Judge slaps “extremist” label on tut.by, one more site linked to tut.by team

The judge des­ig­nat­ed the con­tent of tut.by and zerkalo.io, their social media accounts and even logos as “extrem­ist” at the request of the inte­ri­or min­istry.

The rul­ing means that a per­son or enti­ty will face penal­ties for dis­trib­ut­ing any piece of the two web­sites’ con­tent.

The tut.by team said in a state­ment that it would appeal the rul­ing. “We are con­fi­dent that we have not bro­ken the law and the inte­ri­or ministry’s accu­sa­tions are base­less,” it said.

On May 18, law enforce­ment offi­cers raid­ed the offices of tut.by and oth­er com­pa­nies con­trolled by Tut By Media LLC, as well as the homes of some of their work­ers. Fif­teen peo­ple, includ­ing tut.by Edi­tor in Chief Mary­na Zolata­va and a num­ber of jour­nal­ists, were arrest­ed and have since been held in cus­tody.

The State Con­trol Com­mit­tee announced on May 18 that crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have been insti­tut­ed against Tut By Media LLC senior exec­u­tives under Part Two of the Crim­i­nal Code’s Arti­cle 243, which penal­izes felony tax eva­sion.

On the same day, the infor­ma­tion min­istry blocked access to tut.by at the request of the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office.

Some tut.by work­ers launched zerkalo.io in July. The site, which became unavail­able in Belarus hours after its launch, has the same design as tut.by.