Human Rights in Belarus: UN Security Council Arria meeting. Speech of the BAJ representative

For three days after the elec­tion, which took place on 9 August, Inter­net access in Belarus was severe­ly dis­rupt­ed. At times, the black­out was total; at oth­er times, spe­cif­ic Inter­net ser­vices, web­sites, social net­works and mes­sag­ing ser­vices were blocked. Access to a num­ber of media web­sites was blocked as a result of tar­get­ed gov­ern­ment action. One of the first to be blocked was the BAJ web­site, as was its hot­line mobile num­ber for jour­nal­ists.

Dur­ing three days of tur­bu­lent post-elec­tion protests, more than 70 Belaru­sian and for­eign jour­nal­ists were arrest­ed and 54 were kept in deten­tion. Jour­nal­ists were also the tar­gets of bru­tal treat­ment on the part of the riot police: 25 jour­nal­ists were beat­en up, three were wound­ed when police fired rub­ber bul­lets and stun grenades at the pro­test­ers, and many had equip­ment dam­aged or seized.

Total­ly, there have been more than 150 arrests of jour­nal­ists since the elec­tion cam­paign began, and 39 of them have been phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed. Some of them are being pros­e­cut­ed, often for work with­out accred­i­ta­tion or for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an ille­gal demon­stra­tion. In just one day, 27 August, the police arrest­ed about 50 jour­nal­ists, which all were labeled with the word ‘Press’.

Despite these dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists have con­tin­ued to car­ry out their pro­fes­sion­al duties telling the soci­ety the truth on the gov­ern­ment vio­lent actions.

Then, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ordered Inter­net ser­vice providers to block 75 news web­sites and web­sites of civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing influ­en­tial media out­lets such as Bel­sat TV, the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty, and the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­pan. Though the BAJ web­site did not appear on the black­list, it has not been pos­si­ble to access for 18 days.

In addi­tion to online media out­lets, the influ­en­tial news­pa­pers Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da (its Belarus edi­tion), Nar­o­d­naya Volya, Bel­gaze­ta and Svo­bod­nye Novosti have been tar­get­ed. The state print­ing house refused to print them, claim­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems. When two of the news­pa­pers print­ed their issues abroad, the state post ser­vice has made impos­si­ble their dis­sem­i­nat­ing despite being con­tracts.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties took a num­ber of spe­cif­ic actions to pre­vent for­eign jour­nal­ists from cov­er­ing the events in Belarus.

Before the elec­tion, at least 30 jour­nal­ists for var­i­ous for­eign media out­lets have applied to the Belarus’ Min­istry of For­eign Affairs for tem­po­rary accred­i­ta­tion to work in the coun­try, but received no response with­in a statu­to­ry peri­od. As a result, they could not to work legal­ly, because the Belaru­sian Law on Mass Media pro­hibits for­eign jour­nal­ists‘ activ­i­ties with­out the accred­i­ta­tion.

At least 17 for­eign jour­nal­ists were banned from enter­ing Belarus at the Min­sk air­port and sev­er­al for­eign jour­nal­ists were deport­ed and had entry bans rang­ing from five to ten years imposed on them.

In recent days, the Belaru­sian Inter­de­part­men­tal Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty in the Infor­ma­tion Sphere has pro­ceed­ed to a mas­sive can­cel­la­tion of press accred­i­ta­tions issued to jour­nal­ists work­ing for for­eign media, such as AP, BBC, Reuters and oth­ers. There were 17 jour­nal­ists deprived of the accred­i­ta­tion.

With such gross vio­la­tions of free­dom of expres­sion, and the rights of jour­nal­ists par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties are deny­ing cit­i­zens’ right to infor­ma­tion.

Free­dom of expres­sion forms the basis for the full enjoy­ment of a wide range of oth­er human rights, in par­tic­u­lar the right to free­dom of assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion, and the exer­cise of the right to vote, which are essen­tial for peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of polit­i­cal crises.

We call on Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­bers and all UN mem­ber states to insist on respect­ing by Belarus the right to free­dom of expres­sion and to sup­port the Belaru­sian peo­ple and Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety in their actions aimed at the pro­tec­tion of human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms for all with­out dis­tinc­tion as to polit­i­cal views.