Statement of BAJ Regarding Persecution of Journalists in March 2017

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­is­tered 123 cas­es of vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights so far since the start of March.

Рэпрэсіі супраць журналістаў у Беларусі ў 2017 годзе (Табліца, абнаўляецца)

Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists in Belarus in March 2017 (Chart, updat­ed)

The inci­dents include:

94 deten­tions;

6 inci­dents of beat­ing jour­nal­ists by police;

3 inci­dents of dam­ag­ing jour­nal­ists’ equip­ment;

2 inci­dents of seizure of equip­ment;

40 admin­is­tra­tive cas­es.

Jour­nal­ists have been on tri­al under sev­er­al arti­cle of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code of Vio­la­tions, name­ly:

art. 22.9 for ille­gal pro­duc­tion of mass media prod­ucts (i.e. for work with­out accred­i­ta­tion);

art. 23.34 for vio­lat­ing the pro­ce­dure for orga­niz­ing or hold­ing mass events (like par­tic­i­pants of an unsanc­tioned mass event);

art. 23.4 for dis­obe­di­ence to law­ful police’s demands;

art. 17.1 for minor hooli­gan­ism,

and some oth­ers.

In 10 cas­es jour­nal­ists were pun­ished with arrests vary­ing from 5 to 15 days, in 4 cas­es jour­nal­ists were fined for up to 40 basic amounts (which makes 920 BYN, or equiv­a­lent to 460 euro). Over 10 cas­es are yet to be resolved in court.

On March 31, two Min­sk offices of Bel­sat TV chan­nel (part of Pol­ish pub­lic TV, broad­cast­ing via satel­lite specif­i­cal­ly for Belaru­sian audi­ence, by Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists) were searched, and equip­ment was seized. The police of the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee said the actions fol­lowed a request of the trade­mark own­er (Bel­sat Plus sell­er of satel­lite equip­ment, see back­ground of the case) to pro­tect its copy­right.

PA BAJ sup­ports the stance that, in fact, the author­i­ties pur­sue a dif­fer­ent goal – to stop activ­i­ties of inde­pen­dent TV jour­nal­ists in Belarus, espe­cial­ly dur­ing mass actions of protest.

BAJ reminds of its state­ment dat­ed March 12, 2017 and reit­er­ates its demands:

– To hold an imme­di­ate inves­ti­ga­tion of the mas­sive vio­la­tion of jour­nal­ists’ rights by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies;

– To iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble for vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights and to hold them liable;

– To take nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights in future;

– To protest against the court rul­ings on hold­ing the jour­nal­ists liable accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tive law for that they had only imple­ment­ed their pro­fes­sion­al duties; to over­turn the deci­sions on fines, to release jour­nal­ists under arrest;

– And to return pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and oth­er equip­ment to jour­nal­ists.