Access to popular local news site blocked over “extremist” content

Accord­ing to the agency, a num­ber of arti­cles post­ed on media-polesye.by con­tained pho­tographs and videos from web­sites rec­og­nized as extrem­ist by the author­i­ties, as well as links to such web­sites.

In addi­tion, some Media-Polesye arti­cles were accom­pa­nied by videos, in which the social and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Belarus fol­low­ing the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was described in a neg­a­tive way and the actions of gov­ern­ment and law enforce­ment agen­cies were dis­cred­it­ed, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office said.

Access to the pub­li­ca­tion was blocked for at least six months.

Launched in June 2012, media-polesye.by is a pop­u­lar site that cov­ers news in the Luniniec, Pin­sk and Stolin dis­tricts in the Brest region.

The web­site became inac­ces­si­ble to Belaru­sian users on the evening of Sep­tem­ber 2. It is now avail­able only to users out­side Belarus or via VPN.

Dozens of news sites have been blocked in Belarus in an unre­lent­ing crack­down on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism that began fol­low­ing the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.