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  • UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders Michel Forst Advises Journalists to Contact Him Directly

    The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation with human rights defenders Michel Forst visited the office of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. He met with BAJ representatives, journalists Pauliuk Bykouski, Tatsiana Karavenkova, Maryna Zolatava, and Dziyana Seradziuk.

    UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst

    UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion with human rights defend­ers Michel Forst is in Belarus with an unof­fi­cial vis­it at the invi­ta­tion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the Legal Ini­tia­tive, and the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee.

    Dur­ing the meet­ing, Tut.by edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va spoke about the “BelTA case”, in which she was con­vict­ed. Accord­ing to Zolata­va, the vio­la­tion com­mit­ted by the jour­nal­ists was out of pro­por­tion with the scale of pros­e­cu­tion of news out­lets and jour­nal­ists — deten­tions, search­es, inter­ro­ga­tions, heavy fines, and a crim­i­nal case. She believes that the pres­sure on Tut.by may be due to the fact that inde­pen­dent media is much more pop­u­lar with the audi­ence than state-owned media. The gov­ern­ment is try­ing hard to take inde­pen­dent media under con­trol.

    Bela­PAN jour­nal­ist Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va point­ed out that the “BelTA case” could have been launched, among oth­er things, in order for the author­i­ties to be able to dig into the com­put­ers of jour­nal­ists.

    “The author­i­ties received a lot of infor­ma­tion about the work of the Bela­PAN agency and the Tut.by por­tal, who are their sources of infor­ma­tion, etc.” , Tat­siana said.

    Speak­ing about the prob­lems of jour­nal­ists, Kar­avenko­va not­ed that gov­ern­ment offi­cials are try­ing to stop all con­tacts with the jour­nal­ists, who are denied accred­i­ta­tion. For exam­ple, Bela­PAN has been unable to get access to events with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Pres­i­dent and the Prime Min­is­ter for more than a year.

    «And we can’t appeal. They just respond to our ‘why’s’ — ‘because’, — Tat­siana said.

    Deutsche Welle jour­nal­ist Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki explained, there were obvi­ous elec­toral cycles in Belarus, in which there were peri­ods of cleanis­ing and lib­er­al­iza­tion, and then the screws are tight­ened again. «If we con­sid­er the BelTA case an ele­ment of this cycle, it began too ear­ly. If this is true, it could be a cer­tain sign of changes in the think­ing of the rul­ing elites, ”Byk­ous­ki said.

    Barys Haret­s­ki, Deputy Chair­man of BAJ, men­tioned the prob­lems of access to infor­ma­tion, harass­ment of jour­nal­ists of the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, deten­tions and oth­er obsta­cles to jour­nal­ists.

    This was also illus­trat­ed by the exam­ple of Novy Chas jour­nal­ist Dziyana Ser­adz­iuk , who was tried for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized event, but in fact she had been cov­er­ing an street action near the Ukrain­ian Embassy.

    The UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion with human rights defend­ers Michel Forst said that the sit­u­a­tion in the field of media and the rights of jour­nal­ists are with­in the scope of his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

    Mr. Forst point­ed out that he often works in coop­er­a­tion with the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on press free­dom. He explained the UNESCO mech­a­nism for the pro­tec­tion of jour­nal­ists. In extreme sit­u­a­tions, the UNESCO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al may direct­ly con­tact the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of a par­tic­u­lar coun­try and ask to step in. How­ev­er, it remains con­fi­den­tial and is not pub­li­cized.

    The UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights defend­ers, Michel Forst advised jour­nal­ists to con­tact him direct­ly with a request to respond to some events. In this case, he will be able to fol­low up and launch the mech­a­nism of inter­na­tion­al reac­tions,  And that can ulti­mate­ly have a pos­i­tive effect on the sit­u­a­tion.

    Dur­ing his unof­fi­cial vis­it to Belarus, Mr. Forst meets with human rights activists, jour­nal­ists, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, and the Min­istry of Jus­tice.

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