Belarusian authorities block access to website of Russia’s Regnum news agency

The rea­son behind the block was not imme­di­ate­ly known.

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, three Belaru­sian con­trib­u­tors to Reg­num were each sen­tenced to a sus­pend­ed prison term of five years with three years’ pro­ba­tion on a charge of incite­ment to hatred. The con­victs — Siarhiej Šyp­cien­ka, Juryj Paŭlaviec and Dzmit­ryj Alimkin — filed an appeal, but the Supreme Court of Belarus upheld the sen­tence in June 2018.

The three men posi­tioned them­selves as sup­port­ers of the so-called Russ­ian world, crit­i­ciz­ing the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment for its alleged rap­proche­ment with the West. They were arrest­ed in Decem­ber 2016 and held in cus­tody pend­ing their tri­al. 

Ear­li­er this month, three oth­er news web­sites were made inac­ces­si­ble to users in Belarus by order of the country’s infor­ma­tion min­istry.

The sites are those of Belarus’ news­pa­per NovyČas, as well as of Germany’s inter­na­tion­al broad­cast­er Deutsche Welle and of Cur­rent Time TV, a Russ­ian-lan­guage tele­vi­sion chan­nel launched by U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty with par­tic­i­pa­tion of Voice of Amer­i­ca.

Dozens of news web­sites have been blocked in Belarus fol­low­ing the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.