Legislative amendments further restrict media in Belarus, says OSCE media freedom representative

“The adop­tion of these amend­ments sends a wor­ry­ing sig­nal about media free­dom and plu­ral­ism – online and offline –in Belarus,” Désir said. “I call on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to care­ful­ly review the law and bring it in line with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and OSCE com­mit­ments on free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of the media.

Among oth­er things, the lat­est amend­ment to the law “On the mass media”, adopt­ed 14 June by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Nation­al Assem­bly, includes a gen­er­al ban on for­eign­ers, for­eign legal enti­ties, Belaru­sian enti­ties with at least 20 per­cent stock belong­ing to for­eign or inter­na­tion­al enti­ties, and state­less per­sons estab­lish­ing media out­lets in the coun­try (para 3 of Arti­cle 3).

Addi­tion­al­ly, the amend­ments to the law pro­vide the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion with strict con­trol over all online resources (Art. 51–1). “No Min­istry should have the exclu­sive pow­er to block access to any online resource with­out a court deci­sion. Con­tent removal should require judi­cial over­sight,” Désir said.

The own­ers of online resources are now oblig­ed to “analyse” all con­tent as the law demands that they are respon­si­ble for pre­vent­ing dis­sem­i­na­tion of untruth­ful infor­ma­tion that may harm State or pub­lic inter­est, or defame indi­vid­u­als or legal enti­ties. They are also liable if their resources are used to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion or com­ments by inter­net users who have not gone through pri­or iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, as defined by the State (Art. 30–1).

“Many of the pro­vi­sions are exces­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate and could result in the cur­tail­ing of free­dom of expres­sion, includ­ing the right of cit­i­zens to remain anony­mous online,” Désir said.

The Rep­re­sen­ta­tive also not­ed that the con­cerns expressed by nation­al media NGOs, such as the Belarus Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, had not been tak­en into account.

The law also con­tin­ues to for­bid cit­i­zens from con­tribut­ing to for­eign media with­out spe­cial accred­i­ta­tion, despite calls by the Office of the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media to dis­con­tin­ue this prac­tice.