at­lana Har­da, edi­tor-in-chief of Media-Polesye web­site, which is typ­i­cal of the last two years’ Belaru­sian con­text. “How­ev­er, we keep work­ing despite the cen­sor­ship in Belarus. Our audi­ence has proved to be extreme­ly loy­al. Peo­ple turn to us with their prob­lems and ques­tions out of old habits, they seek infor­ma­tion about their region. The short­age of local news is now acute­ly felt.”

    Since the out­break of war in Ukraine, some media out­lets have had to under­go a dou­ble relo­ca­tion.

    “At first, part of our team moved to Kyiv, where Zerkalo.io was found­ed,” recalled Ali­ak­san­dra Pushk­i­na, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor of the media out­let. “How­ev­er, at the begin­ning of this year, we had to move for the sec­ond time. We are now oper­at­ing from Lithua­nia and Poland. We had to start the whole process again here – reg­is­ter­ing a legal enti­ty and employ­ing peo­ple. But our work did not stop for a sin­gle day, even when the team was mov­ing from Kyiv to oth­er coun­tries.”

    The col­lapse of the media in Belarus, the arrest of media man­agers, and the relo­ca­tion-relat­ed dif­fi­cul­ties were not the only prob­lems faced by the edi­to­r­i­al team:

    “Yan­dex blocked our media in its search engine. As a result, the churn amount­ed to over one mil­lion users. That was main­ly the Russ­ian audi­ence. But eight months lat­er, we are back to our pre­vi­ous fig­ures and have man­aged to reach 3.5 mil­lion unique users. Some 50–60% are read­ers from Belarus, which is very moti­vat­ing and makes us do the work. We can­not lose courage or twid­dle our thumbs.”

    Anoth­er pop­u­lar online pub­li­ca­tion that keeps work­ing from abroad is Nasha Niva. Its direc­tor Anas­ta­sia Rou­da described the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus as unhealthy, and the cur­rent times as a test and a marathon for reporters:

    “We keep up the media work, we dwell on the neg­a­tive Belaru­sian agen­da from sunup to sun­set. There are dai­ly reports of deten­tions, there are tri­als, and the war has bro­ken out. At the same time, our texts are anony­mous on both ends. On the one hand, we write about anony­mous sub­jects and sto­ries. On the oth­er hand, we are wor­ried about those who do jour­nal­ism. That’s why the texts are most­ly signed as Nashaniva.com. It is a col­lec­tive jour­nal­is­tic mind that keeps work­ing.”

    “The persecution of journalists in prison continues”

    “The sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech and expres­sion of inde­pen­dent media in Belarus stays one of the worst in Europe,” said BAJ deputy chair­man Barys Haret­s­ki.

    This year alone over fifty search­es and inspec­tions at jour­nal­ists’ homes were con­duct­ed and over forty reporters were detained in Belarus.

    He remind­ed that the tri­al of Henadz Mazhei­ka, for­mer Kom­so­mol­skaya prav­da v Belarusi cor­re­spon­dent, start­ed the day the Forum was hap­pen­ing. The reporter is stand­ing tri­al in the case of Andrei Zeltser who shot a KGB agent dur­ing a raid and was killed after. He is being tried for pub­lish­ing the sto­ry of an acquain­tance of the deceased IT work­er.

    Accord­ing to BAJ, 32 jour­nal­ists are cur­rent­ly kept in deten­tion. Sen­tences range from 8 years of impris­on­ment for Kate­ri­na Andree­va to 14 years for Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and 13 years for Dzia­n­is Ivashyn…

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the list goes on and on.

    As Barys Haret­s­ki not­ed, the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists in deten­tion facil­i­ties con­tin­ues: “On far-fetched grounds, they are deprived of rel­a­tives’ vis­its, cor­re­spon­dence bans are imposed, lawyers’ vis­its are restrict­ed.

    “In Belarus, there are no legal mech­a­nisms for jour­nal­ists to defend their rights,” added the BAJ deputy chair­man. “Tri­als are held behind closed doors. Some­times it is not even known what exact­ly the reporters are accused of.”

    More­over, the author­i­ties label any­thing they do not like as extrem­ism, includ­ing numer­ous media out­lets.

    “This is not just cen­sor­ship of the infor­ma­tion field, but its cleans­ing,” said Barys Haret­s­ki. “Such actions affect the work of inde­pen­dent media which should pro­tect both jour­nal­ists and sub­jects in their pub­li­ca­tions.

    The Turkmenisation of Belarus

    The unac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech and vio­la­tion of jour­nal­ists’ pro­fes­sion­al rights is close­ly mon­i­tored by var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions.

    Thus, Maria Ordzhonikidze, direc­tor of the Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists Foun­da­tion (found­ed after the mur­der of three Russ­ian reporters who inves­ti­gat­ed the activ­i­ties of the Wag­n­er Group in the Cen­tral African Repub­lic) drew atten­tion to this trend:

    “In 2020, over 1.5 thou­sand attacks were reg­is­tered, includ­ing legal harass­ment (attack through weaponiz­ing law, wrong­ful depri­va­tion of lib­er­ty), on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus. In 2021, there were some 1000 cas­es. In 2022, the num­ber dropped down to three hun­dred. It’s not that the inten­si­ty of attacks has decreased: there just isn’t any­one to attack – some have been expelled from the coun­try, and some have been jailed. We call this Turk­m­eniza­tion.”

    Dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech is char­ac­ter­is­tic for the whole region – includ­ing in Rus­sia and Ukraine.

    “Jour­nal­ists have been repressed, pros­e­cut­ed, killed dur­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions,” observed Jeanne Cav­a­lier, direc­tor of Reporters With­out Bor­ders in East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia office.

    At the same time, she admit­ted that Belarus had become one of the most dan­ger­ous coun­tries for media work­ers in the world. Belarus is ranked 153rd in the rat­ing of the free­dom of jour­nal­ists.

    The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Reporters With­out Bor­ders assured that Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are pro­vid­ed with all avail­able sup­port: finan­cial, tech­ni­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, legal, and psy­cho­log­i­cal assis­tance.

    “We do not want Belarus and Rus­sia to become black holes in terms of infor­ma­tion,” Jeanne Cav­a­lier empha­sized.

    “It’s time to stop being dithery!”

    Inter­est­ing obser­va­tions were voiced by Lithuan­ian jour­nal­ists and human rights activists who close­ly mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion with the Belaru­sian media sec­tor.

    Deputy chair­man of the Lithuan­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists Dar­ius Lukoše­vičius not­ed:

    “Thir­ty years ago there tanks drove to the streets of Vil­nius, and the troops seized the nation­al radio and tele­vi­sion. But that sit­u­a­tion was dif­fer­ent from what you have in Belarus. We have nev­er had to work in emi­gra­tion, there were not many quis­lings among Lithuan­ian jour­nal­ists. The sit­u­a­tion is more com­pli­cat­ed for you.”

    In his opin­ion, Belarus is no more a high pri­or­i­ty on the Euro­pean polit­i­cal and media agen­da, unlike two years ago.

    “If any infor­ma­tion appears, it is, as a rule, anoth­er state­ment by Lukashen­ka,” point­ed out Dar­ius Lukoše­vičius. “As a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist, I have no idea what the Belaru­sian soci­ety lives and breathes today and what part of the pop­u­la­tion believes Putin’s pro­pa­gan­da.”

    Vytis Jurko­nis, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, human rights defend­er, and head of the Free­dom House office in Lithua­nia, demon­strat­ed aware­ness of the process­es hap­pen­ing in Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism:

    “I used to be crit­i­cal about the lack of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism. Over time, it emerged thanks to Stanis­lau Ivashkevich’s team. But these inves­ti­ga­tions may be even tougher and harsh­er and tar­get the real cul­prits.”

    He also brought to notice that the media, includ­ing sports-ori­ent­ed ones (Tribuna.com in par­tic­u­lar), are switch­ing to Belaru­sian: “It’s amaz­ing! Five years ago it would have been some­thing far-fetched.”

    At the same time, Vitis Yurko­nis empha­sized the dom­i­nance of opin­ions from the same experts and the lack of region­al news.

    He also called for self-reg­u­la­tion of the media sphere:

    “Strange projects like Radio 97 should not exist and divert resources. A clear stance on such projects is required. Let’s be hon­est: it is time to stop being dith­ery.”

    The polit­i­cal sci­en­tist believes that there are good prospects for cross-bor­der coop­er­a­tion between the Belaru­sian, Ukrain­ian, and Russ­ian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists to build an anti-tatal­i­tar­i­an front.

    He con­clud­ed by urg­ing: “The inde­pen­dent media in Belarus have stood their ground. Give them hon­or and praise, but don’t lose focus!”

    Watch the recorded video here:

    — in Eng­lish https://youtu.be/gjprn8MeYXg

    — in Lithuan­ian https://youtu.be/jQPOpl9Ze8Q

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