Full support of European journalists to their colleagues in Belarus

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, which is a mem­ber of the EFJ, rep­re­sent­ed Vol­ha Khvoin and Andrus Klikunov. They spoke about the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus, about the chal­lenges and threats that jour­nal­ists now face: injuries, beat­ings, tor­ture, arrests, fines, deten­tions, depri­va­tion of accred­i­ta­tion, psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure and oth­ers. They asked their col­leagues not to ignore this sit­u­a­tion.

In Belarus, dur­ing and after the 9 August pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, the media, jour­nal­ists and blog­gers were the tar­get of increased repres­sion. As a result, the sit­u­a­tion went from seri­ous to cat­a­stroph­ic.

While the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) record­ed 23 vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights from the begin­ning of the year until 8 May, i.e. before the elec­tion cam­paign was launched, it reg­is­tered about 400 such cas­es from 9 August to 1 Novem­ber.

There were 320 deten­tions of jour­nal­ists, who were just doing their job, dur­ing this peri­od. Approx­i­mate­ly one in three detained jour­nal­ists suf­fered vio­lence while in cus­tody.

BAJ record­ed cas­es of tor­ture after deten­tion and dam­age or seizure of jour­nal­ists’ equip­ment. Many jour­nal­ists were detained and sen­tenced to short prison terms and fines. Three jour­nal­ists were
injured by rub­ber bul­lets.

Oth­er seri­ous vio­la­tions of free­dom of speech relat­ed to the elec­tion cam­paign and protests occurred:

• the block­ing of the Inter­net in Belarus in the first days after the elec­tions and con­tin­ued restric­tions on mobile Inter­net dur­ing mass demon­stra­tions;

• restric­tions on access to news sites that inde­pen­dent­ly cov­er the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, an implic­it ban on print­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing four non-state news­pa­pers;

• actions by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to deprive Belarus’ largest media por­tal TUT.by of its media sta­tus;

• the offi­cial char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel NEXTA and its logo as extrem­ist mate­r­i­al;

• the denial of accred­i­ta­tion to for­eign cor­re­spon­dents intend­ing to cov­er the elec­tions; the with­draw­al of accred­i­ta­tion from all for­eign media cor­re­spon­dents who pre­vi­ous­ly had it;

•  the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of blog­gers.

The EFJ Annu­al Meet­ing, the EFJ Steer­ing Com­mit­tee and BAJ call on EFJ affil­i­ates to sup­port jour­nal­ists in Belarus:

1. The AM calls on EFJ affil­i­ates to call on their gov­ern­ments to adopt strong state­ments con­demn­ing the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists, phys­i­cal vio­lence and repres­sion of free­dom of
   expres­sion in Belarus;

2. The AM calls on EFJ affil­i­ates to call on their gov­ern­ments to demand that the inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions of which they are mem­bers – the Euro­pean Union, the Coun­cil of Europe, the
   Organ­i­sa­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe, UNESCO and the Unit­ed Nations – take con­crete and urgent mea­sures against the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and the con­tin­u­ing vio­la­tions of free­dom of expres­sion and human rights in Belarus;

3. The AM calls on each nation­al mem­ber organ­i­sa­tion of the EFJ to write open let­ters to the gov­ern­ment of Belarus call­ing for an end to the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists in the coun­try;

4. The AM calls on nation­al organ­i­sa­tions affil­i­at­ed to the EFJ to con­tin­ue to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion on cur­rent events in Belarus in their coun­tries and among their mem­bers.