Human rights defenders call to drop criminal charges against BelaPAN director

One month has passed since the author­i­ties opened a crim­i­nal case against head of the country’s lead­ing inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN Ales Lipai. The case was ini­ti­at­ed by the Min­sk Office of the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions Depart­ment of the State Con­trol Com­mit­tee on charges of “delib­er­ate eva­sion of pay­ment of income tax on a large scale for 2016–2017” (part 2, Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

The cir­cum­stances of the case sug­gest its polit­i­cal bias, which puts it on a par with the con­vic­tion of Ales Biali­ats­ki, head of the Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na», under the same charges in 2011, and the ongo­ing pros­e­cu­tion of the lead­ers of the inde­pen­dent Trade Union of Radio Elec­tron­ic Indus­try Work­ers Henadz Fia­dyn­ich and Ihar Kom­lik, whose case will be soon heard by a court.

The crim­i­nal case against Ales Lipai was ini­ti­at­ed on June 12. Mean­while, a week before that, on June 5, Lipai sub­mit­ted his income tax dec­la­ra­tion for 2016–2017. The same day, the Min­istry of Tax­es and Levies’ Office in the Par­tyzan­s­ki dis­trict of Min­sk imposed on him an admin­is­tra­tive penal­ty for late sub­mis­sion of the dec­la­ra­tion and re-cal­cu­lat­ed the amount of tax­es and fines, which were paid by Lipai in full on June 12.

Thus, by the time the crim­i­nal case was opened, Ales Lipai had both declared his income and ful­ly paid the tax­es and penal­ties imposed by the tax author­i­ties. Despite this, the case was opened, and two days lat­er Lipai’s apart­ment was searched and his prop­er­ty was seized. On June 26, he was pro­hib­it­ed to leave Belarus before tri­al.

We believe that these devel­op­ments are linked to the gen­er­al trend of increas­ing pres­sure on the inde­pen­dent media and Inter­net resources in Belarus (includ­ing amend­ments to the law on mass media).

One of the levers of pres­sure on the inde­pen­dent media is eco­nom­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion against them. It is man­i­fest­ed, in par­tic­u­lar, by an effec­tive pro­hi­bi­tion of for­eign invest­ments in the media, on the one hand, and by the annu­al gov­ern­ment fund­ing of pub­lic media in the amount of EUR 50 mln., on the oth­er. In addi­tion, state-run media enjoy oth­er non-com­pet­i­tive ben­e­fits (com­pul­so­ry sub­scrip­tion to news­pa­pers, inclu­sion of TV chan­nels in the bind­ing pack­ages, adver­tis­ing pref­er­ences, etc.). The mea­sures of finan­cial pres­sure on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism include heavy fines award­ed to free­lance jour­nal­ists for col­lab­o­rat­ing with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion (under Part 2 of Art. 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, which pun­ish­es vio­la­tions of the order of pro­duc­tion and (or) dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts and has been arbi­trar­i­ly treat­ed by police and courts). Jour­nal­ists are not fined for the con­tent of their pub­li­ca­tions, but for the fact of their appear­ance in the for­eign media.

Last year saw a record num­ber of court fines under this charge, with the total amount of 69 fines amount­ing to the equiv­a­lent of almost EUR 53,000 (this is more than in the pre­vi­ous three years com­bined). More­over, this year the sit­u­a­tion has only wors­ened, and the num­ber of con­vic­tions under Part 2, Art. 22.9 has already reached 60, with the amount of fines total­ing to the equiv­a­lent of EUR 50,000. All this hap­pens in a sit­u­a­tion where the issue of the per­se­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists work­ing with the for­eign media has been for sev­er­al years dis­cussed in the frame­work of the EU-Belarus Human Rights Dia­logue.

We also view the case of Ales Lipai as an attempt by gov­ern­ment agen­cies to use finan­cial leg­is­la­tion in order to hin­der the work of inde­pen­dent media.

In con­nec­tion with the above, we:

- believe that the pros­e­cu­tion of the head of the Bela­PAN news agency Ales Lipai to be relat­ed to his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties, which is an attempt to inter­fere with the work of Bela­PAN, one of the most author­i­ta­tive inde­pen­dent sources of reli­able and time­ly infor­ma­tion about Belarus;

- call to dis­con­tin­ue the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Ales Lipai;

- call to com­ply with the pro­vi­sions of arti­cle 19 of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights in estab­lish­ing restric­tions on the free­dom of expres­sion and to cease harass­ment of free­lance jour­nal­ists for car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties which do not infringe on this free­dom.

Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na»

Ini­tia­tive FORB

Legal Ini­tia­tive

Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee

Cen­ter for Legal Trans­for­ma­tion

Iden­ti­ty and Law

Assem­bly of Pro-Demo­c­ra­t­ic NGOs of Belarus

Belaru­sian Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­ter

Barys Zvozskau Belaru­sian Human Rights House

Advi­so­ry Cen­ter on Cur­rent Inter­na­tion­al Prac­tices and Imple­men­ta­tion of Them in Law “Human Con­stan­ta”

Edu­ca­tion­al and char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tion “Com­mit­tee Sol­i­dar­i­ty”