Harassment of journalists breaks records in Belarus – nearly 100 fines so far this year

No few­er than 99 fines have been slapped on Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists “work­ing with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion” so far in 2018 – 91 of them on reporters work­ing for just one media out­let, Bel­sat TV, a Belaru­sian exile TV chan­nel based in neigh­bour­ing Poland.

“This unprece­dent­ed spate of fines is designed sole­ly to gag inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk. “It is part of an all-out harass­mentcam­paign against the country’s last crit­i­cal media voic­es. Belarus’ inter­na­tion­al part­ners must, as a mat­ter of urgency, press the author­i­ties to stop this.”

The meth­ods used are clas­sic. The author­i­ties force inde­pen­dent media to base them­selves out­side the coun­try and then refuse to give press accred­i­ta­tion to their cor­re­spon­dents, which means they have to work ille­gal­ly. The rate at which fines are being issued is ris­ing expo­nen­tial­ly: 10 in 2016, 69 in 2017 and now 99 so far this year.

Some jour­nal­ists get spe­cial atten­tion. After 10 fines last year, Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ist Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki has already received 12 this year, totalling 4,700 euros. Vol­ha Chay­chyts, who also works for Bel­sat TV, got sev­en fines last year and has already received nine this year, totalling 3,880 euros. The aver­age month­ly salary in Belarus is about 400 euros.

Along with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) and many oth­er inter­na­tion­al NGOs, RSF has been call­ing for an over­haul of the for­eign media accred­i­ta­tion law ever since its adop­tion in 2008. But the author­i­ties have kept on tough­en­ing media leg­is­la­tion instead of relax­ing it.

Amend­ments adopt­ed in June extend­ed the accred­i­ta­tion sys­tem to online media. And a recent cab­i­net decree con­di­tioned all broad­cast per­mits for for­eign media on exam­i­na­tion of the media’s con­tent by a com­mis­sion that reports to the infor­ma­tion min­istry.

Belarus is ranked 155th out of 180 coun­tries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Free­dom Index.