Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting July 27 – August 16, 2015

On July 27, the edi­to­r­i­al office of non-state news­pa­per Intex-press report­ed that the local Baranavichy enter­prise of com­mu­nal ser­vices failed to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to jour­nal­ists with­in legal­ly deter­mined peri­od. A jour­nal­ist of the news­pa­per found infor­ma­tion about a con­trac­tor for gov­ern­ment pur­chas­es to con­struct ani­mal bur­ial ground; the jour­nal­ist for­mu­lat­ed 16 ques­tions and sent the request in a writ­ten form. Instead of pro­vid­ing answers, the offi­cials redi­rect­ed the ques­tions with answers to the state-run news­pa­per Nash Kray, and sent a copy of the news­pa­per dat­ed July 15 to the edi­to­r­i­al office of IP. The jour­nal­ists under­line that the infor­ma­tion was exclu­sive, the ques­tions pre­pared was work of the jour­nal­ist of IP. “It is absolute­ly insult­ing. Infor­ma­tion is our busi­ness. The next step is that we can give mon­ey from sales of our news­pa­per to Nash Kray. We will com­plain to oth­er orga­ni­za­tions,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of IP.

On July 27 the Lenin dis­trict court of Mahilow closed the case against Ali­na Skrabuno­va (part 2, art. 22.9) because the peri­od of lim­i­ta­tion for admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings had expired. The jour­nal­ist was accused of ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts because of a report about a local fac­to­ry, broad­cast on Bel­sat on May 26. The first court hear­ings were held on July 23 and 24, the lawyer Barys Bukhel under­lined that the case mate­ri­als had a lot of vio­la­tions, and the judge sent them for com­ple­tion. Also, on July 30, the jour­nal­ist filed com­plaints to the prosecutor’s office against offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the police depart­ment of the Lenin dis­trict of Mahilow and the police depart­ment of the Mahilow region, but the com­plaints were lat­er dis­missed because, accord­ing to their reply, the com­plaint can only be filed only dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings under con­sid­er­a­tion.

On July 27, it was report­ed that the depart­ment on price poli­cies of the Min­istry of Econ­o­my did not find any vio­la­tions of the anti­mo­nop­oly law in the actions of the Repub­li­can Uni­tary Enter­prise Bel­posh­ta, which denies its ser­vices to the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Intex-press (Baranavichy). The edi­to­r­i­al office alleged that the postal enter­prise abused its dom­i­nat­ing posi­tion and vio­lat­ed the anti­mo­nop­oly law. The agency con­firmed that the enter­prise was on the reg­is­ter of eco­nom­ic enti­ties with dom­i­nat­ing posi­tion in series of “spe­cial postal com­mu­ni­ca­tions; ser­vices on sub­scrip­tion, deliv­ery and redi­rec­tion of print mass media”. How­ev­er, the agency wrote, “inclu­sion into the sub­scrip­tion cat­a­logue does not relate to ser­vices of spe­cial postal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sub­scrip­tion, deliv­ery and redi­rec­tion of print mass media”. A sim­i­lar reply was sent to Haze­ta Slonim­skaya.

On July 28 in Hly­bokaye Tat­siana Smotk­i­na was fined for 4.5 mil­lion rubles under art. 22.9 (ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts). The jour­nal­ist wrote an arti­cle “Roads will become more pos­i­tive” about an artis­tic exper­i­ment of stu­dents of the local school of art. The arti­cle was pub­lished on the web­site of the Radio Racy­ja. The case was ini­ti­at­ed by Hly­bokaye prosecutor’s office. The judge dis­missed the motion to hold the hear­ing in the Belaru­sian lan­guage. One wit­ness, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive pf the local exec­u­tive com­mit­tee whose words were quot­ed in the arti­cle, did not appear at the hear­ing. Tat­siana Smotk­i­na argued that she worked as a free­lancer and exer­cised her con­sti­tu­tion­al right to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion. Also, on July 23, anoth­er jour­nal­ist from Hly­bokaye Zmitser Lupach was fined under the same admin­is­tra­tive arti­cle.

The court of appeal upheld the deci­sion on fines on August 19. The hear­ing was closed behind closed doors, although there was the pub­lic will­ing to attend it.

On July 29, the Min­istry of Home Affairs sent a reply to BAJ regard­ing the peti­tion to stop pros­e­cu­tions against free­lance jour­nal­ists under admin­is­tra­tive art. 22.9. The agency respond­ed neg­a­tive­ly: any nego­ti­a­tions with the Min­istry are sense­less, ask the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry, says the reply signed by a deputy head of the depart­ment on crime pre­ven­tion S.Krasutski.

“These are police offi­cers who draw up admin­is­tra­tive reports against jour­nal­ists alleged­ly for vio­la­tion of mass media law. Not the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry, which is a repub­li­can exec­u­tive body, but police offi­cers who hard­ly even under­stand media leg­is­la­tion. In my view, it is an attempt to avoid dis­cus­sions in this urgent issue as dozens of jour­nal­ists in Belarus have faced it this year,” says Andrei Bas­tunets, chair­per­son of BAJ.

On August 4, a reply regard­ing the peti­tion on free­lancers was sent from the Supreme Court. The deputy chair Rus­lan Aniske­vich replied that the prob­lem “could not be solved” accord­ing to the Law on Pub­lic Peti­tions.

A sim­i­lar reply was sent ear­li­er from the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s office.

On July 29, the Kas­trych­nit­s­ki court of Mahilou closed the case against the jour­nal­ist and pub­lic activist Ihar Barysau because the peri­od of lim­i­ta­tions for admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings had expired. He was accused of vio­lat­ing art. 22.9, part 2 (ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts), and also of art. 23.34, part 2 (the pro­ce­dure for receiv­ing for­eign mon­e­tary aid). Also, the judge issued a spe­cial rul­ing to the police offi­cers for vio­la­tions in the doc­u­ments and sub­mis­sion of the case to court after the peri­od of lim­i­ta­tion was out.

We remind that on March 12, the editor’s flat was searched. The police were con­duct­ing a check-up in rela­tion to an arti­cle dat­ed Jan­u­ary 8. The arti­cle alleged that a direc­tor gen­er­al of a local enter­prise in Mahilow had lost a big sum in a casi­no. Upon three hours’ search­es, infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers and per­son­al com­put­ers were seized, with­out seizure pro­to­cols. The jour­nal­ist was nei­ther a sus­pect nor a wit­ness in a case; the case under art. 188 part 2 (defama­tion) was not open yet.

On July 29, in Homel jour­nal­ists Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Natal­l­lia Kry­vashei were detained at the door of the Cen­tral police depart­ment where a pick­et had been sched­uled. The jour­nal­ists were held for around three hours, then released. Police offi­cers drew up a report that Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki threat­ened them, which he denies. The jour­nal­ists called it a provo­ca­tion, and expressed an inten­tion to file com­plaints to the prosecutor’s office.

On August 5, the chief edi­tor of Haze­ta Slonim­skaya Vic­tor Val­adaschuk was sum­moned to the Slonim dis­trict police depart­ment where he was informed that an admin­is­tra­tive case was opened against the edi­to­r­i­al office under art. 23.33 (dis­tri­b­u­tion of false infor­ma­tion insult­ing hon­or and dig­ni­ty of the pres­i­dent).

The grounds for the case was an arti­cle «Voice from a vil­lage. The main thing is that the pres­i­dent can talk nice­ly» (dat­ed July 29, the col­umn Elec­tions-2015). The arti­cle rep­re­sents an inter­view with some vil­lagers about the forth­com­ing elec­tions. The edi­tor did not know yet which frag­ment caused the case to start. Accord­ing to arti­cle 23.33 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, the non-state news­pa­per could be fined for up to 500 basic amounts (90 mil­lion rubles, more than 5,000 euro).

On August 8, the cus­toms office on the bor­der cross­ing point Hrodna‑2 searched jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­sei Trubkin who was return­ing to Belarus and had sev­er­al copies of the book Sys­tem Białoruś by Andrzej Poc­zobut. The books, as well as the report by Vias­na Human Rights Vio­la­tion in Belarus in 2010 were tak­en for exam­i­na­tion. The jour­nal­ist spent on the bor­der around three hours, giv­ing expla­na­tions to the cus­toms offi­cers.

On August 11, jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na Andrei Mialesh­ka filed a com­plaint to the Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment ask­ing to reveal the per­sons who write anony­mous offen­sive online arti­cles about local jour­nal­ists and civ­il activists. The jour­nal­ist also found an arti­cle about him­self. For sev­er­al years, there were pub­lished arti­cles about, among all, BAJ mem­bers A.Dzianisau, A.Kirkevich, V.Parfionenka, U.Khilmanovich and V.Sazonau.