Belarus: Stop harassment of independent media outlet TUT.BY

Launched in 2000, TUT.BY is con­sid­ered the main inde­pen­dent online news out­let in the coun­try. It is an impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion for Belaru­sians look­ing for objec­tive infor­ma­tion about the sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try. Since August 2020,TUT.BY has report­ed on demon­stra­tions and the ongo­ing crack­down on pro­test­ers, activists, jour­nal­ists and human rights defend­ers. One of TUT.BY’s jour­nal­ists, Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich, was sen­tenced to six months in prison for inves­ti­gat­ing the death of a pro­test­er Raman Ban­daren­ka.

TUT.BY is not the only online resource blocked in the after­math of the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion; dozens of oth­ers have been cen­sored, includ­ing Euro­ra­dio, Bel­sat, and most recent­ly – Probono.by. For this rea­son many peo­ple switch to fol­low­ing inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion on Telegram and oth­er social media, but the author­i­ties tar­get such chan­nels and their admin­is­tra­tors too.

“Online space in Belarus is shrink­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly,” said Sarah Clarke, Head of Europe and Cen­tral Asia. “In addi­tion to block­ing Inter­net resources, we have seen repeat­ed Inter­net shut­downs and dis­rup­tions when­ev­er the peo­ple of Belarus took to the streets. There are cur­rent­ly 16 jour­nal­ists behind bars, many blog­gers, and hun­dreds of activists and pro­test­ers. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must act, they can­not go back to ‘busi­ness as usu­al’ with the regime – more sanc­tions are need­ed.” 

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office found the TUT.BY web­site had vio­lat­ed  the Law on Mass Media on numer­ous counts, chiefly in rela­tion to the pub­lish­ing and shar­ing of banned infor­ma­tion in a num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions. These mate­ri­als con­tained infor­ma­tion about the unreg­is­tered BYSOL foun­da­tion, which col­lects funds to sup­port vic­tims of human rights vio­la­tions and per­se­cu­tion since August 2020. 

ARTICLE 19 con­demns the ongo­ing crack­down on free­dom of expres­sion in Belarus and stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with per­se­cut­ed media work­ers. We call on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to strength­en the sanc­tions against the regime and to sup­port media and civ­il soci­ety in the coun­try as they oper­ate in a increas­ing­ly hos­tile and dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment.