Support for journalists and media, solidarity campaigns, European awards, and TikTok launch: BAJ yearly closure

Vilnius, May 2023. Photo: BAJ

In this “mad, mad, mad, mad world” of war and conflict, the work of BAJ has intensified

The year began with the regime declar­ing BAJ an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion.” Impor­tant­ly, the asso­ci­a­tion was the first human rights orga­ni­za­tion to receive such a sta­tus. The KGB made the deci­sion extra­ju­di­cial­ly on Feb­ru­ary 28. It wasn’t a sur­prise for us.

BAJ deputy chair Barys Haret­s­ki stressed that the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the jour­nal­ists’ orga­ni­za­tion nat­u­ral­ly wors­ens the work­ing con­di­tions of media work­ers. It is an act of intim­i­da­tion and lim­its their rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties.

BAJ Chairman Andrei Bastunets. Photo: BAJ

BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets empha­sizes that Belarus is one of the world’s top three coun­tries with the high­est num­ber of impris­oned jour­nal­ists, as report­ed by Reporters With­out Bor­ders. Fol­low­ing Chi­na, Belarus has the high­est num­ber of female jour­nal­ists behind bars – 10. Belaru­sians hand­ed down three of the six most severe sen­tences for women jour­nal­ists in the world. Mary­na Zolata­va and Lud­mi­la Chek­ina received a 12-year sen­tence, and Vale­ria Kast­si­uho­va was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison.

Reporters Without Borders infographic

“We sup­port­ed our col­leagues in every pos­si­ble way,” empha­sized the head of the asso­ci­a­tion of jour­nal­ists. “This includ­ed con­duct­ing a glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paign.”

He refers to the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon for Impris­oned Jour­nal­ists. The action start­ed in Vil­nius and took place on almost all con­ti­nents. With­in a year, about 30 coun­tries joined it. The lat­est report came from Cana­da, where rep­re­sen­ta­tives of IFEX, a glob­al net­work to pro­tect and pro­mote free­dom of expres­sion, joined the marathon.

“We received the sharpest mes­sage from Hol­ly­wood,” said the orga­niz­er of this move­ment. Thanks to him, the marathon con­tin­ues. “Ernie Bar­barash, a US direc­tor, joined the sol­i­dar­i­ty action in sup­port of Homel jour­nal­ist Larysa Schyrako­va.”

Ernie Barbarash

Even in far­away Aus­tralia, the local Media, Enter­tain­ment, and Arts Alliance adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing the action and demand­ing the release of the jour­nal­ists. Reporters With­out Bor­ders joined the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon most wide­ly, launch­ing the cam­paign in 12 coun­tries.

“We con­tin­ue our human rights activ­i­ties. Although some of the focus of our work has changed,” Andrei Bas­tunets says. “Inter­na­tion­al struc­tures wide­ly sup­port our activ­i­ties. Dur­ing the recent meet­ing of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment del­e­ga­tion on rela­tions with Belarus, the issue of the state of the media sec­tor was dis­cussed. We also active­ly coop­er­ate with the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. BAJ received the East­ern Part­ner­ship Civ­il Soci­ety Forum Award in Novem­ber 2023.”

Andrei Bastunets at the awards ceremony in Brussels. Photo: Telegram channel “Foreign Affairs Representative Office”

BAJ EXISTS THANKS TO OUR READERS’ SUPPORT | PATREON

The Mirror Game. TikTok launch. Peer support campaigns

BAJ’s out­reach is trans­par­ent and mea­sur­able through our web­site and social media. By the way, BAJ was forced to move to the baj.media domain this year. This was a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, as we were threat­ened with the seizure of the domain name baj.by by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. Imme­di­ate­ly after we pub­lished our posi­tion on hold­ing the Inter­net Gov­er­nance Forum, the author­i­ties began to take active steps in this direc­tion. Real­iz­ing the dan­ger, the web­site of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was moved to a new inter­na­tion­al domain.

“At the same time, we fought against the block­ing of mir­ror sites by the Belaru­sian regime and Roskom­nad­zor,” says Barys Haret­s­ki. “As soon as we were blocked in Belarus, we imme­di­ate­ly bought anoth­er domain name. Due to restric­tions in Rus­sia, our posi­tion in Google search results has been low­ered, but there are some great trends that I won’t reveal so as not to give infor­ma­tion to our ene­mies.”

Barys Haretski, BAJ Deputy Chairman. Photo: BAJ

A few words about our audi­ence, who have also been fac­ing some chal­leng­ing times. Accord­ing to our sur­vey, many read­ers feel fatigued or burnt out by bad news. Exiled jour­nal­ists often face sev­er­al chal­lenges, includ­ing being unable to meet with fam­i­ly and friends, deal­ing with psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress, and hav­ing to learn a new lan­guage and find work in their field.

“Thanks to this research, we have iden­ti­fied two dis­tinct audi­ence seg­ments,” says the BAJ deputy chair­man. “One group con­sists of mature media pro­fes­sion­als, while the oth­er is made up of read­ers aged 20–25. We launched a Tik­Tok chan­nel to reach a younger audi­ence. We repack­age impor­tant infor­ma­tion for them. It’s one thing to cre­ate a text, but you also need to deliv­er it to the read­er in an appeal­ing way. So we now have a well-staffed SMM depart­ment work­ing with Insta­gram, Face­book, and Telegram.”

We have all the rea­sons to be opti­mistic about social media. How­ev­er, Tik­Tok is by far show­ing the most progress.

“The Tik­Tok launch was a sig­nif­i­cant moment for BAJ as a brand,” says Kat­siary­na Vasil­ion­ak, host of BAJ Tik­Tok. “In the first six months, we reached over half a mil­lion views, despite the niche top­ic and con­tent exclu­sive­ly in Belaru­sian. It’s nice when Belaru­sians come up to me on the street and say, ‘I know you, you’re from BAJ, I saw you on Tik­Tok.’ It means we suc­cess­ful­ly con­veyed the mes­sage to the audi­ence. Most of our views come from Belarus.

Katsiaryna Vasilionak

Read­ers may also have noticed that there are many more unique pub­li­ca­tions on the site. It is also an attempt to strength­en BAJ’s out­reach cam­paign. We cov­er the issues and chal­lenges that jour­nal­ists encounter, includ­ing some absurd sit­u­a­tions. Some­one can not take their car out of Ukraine, some­one has dif­fi­cul­ties in obtain­ing a res­i­dence per­mit.

Barys Haret­s­ki states that the BAJ par­tic­i­pat­ed in and sup­port­ed fundrais­ing cam­paigns for jour­nal­ists in need. Specif­i­cal­ly, the orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ed Yulia Tyalpuk after she was injured in an acci­dent in Bia­lystok. “We man­aged to raise 16,000 zlo­tys. She’s under­go­ing treat­ment now.”

This year, we suc­cess­ful­ly raised funds for our col­leagues Yury Nest­siaren­ka, Hen­nadz Ver­atyn­s­ki, Siarhei Sat­suk, and Leanid Sudalen­ka.

BAJ active­ly sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed the “We Care!” sol­i­dar­i­ty marathon, the most high-pro­file cam­paign of the sum­mer. Joint efforts have col­lect­ed over 574,000 euros. It was a clear suc­cess for the demo­c­ra­t­ic forces and the media.

Last­ly, Lithua­nia host­ed an annu­al inter­na­tion­al soc­cer tour­na­ment for jour­nal­ists, which has become a tra­di­tion dur­ing peace­time and con­tin­ues to this day. It was attend­ed by teams from Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Geor­gia, Arme­nia, and Hun­gary, as well as from Vil­nius and Kau­nas. Belaru­sians held forth place!

Belarusian football team. Druskininkai, 2023. Photo: BAJ

“The number of people requesting attorneys’ services is decreasing”

Human rights work remains one of BAJ’s core activ­i­ties. This direc­tion has under­gone a great deal of change.

— “Now, with Leanid Sudalen­ka back at work, there are rep­re­sen­ta­tives in all regions,” empha­sizes Aleh Ahe­jeu, BAJ deputy chair­man. Ahe­jeu was rec­og­nized this year as Human Rights Defend­er of the Year. “How­ev­er, the num­ber of peo­ple request­ing attor­neys’ ser­vices is decreas­ing. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the focus was on pro­vid­ing legal assis­tance. How­ev­er, there has been an increase in requests from indi­vid­u­als out­side of Belarus. It’s a lot of work.”

Aleh Ahejeu. Photo: BAJ

At the same time, the inter­na­tion­al track needs more atten­tion. The Coun­cil of Europe refused to have any con­tact with the Belaru­sian regime and instead direct­ed its resources towards demo­c­ra­t­ic forces and civ­il soci­ety. This includ­ed two impor­tant events in Stras­bourg and War­saw, which were attend­ed by BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

“Of course, repres­sion doesn’t get any less intense. We’re see­ing a plateau of sorts. Some media work­ers are released, while oth­ers are detained. The num­ber of impris­oned jour­nal­ists is not decreas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” Aleh Ahe­jeu recalls. “It is evi­dent that repres­sion is not abat­ing, and the regime does not have the resources to aggra­vate the sit­u­a­tion.”

Seeking quality and experimentation

Edu­ca­tion­al out­reach is equal­ly impor­tant and has always been con­sid­ered BAJ’s trump card. The webi­na­rs and work­shops haven’t stopped. And they enjoy great inter­est.

“It was a year of qual­i­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion,” the respon­si­ble man­agers stat­ed. “We count­ed the total num­ber of event par­tic­i­pants, which turned out to be 348 peo­ple. It’s like in our best years. That is, there are few­er events but more par­tic­i­pants.”

The asso­ci­a­tion staff noticed that approx­i­mate­ly one-third of the atten­dees were new to the pro­fes­sion or plan­ning to enter the field. Edu­ca­tion­al cours­es are increas­ing­ly attend­ed not only by jour­nal­ists but also by media activists and human rights defend­ers.

The long-term course of fact-check­ing reflects well the demands of the times. At least 28 peo­ple attend­ed the work­shops.

“It is espe­cial­ly note­wor­thy that Ukrain­ian part­ners and orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to work with us. This shows con­fi­dence in BAJ,” added those in charge of edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties.

A request has been made for offline events, but it now requires more resources due to refunds for trav­el and accom­mo­da­tion fees.

The revival of the Free Word con­test under the aus­pices of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was a bright and sym­bol­ic event. In Sep­tem­ber 2023 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists from dif­fer­ent coun­tries attend­ed the award cer­e­mo­ny in Vil­nius. Just like in the good old days.

The winners of the 2023 Free Word Awards. Photo: BAJ

Read more:

Political prisoner and blogger Pavel Vinahradau transferred to high-security prison

Aliaksei Batsiukou, vlogger and journalist from Mahiliou, reportedly detained

BELARUS 2022 – 2023. HUMAN RIGHTS. CIVIL SOCIETY. MASS MEDIA