Belarus website editor slapped with heavy fine

Con­vict­ed of “neg­li­gence” for alleged­ly let­ting her staff use the dis­patch­es of the state-owned news agency BelTA with­out a sub­scrip­tion, Zolata­va was ordered to pay a fine of 7,650 rubles and court costs of 6,000 rubles, or a total of more than 5,600 euros – the equiv­a­lent of the aver­age annu­al salary in Belarus.

Zolata­va and a dozen oth­er jour­nal­ists were held for sev­er­al days after raids on Tut.by and the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN last August, when the pro-gov­ern­ment media sub­ject­ed both media out­lets to an intense smear cam­paign. Zolata­va, who had faced a pos­si­ble five-year jail term, was the only one to be tried on crim­i­nal charges. Her col­leagues were ordered to pay dam­ages to BelTA with­out being tried.

“This heavy fine con­sti­tutes the lat­est act of intim­i­da­tion against the last inde­pen­dent media out­lets in Belarus,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk. “The way the author­i­ties per­sist­ed with this case, which was out of all pro­por­tion from the out­set, shows their deter­mi­na­tion to under­mine the state media’s rivals. It is high time the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the Euro­pean Union, took steps to end the esca­lat­ing crack­down in Belarus.”

Dur­ing the tri­al, the defence insist­ed that Tut.by’s arti­cles were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly post­ed after BelTA’s dis­patch­es had been pub­lished – a quar­ter of an hour after their pub­li­ca­tion for sub­scribers.

Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists said they had been pres­sured to pro­vide tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. The IP address­es used to access the BelTA web­site are shared not only by Tut.by’s jour­nal­ists but by all vis­i­tors to Tut.by’s art gallery. Zolata­va and her col­leagues learned in the course of this case that their phones had been tapped, in vio­la­tion of the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of their sources.

Zolatava’s tri­al came amid efforts by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to tight­en their grip on the media. They include a dra­con­ian new media law, block­ing of lead­ing news sites and an unprece­dent­ed wave of fines against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. Belarus is ranked 155th out of 180 coun­tries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Free­dom Index.