Provincial newspaper dodges penalty for using ‘extremist’ visuals

The prosecutor’s office acknowl­edged that Lep­el­s­ki Krai had dis­trib­uted “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als. Still, the edi­to­r­i­al staff was not pun­ished, unlike non-state pub­li­ca­tions, which are usu­al­ly fined.

Lep­el­s­ki Krai used a well-known pho­to from the TUT.by news por­tal to illus­trate its mate­r­i­al

Reader spots watermarked photos from ‘extremist’ news outlet

Vit­seb­sk activist Dzmit­ry Kar­neyen­ka filed a com­plaint with the Lep­el Dis­trict Prosecutor’s Office, point­ing out that the web­site of the region­al news­pa­per uses pho­tos with the inscrip­tion “TUT.BY”, which can be con­sid­ered “dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist con­tent”. He point­ed out five such cas­es and asked the pros­e­cu­tor to eval­u­ate the pub­li­ca­tions and bring the vio­la­tors to jus­tice.

Prosecutor confirms law violations, but no one held accountable

Dzmit­ry Kar­neyen­ka received a reply from the Lep­el Dis­trict Prosecutor’s Office. Pros­e­cu­tor Vital Zhy­hi­mont said that edi­tor Yana Mis­nik was ordered to elim­i­nate vio­la­tions of leg­is­la­tion on coun­ter­ing extrem­ism, and access to the archived ver­sion of the site was closed.

The employ­ee respon­si­ble for the site was fired before the inci­dent, so it is impos­si­ble to bring her to dis­ci­pli­nary respon­si­bil­i­ty. The com­plaint was referred to the Lep­el Dis­trict Inter­nal Affairs Depart­ment to con­sid­er the issue of hold­ing them admin­is­tra­tive­ly liable.

Last year, the news­pa­per was purged: the for­mer edi­tor of the Lep­el news­pa­per, Svi­at­lana Voz­ni­ak, and sev­er­al employ­ees were dis­missed for fail­ing to meet ide­o­log­i­cal require­ments.

Non-state publications face harsh penalties for similar ‘mistakes’

For exam­ple, in 2021, Ali­ak­sei Shota, the direc­tor and edi­tor-in-chief of the news out­let Hrodna.Life, was fined $4,430 for pub­lish­ing mate­ri­als linked to an extrem­ist Telegram chan­nel, even though the chan­nel was not des­ig­nat­ed as extrem­ist at the time of pub­li­ca­tion. He also failed to appeal the deci­sion and receive an install­ment of the fine.

On June 3, 2021, Iry­na Novik, the publication’s spe­cial projects edi­tor, was fined $286 and spent three days in deten­tion await­ing tri­al.