E‑NEWSLETTER “MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS”. Monitoring Report 2021

E‑NEWSLETTER “MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS”

No. 1 (67) 2022

RESULTS OF MEDIA YEAR 2021

Con­tents:

1. Con­di­tions for inde­pen­dent media sec­tor activ­i­ty in 2021
2. Per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers
3. Appli­ca­tion of anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to restrict free­dom of expres­sion
4. Restric­tion of free­dom of expres­sion online
5. Restric­tions on the activ­i­ty of print media
6. FIGURES OF THE YEAR

Conditions for independent media sector activity in 2021

Despite the harsh sup­pres­sion of peace­ful protests after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 2020 and the offi­cial­ly declared ‘sta­bi­liza­tion’ of inter­nal sit­u­a­tion in Belarus, the pres­sure on inde­pen­dent media and civ­il soci­ety became more intense in the coun­try in 2021. The repres­sions against non-state jour­nal­ists and media became sys­temic. And they were aimed at the actu­al destruc­tion of inde­pen­dent media sec­tor in Belarus.

Con­se­quent­ly, a lot of inde­pen­dent media out­lets were forced to take a deci­sion on relo­ca­tion and con­tin­u­a­tion of their activ­i­ty from abroad. At the same time, they remain a part of the uni­fied media sec­tor of Belarus.

Also, the activ­i­ties of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) in defense of jour­nal­ists’ rights were ham­pered by the pres­sure on the part of offi­cial author­i­ties.

In Feb­ru­ary and July 2021, the BAJ office in Min­sk and the apart­ments of its employ­ees were searched. The search­es were accom­pa­nied by the seizure of doc­u­ments and tech­ni­cal equip­ment, the arrest of the BAJ office and bank accounts.

Fol­low­ing a law­suit filed by the Min­istry of Jus­tice of Belarus, the Supreme Court of Belarus liq­ui­dat­ed the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Pub­lic Asso­ci­a­tion in August 2021. The BAJ was liq­ui­dat­ed among sev­er­al hun­dred oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions named by the author­i­ties as a “tumor that needs to be elim­i­nat­ed”.

Quite a few of BAJ lead­ers and employ­ees were forced to leave the coun­try for secu­ri­ty rea­sons as well as in order to con­tin­ue their activ­i­ty.

Persecution of journalists and bloggers

The work of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus was fur­ther accom­pa­nied with deten­tions, search­es with the seizure of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers as well as with per­se­cu­tion on admin­is­tra­tive charges in the form of fines and arrests. The BAJ reg­is­tered 113 cas­es of arbi­trary deten­tions of jour­nal­ists in 2021. Also, there were reg­is­tered 29 cas­es, when the jour­nal­ists were sen­tenced to dif­fer­ent terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest.

The top-lev­el repres­sions took place in July 2021, when the police and KGB offi­cers con­duct­ed 75 search­es across the coun­try in jour­nal­ists’ hous­es and edi­to­r­i­al premis­es of inde­pen­dent media out­lets. 146 search­es were reg­is­tered dur­ing the year of 2021 as a whole. As a rule, the search­es were ground­ed on the need of inves­ti­ga­tion of crim­i­nal cas­es, in par­tic­u­lar under arti­cle 289 (‘an act of ter­ror­ism’) and arti­cle 342 (‘orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’).

One of the most seri­ous chal­lenges faced by inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media work­ers in Belarus was con­nect­ed with the unprece­dent­ed scale of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. The crim­i­nal­iza­tion of inde­pen­dent media work­ers’ activ­i­ties appeared in the forms of applied crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for cov­er­ing the events that take place in the coun­try and in charges for the alleged­ly com­mit­ted eco­nom­ic crimes. More than 60 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives were sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion dur­ing the year of 2021. 32 of them remained in cus­tody at the end of the year.

4 jour­nal­ists were con­vict­ed on crim­i­nal charges in 2021.

A jour­nal­ist of TUT.BY Web-por­tal Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich was sen­tenced to six months in prison for “dis­clos­ing med­ical secrets, which entailed grave con­se­quences” under arti­cle 178 (part 3) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus. (She pub­lished infor­ma­tion about the death of a peace­ful pro­test­er Raman Ban­daren­ka that con­tra­dict­ed the offi­cial ver­sion of his death). The Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ists Kat­siary­na Andreye­va and Daria Chultso­va were sen­tenced to two years of impris­on­ment for broad­cast­ing live from the site of the bru­tal­ly dis­persed pub­lic com­mem­o­ra­tion event in mem­o­ry of Raman Ban­daren­ka in his yard that was regard­ed by the author­i­ties as the alleged ‘arrange­ment of actions that gross­ly vio­lat­ed pub­lic order’ (arti­cle 342 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus).

Siarhei Hardziye­vich, a cor­re­spon­dent for the inde­pen­dent region­al news Web-site 1reg.by from the city of Drahichyn (Brest region), was sen­tenced to 18 months of impris­on­ment. He was charged under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus – arti­cle 368 (‘insult to the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’), arti­cle 188 (‘slan­der’) and 369 (‘insult to a gov­ern­ment offi­cial’) for the alleged post­ing of mes­sages in a local Viber chat.

Crim­i­nal tri­als were held against oppo­si­tion blog­gers in 2021. Most of them had been detained dur­ing the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign. All of them were sen­tenced to dif­fer­ent terms of impris­on­ment: Uladz­imir Niaron­s­ki, Siarhei Pia­trukhin, Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau, Vadz­im Yer­mashuk – 3 years of impris­on­ment; Pavel Spirin — 4.5 years of impris­on­ment, Eduard Palchis — 13 years of impris­on­ment, a Radio Lib­er­ty / Radio Free Europe con­sul­tant Ihar Losik — 15 years of impris­on­ment in a high secu­ri­ty colony.

The ‘Reporters with­out Bor­ders’ human rights orga­ni­za­tion labeled Belarus as the most dan­ger­ous coun­try for media work­ers in Europe.

Accord­ing to the annu­al report, issued by the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, Belarus ranked 5t^h in the world as for the num­ber of jour­nal­ists in prison. (19 media work­ers were in jail at the moment, when the report was pre­pared.)

More details about per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in 2021 can be found under the link: https://baj.media/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-e-newsletter-no2-64–2021-persecution-journalists-2021

Application of anti-extremist legislation to restrict freedom of expression

Inter­fer­ence in the jour­nal­ists’ work by law enforce­ment agen­cies was accom­pa­nied by the tight­en­ing of legal reg­u­la­tion of activ­i­ties in the field of free­dom of expres­sion. In par­tic­u­lar, a num­ber of amend­ments was made to the law “On Coun­ter­ac­tion to Extrem­ism”. They expand­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ties for hold­ing peo­ple legal­ly liable for expres­sion of opin­ions. The author­i­ties start­ed to apply them fre­quent­ly in rela­tion to inde­pen­dent media as well. It became a com­mon prac­tice to rec­og­nize pub­li­ca­tions of inde­pen­dent media as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. Con­se­quent­ly, pub­lic access to these media in Belarus was blocked, and the Inter­net users and media cit­ing these mate­ri­als were held legal­ly liable (even in case the re-post­ed mate­ri­als had appeared before the dates, when the media were rec­og­nized as extrem­ist).

More­over, sev­er­al lead­ing Belaru­sian media and their online com­mu­ni­ties were named ‘extrem­ist group­ings’ that entailed crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty. (Thus, arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty of up to 10 years of impris­on­ment for cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group­ing and up to 6 years in prison for par­tic­i­pa­tion in it.) The Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus rec­og­nized “a group of cit­i­zens unit­ed through the Inter­net resources of “Bel­sat” and “a group of cit­i­zens unit­ed through the Inter­net resources of Radio Lib­er­ty as extrem­ist group­ings and banned their activ­i­ties. The KGB rec­og­nized “a group of cit­i­zens of Belarus from among the employ­ees of the Bela­PAN News Agency” as an extrem­ist group­ing, too.

Restriction of freedom of expression online

The author­i­ties start­ed to regard the Inter­net as the main source of “oppo­si­tion­al” ideas, which were under­stood as any point of view that dif­fered from the offi­cial one. Since the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion 2020, the state has been con­stant­ly tak­ing mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion on the Web, among oth­er, by block­ing web­sites of inde­pen­dent media and web­sites of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, forcibly remov­ing crit­i­cal con­tent, rec­og­niz­ing pub­li­ca­tions of inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion resources as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”, and hold­ing peo­ple account­able for dis­sem­i­nat­ing (in par­tic­u­lar, re-post­ing) the “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. Since the oppor­tu­ni­ties to receive infor­ma­tion through online media Web-sites were restrict­ed with the blocked pub­lic access to more than 100 news Web-resources in 2020–2021, the Belaru­sian audi­ence start­ed to use more fre­quent­ly instant mes­sen­gers, par­tic­u­lar­ly Telegram, and social net­works, par­tic­u­lar­ly YouTube.

Accord­ing to the Free­dom House’s glob­al Web free­dom rank­ing, Belarus appeared among the coun­tries with the worst dete­ri­o­ra­tion in Web free­dom along­side with Myan­mar and Ugan­da in 2021. Com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, the posi­tion of Belarus on the list decreased by 7 points. The coun­try received only 31 points out of 100 pos­si­ble.

More details about restric­tion of free­dom on the Web can be found under the link:

https://baj.media/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-e-newsletter-no‑3–65-2021-restriction-freedom-media-web

Restrictions on the activity of print media

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued to restrict the activ­i­ties of inde­pen­dent print media, par­tic­u­lar­ly the media that pub­lish mate­ri­als on social and polit­i­cal issues. In 2020, the author­i­ties main­ly deprived them of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to print and dis­trib­ute their cir­cu­la­tions. In 2021, the pres­sure from the inter­nal affairs bod­ies and the pros­e­cu­tor’s offices as well as pros­e­cu­tion of both the media out­lets and their employ­ees were added. Con­se­quent­ly, 7 news­pa­pers and 1 mag­a­zine sus­pend­ed the pro­duc­tion of their print ver­sions in 2021. 8 more news­pa­pers haven’t been pub­lished since 2020.

The ces­sa­tion of inde­pen­dent print media pub­lish­ing after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 2020 was accom­pa­nied by the emer­gence of unreg­is­tered pub­li­ca­tions, pub­lished by activists. The pub­li­ca­tions main­ly con­tained reprints of mate­ri­als from inde­pen­dent news Web-sites. The dis­trib­u­tors of these small-cir­cu­la­tion news­pa­pers were brought to admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty in Jan­u­ary-March 2021.

More details about the pres­sure on the print media can be found under the link:

https://baj.media/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-e-newsletter-no‑4–66-2021-restriction-print-media-activities

FIGURES OF THE YEAR

FIGURES OF THE YEAR. Repres­sion of media and jour­nal­ists in Belarus in 2021

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2022 (chart)