Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting December 22, 2014 – January 4, 2015

On Decem­ber 23, the inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion­al agency Bela­PAN dis­sem­i­nat­ed the state­ment regard­ing the con­tin­u­ous block­ing of the company’s IP address­es – belapan.by, belapan.com, and naviny.by. The com­pa­ny demand­ed that the state bod­ies inves­ti­gat­ed the facts of unlaw­ful block­ing and pub­lished the results of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

We remind that on Novem­ber 20, access to Bela­PAN had been blocked, for both Belaru­sian and for­eign users. Bela­PAN was able to restore access by chang­ing IP address­es on Decem­ber 21, but at around 2pm the same day the new address­es were blocked, too. “It is unknown yet who took the deci­sion on block­ing and who per­formed it. The host­ing com­pa­ny and the state monop­o­list Bel­t­ele­com claimed they did not have infor­ma­tion about it. Attempts to get answers with the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion were use­less,” says the state­ment. The web­sites resumed work lat­er in spite of the block­ing.

As became known on Decem­ber 23, 26 state-run news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines would get bud­get sup­port in 2015. The respec­tive rul­ing of the Gov­ern­ment No 1208, dat­ed Decem­ber 20, enlists the news­pa­pers for the sup­port: news­pa­pers Respub­li­ka, Sovet­skaya Belorus­sia, Zor­ka, Belorusskaya Niva, Sportiv­naya panora­ma, Zvyaz­da, etc. The sum of the finances was not men­tioned.

And, accord­ing to the state bud­get for 2015, the whole sum of state sup­port to mass media amounts to 804.2 bil­lion rubles. From them, 653.74 bil­lion rubles are allo­cat­ed to TV and radio broad­cast­ing; 70.2 bil­lion rubles are allo­cat­ed to print papers and pub­lish­ing.

On Decem­ber 24, the Cen­ter for Legal Trans­for­ma­tions (Lawtrend) announced the results of mon­i­tor­ing of web­sites of state bod­ies. Accord­ing to the results, web­sites of local author­i­ties did not com­ply with the require­ments of the Law on Peti­tion­ing of Phys­i­cal and Legal Per­sons. The research looked into con­tents of 135 web­sites (7 of the region­al exec­u­tive com­mit­tees and the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, 128 dis­trict and city exec­u­tive com­mit­tees).

The lat­est amend­ments to the law required com­pul­so­ry con­sid­er­a­tion of peti­tions sub­mit­ted with the help of elec­tron­ic instru­ments. How­ev­er, new amend­ments are being planned to make con­sid­er­a­tion of peti­tions filed through e‑mail option­al; the only com­pul­so­ry form for con­sid­er­ing peti­tions will be elec­tron­ic peti­tions sub­mit­ted through a spe­cial con­tact form on every web­site. Also, the amend­ments plan to impose on peti­tion­ers a com­pen­sa­tion­al duty, in case they peti­tion abu­sive­ly.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to the research by Lawtrend, not even every web­site pro­vides the required con­tact form.

On Decem­ber 24 the pri­vate print­ing house Plu­tos Mar­ket refused to print the lat­est issue of the non-state news­pa­per Svo­bod­nye Novosti Plus (SN+), with­out explain­ing the rea­sons.

The deputy head of the print­ing house Ihar Vish­neus­ki said the trou­ble was about bro­ken equip­ment. He explained that the equip­ment had not been repaired yet to print the news­pa­per of such a big cir­cu­la­tion (over 30 000 copies). He did not say whether the print­ing house would pub­lish the next issue. The edi­to­r­i­al office had to urgent­ly look for anoth­er print­er. On Jan­u­ary 6, the edi­tor Vasil Zda­niuk signed a con­tract for pub­lish­ing the news­pa­per with the state monop­o­list Belarus­ki Dom Druku.

On Decem­ber 24, the Viteb­sk region­al court upheld sen­tences to the sev­en peo­ple in the pho­to made for Novem­ber 5 near famous graf­fi­ti in Viteb­sk.

We remind that the pho­to was tak­en by region­al activists before Novem­ber 5 and pub­lished on a Face­book page of the city and sev­er­al web­sites. The pho­to was men­tioned with­in the Stand Up For Jour­nal­ism cam­paign (the EFJ cam­paign is held year­ly and BAJ also joins it, adopt­ing the cam­paign to the local con­text).

Quite unex­pect­ed­ly, the jour­nal­ists were accused of vio­lat­ing the pro­ce­dure of hold­ing mass events (arti­cle 23.34 of the Law on Mass Events of Belarus).

(Note: accord­ing to the legal­ly estab­lished pro­ce­dure, they should have applied to the local author­i­ties at least two weeks before, ask­ing a per­mit to stage the mass event; the author­i­ties can refuse if the orga­niz­er fails to set­tle secu­ri­ty issues, these are to arrange an agree­ment with an ambu­lance, fire­fight­ers and guardians to be on duty for emer­gen­cies – this is a typ­i­cal pro­ce­dure for orga­niz­ing mass events and typ­i­cal rea­sons for refus­ing per­mits to hold a mass event).

The court sen­tenced six peo­ple (Ale­na Stsi­ap­na­va, Ale­na Shabunia, Zmitser Kaza­ke­vich, Kas­tus Mardzv­intsau, Pavel Lev­in­au, and the activist Tat­siana Seviarynets) to fines from 2.7 to near 3.7 mil­lion rubles (around $250 – $330); one per­son (a pass­er-by Piotr Berlin­au) was held pre­ven­tive­ly in pre-tri­al deten­tion (so that he would not get lost, because he did not have a per­ma­nent reg­is­tra­tion), so the judge found it just to pun­ish him with the three days arrest he had already served.

The appeal was heard simul­ta­ne­ous­ly by sev­er­al judges. The log­ic is unclear, but the jour­nal­ists were split in cou­ples, Pavel Levinau’s appeal was heard sep­a­rate­ly. Judges Iry­na Smali­ako­va, Svi­at­lana Ivano­va and Edvard Mar­ti­rasian were unan­i­mous in uphold­ing the deci­sion of the court of low­er instance.

BAJ as well as the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists protest­ed against the sanc­tions with open state­ments. Our col­leagues form the EFJ staged a pho­to ses­sion in a sim­i­lar man­ner with the ques­tion “Is this a crime?”

On Decem­ber 24, jour­nal­ist Ales Liauchuk from Brest was fined for a large sum for con­tribut­ing to Bel­sat with­out accred­i­ta­tion (admin­is­tra­tive arti­cle 22.9); mean­time, the jour­nal­ist claims the court deci­sion was poor­ly ground­ed, most­ly on alle­ga­tions from the KGB.

Ales Liauchuk pre­sent­ed his press cre­den­tials of Bela­PAN non-staff cor­re­spon­dent. The judge did not take the doc­u­ments into account. The jour­nal­ist said the case mate­ri­als clear­ly stat­ed that the KGB had estab­lished the fact of his coop­er­a­tion with Bel­sat, but it was not any­how proved. The jour­nal­ist said the deci­sion had been writ­ten before­hand. “When I saw it was a cir­cus and nobody was going to con­sid­er my case, I refused to tes­ti­fy and answer ques­tions,” he said. The judge fined him for 6 mil­lion rubles (which is around $500). He is going to appeal to the Brest region­al court. This was the 14th case under arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code in 2014.

On Decem­ber 30, the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou received a reply from the police say­ing they were unable to estab­lish the per­sons who had pub­lished a libelous arti­cle about him on the web­site voskresinfo.com. The police replied it was not with­in their com­pe­tences to search for the per­sons respon­si­ble.

We remind that the men­tioned web­site pro­lif­er­at­ed arti­cles that can be deemed libelous against polit­i­cal and civ­il activists of Mahilow (it touched at least 20 peo­ple), espe­cial­ly in the wake of elec­toral cam­paigns.

A month before the civ­il activist Anton Kast­sou and jour­nal­ists Ihar Barysau and Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou filed appli­ca­tions to the police ask­ing to iden­ti­fy writ­ers of the web­site and to block the web­site. All of them received replies that the police acknowl­edged that the mate­ri­als were libelous, but were unable to do any­thing with it. In the reply to Barysau the police said the web­site was reg­is­tered in Ukraine, and in the reply to Kast­sou they said the web­site was reg­is­tered in Rus­sia. They

rec­om­mend­ed to defend hon­or and dig­ni­ty in courts of the coun­tries they men­tioned.