The Belarusian Association of Journalists Requested the Presidential Administration to Defend Journalists

The sit­u­a­tion has aggra­vat­ed unprece­dent­ed­ly since recent­ly. The jour­nal­ists are fined again for the mere fact of appear­ance of their mate­ri­als in for­eign media.

The Asso­ci­a­tion tried to solve the sit­u­a­tion before, address­ing to dif­fer­ent gov­ern­men­tal and judi­cial author­i­ties, includ­ing the Supreme Court of Belarus, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the Pub­lic Prosecutor’s Office, and the KGB, all in vain. None of the author­i­ties took any steps in order to solve the prob­lem. A reply mes­sage from the KGB wasn’t received at all.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists:

- express­es con­cern in con­nec­tion with mass admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists for imple­men­ta­tion of their pro­fes­sion­al duties with a ref­er­ence to arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es;

- asks to facil­i­tate ter­mi­na­tion of unground­ed intru­sion into the imple­men­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists’ right to receive, keep, and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, exer­cised by the offi­cers, rep­re­sent­ing the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus;

- requests to ensure the jour­nal­ists’ free­dom of speech as well as its free expres­sion, guar­an­teed by arti­cles 33 and 34 of Con­sti­tu­tion of Belarus.

The BAJ pro­pos­es to con­sid­er the ques­tions from the appeal dur­ing a meet­ing with offi­cials from the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion and oth­er gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties as well as all oth­er stake-hold­ers, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

Apart from that, it should be men­tioned that the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has recent­ly sent a let­ter about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists to Mr David Kaye, Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the pro­mo­tion and pro­tec­tion of the right to free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion.

The Asso­ci­a­tion has request­ed the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur to request expla­na­tions from the state author­i­ties of Belarus regard­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for con­tribut­ing their mate­ri­als to for­eign media out­lets as well as facil­i­tate ter­mi­na­tion of this pros­e­cu­tion on the part of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties.