Resolution of international conference ‘The Perspectives and Challenges to Freelance Journalism in Europe. A Special Focus on Belarus’

Being the par­tic­i­pants of the inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on ‘The Per­spec­tives and Chal­lenges to Free­lance Jour­nal­ism in Europe. A Spe­cial Focus on Belarus’ from Belarus, the Unit­ed King­dom, Ger­many, Nor­way, Italy, France, Swe­den, Rus­sia, Ukraine, and Esto­nia as well as being rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists we would like to state as fol­lows:

Free­lance jour­nal­ists face dif­fi­cul­ties with car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty in some Euro­pean states.

How­ev­er, the pres­sure on such jour­nal­ists in Belarus is unprece­dent­ed.

Con­trary to the pro­vi­sions of Belarus ‘Law on Mass Media’, the police and courts oblige free­lance jour­nal­ists to apply for accred­i­ta­tion in the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Belarus, despite the fact that the media work­ers are not employed as staff work­ers of for­eign media. Con­se­quent­ly, they ground­less­ly equal the jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty with­out accred­i­ta­tion to the vio­la­tion of pro­duc­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of mass media prod­ucts (arti­cle 22.0, part 2 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es). How­ev­er, mass media prod­ucts are nei­ther pro­duced, nor dis­trib­uted by jour­nal­ists. The media prod­ucts are pro­duced by edi­to­ri­als and dis­sem­i­nat­ed by the press dis­trib­u­tors. There­fore, the free­lance jour­nal­ists can­not be made account­able for the alleged vio­la­tion of the activ­i­ty pro­ce­dures even in case they pre­pare the mate­r­i­al with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

Huge fines have been imposed on the free­lance jour­nal­ists, whose mate­ri­als appeared in for­eign media, since 2014. The fines often exceed­ed the amount of month­ly con­sumer bud­get per per­son in Belarus.

48 cas­es of impos­ing fines for prac­tic­ing free­lance jour­nal­ism were reg­is­tered in Belarus in 2014–2016. The total sum of fines equaled EUR 15,000.

At the same time, there have been reg­is­tered 50 facts of impos­ing fines on free­lance media work­ers for the total sum of 18,000 EUR with­in 10 months since the begin­ning of the year 2017.

Tak­ing into account the said above, we call upon

1. the offi­cial author­i­ties of Belarus with a demand:

• To ter­mi­nate pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty;
• To intro­duce the sta­tus of free­lance jour­nal­ists into the nation­al leg­is­la­tion of Belarus, in order to ensure the defense of their rights and law­ful inter­ests as well as to can­cel the ban on imple­ment­ing the pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty with­out accred­i­ta­tion in the law ‘On Mass Media for the jour­nal­ists of for­eign media in Belarus’;
• To imple­ment in prac­tice the norms of inter­na­tion­al law that reg­u­late free expres­sion of opin­ion as well as free press dis­tri­b­u­tion;

2. the civ­il soci­ety of Belarus and jour­nal­ists from all coun­tries of the world:

• to express sol­i­dar­i­ty with jour­nal­ists, who face pros­e­cu­tion for prac­tis­ing their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty in Belarus;

3. the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists with a sug­ges­tion:

• to con­tin­ue the advo­ca­cy in defense of free­lance jour­nal­ists and the pro­grammes in defense of their activ­i­ty;
• to fos­ter the strenghen­ing of part­ne­ships between nation­al jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions.

Adopt­ed at the inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence ‘The Per­spec­tives and Chal­lenges to Free­lance Jour­nal­ism in Europe. A spe­cial focus on Belarus’.

Novem­ber 16, 2017, Min­sk