Belarus authorities suspend popular news portal’s status of media outlet

As report­ed ear­li­er, on Octo­ber 8, the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk is to con­sid­er the ministry’s claim on the ter­mi­na­tion of the portal’s pub­lish­ing sta­tus.

The media out­let sta­tus pro­vides a num­ber of advan­tages; in par­tic­u­lar, the abil­i­ty to legal­ly be present in areas of armed con­flicts, at emer­gency fields, at mass events, etc and report from there. It should be recalled that TUT.BY was reg­is­tered as a media out­let in Jan­u­ary 2019; since its found­ing in 2000, the por­tal had been work­ing with­out this sta­tus.

Oppo­si­tion leader Svy­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya has com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion:

“Belaru­sians were deprived of access to the Inter­net, free­dom of assem­bly, phys­i­cal free­dom, the right to an attor­ney and a fair tri­al, the right to go on strike and do their job, includ­ing being a jour­nal­ist. The regime keeps per­sist­ing in its opin­ion that it is pos­si­ble to cov­er up its crimes by stop­ping a print­ing press, block­ing a web­site or depriv­ing media out­lets of accred­i­ta­tion. But the regime is wrong. Dear jour­nal­ists, you are heroes. I admire your resilience and pro­fes­sion­al­ism which are espe­cial­ly notice­able and valu­able in the face of legal default.”

In the 2020 Press Free­dom Index by Reporters With­out Bor­ders, Belarus ranks 153 out of 180 coun­tries. Now it is between the Sul­tanate of Brunei and Turkey and four posi­tions below the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. Is should be not­ed that the lat­est ver­sion of the Index was issued before the dra­mat­ic events of August, 2020. The list of inci­dents which Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists regards as vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights, com­mit­ted by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties is here (in Eng­lish)