BAJ — IFJ Conference: Belarus Is One of the Most Hostile Media Environments

In his open­ing remarks, BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets not­ed how rep­re­sen­ta­tive the con­fer­ence was: it gath­ered mem­bers of jour­nal­ists’ unions from Britain, Ger­many, France, Nor­way, Spain, Italy, Swe­den, Esto­nia, Ukraine, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (IFJ) and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (EFJ). The forum was also attend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the diplo­mat­ic corps, free­lancers, and lawyers.

«The num­ber of free­lance jour­nal­ists is grow­ing irre­versibly. In some coun­tries, free­lancers out­grow staffers in num­bers.  How­ev­er, free­lancers are fac­ing more and more chal­lenges. First of all, this is the lack of social secu­ri­ty, low­er income, and lack of guar­an­tees. This job is not only about chal­lenges, but also chances» — Bas­tunets said.

BAJ leader remind­ed that per­se­cu­tion of free­lancers was the most painful point for the time being. Since the begin­ning of the year Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists received more than 55 fines for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion.  

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Adrien Collin stressed that IFJ always expressed sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

«Over many years BAJ has shown incred­i­ble courage and deter­mi­na­tion in their stand­ing up for the free­dom of expres­sion. Mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion have faced tremen­dous threats, but have worked hard to keep alive the prin­ci­ples of the jour­nal­ism that serves no inter­est oth­er than the pub­lic inter­est.

Belarus is one of the most hos­tile media envi­ron­ments, intim­i­da­tion and per­se­cu­tion of reporters have been the norm for years here.

The author­i­ties have put in place a repres­sive legal frame­work. While progress may have been noticed in 2016 with a lim­it­ed amount of jour­nal­ists detained or fined, the sit­u­a­tion was much worst this year fol­low­ing the wave of protests against the unem­ploy­ment tax bill,» Adrien Collin point­ed out.

Also, the sub­ject of the day is the fact that jour­nal­ists work­ing as free­lancers can not oper­ate freely in the coun­try, as the state rou­tine­ly refus­es accred­i­ta­tion to inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and harass­es those who work with for­eign media. The IFJ calls today on the gov­ern­ment to remove all obsta­cles to the exer­cise of a free and inde­pen­dent media.

Allow­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of news media out­lets and the accred­i­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists should be a pri­or­i­ty. We demand that the exist­ing law and espe­cial­ly Arti­cle 22.9 of the Belaru­sian Admin­is­tra­tive Code which for­bids free­lance jour­nal­ists from oper­at­ing is removed.

«We are here today to dis­cuss the ways to help our col­leagues of BAJ to defend these fun­da­men­tal rights. How can we put the issue of free­lancers on the map of local author­i­ties as well as Euro­pean insti­tu­tions? Which cam­paigns and activ­i­ties should we con­duct to defend the basic rights of free­lancers in Belarus both at the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­el?

Over the world, the IFJ seeks to boost jour­nal­ism and free­dom of expres­sion. We use the BAJ as a mod­el for how to serve and moti­vate your mem­bers to stick with jour­nal­ism.  But BAJ needs our sol­i­dar­i­ty to over­come the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. I hope we will find prac­ti­cal ways to respond to these chal­lenges,» — Adrien Collin said.

Direc­tor of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Renate Schroed­er point­ed out the start of the dif­fi­cult but much need­ed polit­i­cal dia­log between Belarus and the EU.  The Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­u­lar­ly puts the prob­lems with the free­dom of expres­sion in Belarus to the atten­tion of the EU politi­cians.

«This year the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on the per­se­cu­tion of more than 120 jour­nal­ists. This is also the result of coop­er­a­tion of EFJ and BAJ. We will report to the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and includ­ed this meet­ing in the report. I hope for some progress. The EU and Belarus start­ed a dia­log on human rights. And we have some opti­mism. We also coop­er­ate with the OSCE on the media sit­u­a­tion. Dun­ja Mija­tovic addressed the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Belarus on the harass­ment of jour­nal­ists, and the For­eign Min­istry just said that jour­nal­ists were not allowed to work with­out accred­i­ta­tion. Peri­od. Noth­ing to explan or jus­ti­fy that,» Renate Schroed­er said.

Larysa Shchyrako­va from Homel spoke about the chal­lenges faced by a Belaru­sian free­lancer.

«The great­est chal­lenge is that «they give you no chance to live a nor­mal life,» Larysa began. She fur­ther referred to the numer­ous tri­als, cas­es of harass­ment by police, and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure: «Some­times even get­ting to the venue of the protest and work­ing there is a real city quest. For exam­ple, one day I had to spend a night at a friend’s home, as I saw the police was mon­i­tor­ing the entry to my and my par­ents’ hous­es. The next day when they detained me, the first ques­tion from the police chief was, «Where did you sleep today?» It is impor­tant for me to be there and to cov­er the events. I love this job, I like cov­er­ing the social activ­i­ty: Belaru­sians were in lethar­gi­cal sleep for many years and final­ly they came out, they express them­selves. I real­ly enjoyed cov­er­ing those street actions.»

In 2015 — 2017, Shchyrako­va stood 18 tri­als for jour­nal­ism.

«It’s not very typ­i­cal for Belaru­sians, but I felt a huge wave of sol­i­dar­i­ty. One day after the tri­al, a woman approached me and gave me mon­ey as a sup­port. Peo­ple attend­ed my tri­als. Sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed for sup­port­ing me. But peo­ple get tired of attend­ing the nev­erend­ing tri­als. This year, in Rechyt­sa they sum­moned me on April13, my birth­day. I think it was done on pur­pose.

Also, the police threat­ened me to take my son away. When the pub­lic learned about that from the media, their reac­tion was strong. I used under­es­ti­mate how the media influ­ence the pub­lic opin­ion. I think they did not go any fur­ther thanks to the big wave of sol­i­dar­i­ty «, said the jour­nal­ist.

Larysa also spoke about dis­sem­i­na­tion of slan­der­ous infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net and pub­li­ca­tion of details of her divorce. 

Larysa’s speech was very emo­tion­al. At the end she said she had decid­ed to leave her job, «because her health is above every­thing.»

«And when God clos­es one door, he opens the oth­er. All will be well «, — she con­clud­ed.

In 2017, Larysa stood 8 admin­is­tra­tive tri­als, had 11 police reports, over 20 offen­sive arti­cles about her on the Inter­net, two deten­tions, and one pros­e­cu­tor’s warn­ing.

Mahil­iou jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Burak­ou stressed that the author­i­ties per­se­cute only free­lancers, who work with inde­pen­dent media.

He also men­tioned the EU dia­log with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and the uncer­tain future.

«There’s an unset­tling point now, as we do not know if we made the right choice many years ago», — said Alexan­der.

Free­lancer Vol­ha Chayt­cyts sup­port­ed Larysa:

«I don’t know of cas­es when the author­i­ties would take jour­nal­ists’ chil­dren. But I know such inci­dents hap­pened with civic activists. They do not need a court order, a deci­sion by spe­cial com­mis­sion is enough for that. … Jour­nal­ists can be found guilty of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a street action, and it is impos­si­ble to prove that they worked there as jour­nal­ists. And when we report from some town, we can’t men­tion the name of the town at least a day before the trip, we can’t stay in hotels as they reg­is­ter your name.» Vol­ha said. «Some­times in the court a police­man would say: «I per­son­al­ly do not know her, but I watch her for a year or so.»

This year alone, free­lance jour­nal­ists in Belarus suf­fered inter­fer­ence from the author­i­ties more than 180 times. Over 50 cas­es have result­ed in large fines, and for some — in arrests.