After the parliamentary elections: political and media freedom in Belarus

Vol­ha Siakhovich from the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and Valiantsin Ste­fanovich of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­tre point­ed out that it has become slight­ly eas­i­er to engage in civ­il soci­ety. There were no deten­tions or oth­er repres­sion of the small num­ber of peo­ple who demon­strat­ed on elec­tion day, Novem­ber 17.

- Now there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties to cam­paign for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, Valiantsin Ste­fanovich said.

Bar­ri­ers to free media

How­ev­er, the government’s grip on the media remains tight, Vol­ha Siakhovich explained.

- The abol­ish­ment of the sev­en defama­tion arti­cles in the Belaru­sian Crim­i­nal Code is absolute­ly the most impor­tant step that the gov­ern­ment needs to take. The arti­cles are the sec­tion in the law that opens up for the detain­ing and fin­ing of jour­nal­ists, Vol­ha Siakhovich said.

In addi­tion to the Crim­i­nal Code, Vol­ha Siakhovich also brought up exam­ples that explain why Belarus ranks at the bot­tom among Euro­pean coun­tries in the 2019 World Press Free­dom Index.

There were some record­ed cas­es of deten­tions dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion cam­paign. In 2018, a total of 31 jour­nal­ists were detained while per­form­ing their duties. In 2017 the num­ber was 101. Ten jour­nal­ists were detained for up to three days.

Vol­ha Siakhovich also brought up the accred­i­ta­tion law (Arti­cle 1(6) of the Law on Mass Media) and its impact on free­lance jour­nal­ism. In 2018, 118 free­lance jour­nal­ists paid fines of at least EUR 43 000 in total for vio­lat­ing the arti­cle. So far this year, the num­ber is 40. The fines were imposed under Arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences (Vio­la­tion of the media law). These fined jour­nal­ists are pri­mar­i­ly con­nect­ed to for­eign media out­lets such as the Poland-based TV sta­tion Bel­sat. Media pieces that gar­ner a high lev­el of pub­lic inter­est are more like­ly to lead to fines.

- It’s against the Law on Mass Media for for­eign jour­nal­ists to work in Belarus with­out accred­i­ta­tion from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs. And of course it restricts influ­ences from inde­pen­dent sources, Vol­ha Siakhovich empha­sised.

She added that the effect of web­site own­er respon­si­bil­i­ty for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of third par­ties – in oth­er words the respon­si­bil­i­ty for own­ers to iden­ti­fy those who post on the site – is a bar­ri­er to free dis­cus­sion forums on the inter­net.

The par­lia­men­tary elec­tions on 17 Novem­ber

Reports from both the inter­na­tion­al elec­tion obser­va­tion mis­sion of the OSCE and Civ­il Rights Defend­ers con­clude that the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions did not meet inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in sev­er­al respects.

Valiantsin Ste­fanovich and Vol­ha Siakhovich point­ed out in par­tic­u­lar that vot­ers were encour­aged by the pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion to vote ear­ly for non-oppo­si­tion can­di­dates and that the count­ing process of the large num­ber of ear­ly votes (almost 36 per cent) was non-trans­par­ent and impos­si­ble to mon­i­tor. In addi­tion, on elec­tion day observers were placed too far away to be able to mon­i­tor the count­ing prop­er­ly.

Valiantsin Ste­fanovich and Vol­ha Siakhovich also point­ed out that the can­di­date reg­is­tra­tion process favoured non-oppo­si­tion can­di­dates. They gave exam­ples of oppo­si­tion can­di­dates los­ing their can­di­date sta­tus because they pre­sent­ed polit­i­cal pro­grammes that were not in line with media cen­sor­ship.

- The pres­i­den­tial elec­tion next year car­ries a lot of weight and the gov­ern­ment now real­ly needs to show that it’s ready for sys­tem­at­ic reforms of the elec­tion leg­is­la­tion, as well as and in media free­dom, Valiantsin Ste­fanovich stat­ed.

Valiantsin Ste­fanovich and Vol­ha Siakovich stressed that the pos­si­bil­i­ty to meet and to keep the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty updat­ed con­tin­ues to be key in push­ing for reforms in Belarus.

The meet­ing was a co-arrange­ment between the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Swe­den to the EU and Civ­il Rights Defend­ers.