Website of Independent News Agency Attacked (Updated with Statement)

The attacks on the web­sites belapan.com and naviny.by start­ed on Sat­ur­day, at noon. On Mon­day, the web­sites still oper­at­ed with inter­rup­tions.

Ear­li­er, the web­sites of the news agency was attacked on Decem­ber 19 – 22, 2014, along­side with sev­er­al oth­er inde­pen­dent resources. How­ev­er, the pre­vi­ous time Bela­PAN report­ed that the prob­lem occurred through block­ing of the IP address. Then, BAJ demand­ed inves­ti­ga­tion of the attacks, how­ev­er, all the state agen­cies (Gen­er­al prosecutor’s office, the Min­istry of Home Affairs and the OAC, the Min­istry of Informa­ti­za­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) bureau­crat­i­cal­ly dis­missed the peti­tion.

Bela­PAN claimed the DDoS atatck has been a delib­er­ate pre­ven­tion of free flow of infor­ma­tion. 

“The attacks were launched after a crit­i­cal arti­cle about last week’s «Prayer for Belarus» cer­e­mo­ny was post­ed on naviny.by. It fea­tured inter­views with stu­dents sent to the event fea­tur­ing Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. We believe that it is this objec­tive cov­er­age, which was not aimed at pleas­ing author­i­ties, that angered ide­ol­o­gy work­ers who then ordered our web­sites hit by the DDoS attacks. 

We view the inci­dent as fla­grant pres­sure on an inde­pen­dent media out­let and a vio­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples of free­dom of speech and free­dom of the media. This is hap­pen­ing dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign. Such inci­dents should be tak­en into account by observers in their assess­ment of the con­di­tions in which Belarus’ pres­i­den­tial elec­tion has tak­en place. 

Bela­PAN is an offi­cial­ly reg­is­tered media out­let. In accor­dance with the require­ments of Belaru­sian laws our serv­er is locat­ed in Belarus, in the data cen­ter of state com­mu­ni­ca­tions monop­o­list Bel­t­ele­com. We demand that the safe main­te­nance of our sites and pro­tec­tion against any attempts at harm­ing their full-scale oper­a­tion be pro­vid­ed,» says Bela­PAN in its state­ment. 

Relat­ed:

Reg­u­la­tion of ByNet (sum­ma­ry)