E‑newsletter ‘Mass Media in Belarus’. No. 4 (78) 2024

SITUATION IN BELARUS MASS MEDIA FIELD: SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2024. REVIEW. Down­load PDF.

 The sit­u­a­tion of Belaru­sian mass media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Sep­tem­ber-Decem­ber 2024 was deter­mined by prepa­ra­tions for the so-called “elec­tions” of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

The per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers, cen­sor­ship, and pro­pa­gan­da in the state media were reg­is­tered much more fre­quent­ly dur­ing the peri­od under review.

Among oth­er, the fol­low­ing devel­op­ments were reg­is­tered in the Belaru­sian media field in Sep­tem­ber – Decem­ber 2024:

- the con­tin­ued crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists both inside the coun­try and in absen­tia – the num­ber of filed crim­i­nal cas­es was steadi­ly grow­ing,

- the increased pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and blog­gers in Belarus with the high­er num­ber of search­es and deten­tion,

- any form of inter­ac­tion with the “extrem­ist” media resources, includ­ing reposts of their pub­li­ca­tions on social media and giv­ing inter­views to their jour­nal­ists, was regard­ed by the regime in pow­er as a ground for pros­e­cu­tion,

- the “anti-extrem­ist” leg­is­la­tion was wide­ly used by the regime in pow­er to lim­it free­dom of expres­sion and access to inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion. As of Sep­tem­ber 1, 2024, there were about 14,000 blocked Web-resources in Belarus, and more than 5,000 of them were labeled as «extrem­ist infor­ma­tion prod­ucts»,

- cen­sor­ship went beyond the tra­di­tion­al “fight against extrem­ism”, since the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion demand­ed an audit of print­ed pub­li­ca­tions in order to exclude from sale those that “may harm nation­al inter­ests”,

- the pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties of Belaru­sian state media expand­ed through the new­ly cre­at­ed online resources and a news TV chan­nel,

- a media com­pa­ny of the Union State of Rus­sia and Belarus was estab­lished, and it was also announced that a strat­e­gy for form­ing a com­mon infor­ma­tion space of the Union State would be devel­oped.

Criminal prosecution

For­mer jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions that were labeled as “extrem­ist” at var­i­ous times got pros­e­cut­ed in Belarus with­in the peri­od under review. Sen­tences were hand­ed down to Yauhen Nikalayevich (one and a half years in prison for the alleged “par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots” in 2020) and Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va (sen­tenced to 4 years in prison for pub­li­ca­tions in the ‘Die Tageszeitung’ news­pa­per (Ger­many) that alleged­ly con­tained defam­a­to­ry state­ments).

The pre­vi­ous­ly detained jour­nal­ist from Brest Dani­il Palian­s­ki and the own­er of s13.ru News Web­site from Hrod­na Siarhei Chabot­s­ka were crim­i­nal­ly charged in the peri­od under review.

The author­i­ties mon­i­tored blog­gers’ activ­i­ty, track­ing any crit­i­cal expres­sions about the regime in pow­er. Thus, even a pro-gov­ern­ment blog­ger Yauhen Katliarou from Homiel was sen­tenced to 18 months in prison for pub­lish­ing a video, con­demn­ing the actions of local author­i­ties. 

The impris­oned jour­nal­ists and blog­gers are con­stant­ly sub­ject­ed to pres­sure by means of iso­la­tion and aggra­vat­ing con­di­tions of deten­tion. Among oth­er, it is done through hand­ing down addi­tion­al sen­tences, alleged­ly, for “dis­obey­ing mali­cious­ly the demands of prison admin­is­tra­tion” under arti­cle 411 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus.

Report­ed­ly, the sup­ple­men­tary sen­tence of 10 months of impris­on­ment has been hand­ed down to the jour­nal­ist Ihar Karnei in addi­tion to the ini­tial sen­tence of three years in jail. The blog­ger Zmitser Kazlou was about to be released from prison. How­ev­er, it didn’t hap­pen, since the addi­tion­al sen­tence of one year and five days was announced to him. A sim­i­lar crim­i­nal case was also filed against the impris­oned jour­nal­ist Miko­la Dzi­adok.

Detention, searches, and other forms of pressure on journalists in Belarus

Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists and pres­sure on their rel­a­tives obvi­ous­ly inten­si­fied with­in the peri­od under review. Thus, 20 jour­nal­ists were detained, and 17 jour­nal­ists’ hous­es were sub­ject­ed to police search­es. Also, 8 media work­ers were pun­ished by admin­is­tra­tive arrests in Belarus.

Thus, report­ed­ly, at least sev­en for­mer employ­ees of “Intex-press” news­pa­per were detained in Baranavichy (Brest region). Most prob­a­bly, they were con­vict­ed in a polit­i­cal crim­i­nal case for the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group.

A jour­nal­ist Ihar Iliyash was detained and placed in cus­tody for inter­act­ing with Ukrain­ian col­leagues and giv­ing inter­views to the so-called «extrem­ist» media out­lets about the sit­u­a­tion of his impris­oned wife Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, who is an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist, too.

Pressure on journalists in exile

The Belaru­sian media work­ers in exile were fur­ther sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in absen­tia. The list of affect­ed indi­vid­u­als includ­ed Siarhei Skulavets, Ales Liauchuk, as well as the pro­duc­ers and guests of «Plan:B» show on the Bel­sat TV chan­nel. Their rel­a­tives in Belarus faced search­es, pres­sure, and intim­i­da­tion.

The BAJ was updat­ed that the prop­er­ty of four exiled jour­nal­ists was seized dur­ing the peri­od under review.

The exiled media rep­re­sen­ta­tives faced harass­ment in the Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da pub­li­ca­tions. The rhetoric of state pro­pa­gan­dists was abun­dant in hate speech.

Thus, Kiryl Kaza­k­ou, “Min­skiy Kury­er” newspaper’s Edi­tor-in-chief called to shoot down a blog­ger Miki­ta Melka­zio­rau with­out tri­al, refer­ring to him as “the ani­mal”. The state newspaper’s top man­ag­er expressed his per­son­al readi­ness “to do away” with the blog­ger. 

Report­ed­ly, 21 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists have been includ­ed in the want­ed list of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion over the past six months. 

The use of “anti-extremist” legislation for prosecuting the distributors of independent media content

s13.ru City News Web­site from Hrod­na and the ‘Pozirk’ media project were labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ by the regime in pow­er with­in the peri­od under review.

Numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions and news resources on social media (espe­cial­ly on Tik­Tok and X) were rec­og­nized as extrem­ist mate­ri­als in Sep­tem­ber – Decem­ber 2024. In addi­tion to Belaru­sian online media, Ukrain­ian media could also be found on the list, such as the YouTube chan­nel of UNIAN News Agency and eight TELEGRAF Web resources.

The Belaru­sian peo­ple were fre­quent­ly pros­e­cut­ed for dis­trib­ut­ing “extrem­ist” media pro­duc­tion on social media as well as for inter­ac­tion with inde­pen­dent mass media. Most of them were pros­e­cut­ed for repost­ing pub­li­ca­tions, despite the fact that they had been pro­duced before the moment of time, when the orig­i­nal sources were rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist”. 

A his­to­ri­an Ihar Mel­nikau was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024 for his inter­view with the ‘Euro­pean Radio for Belarus’, which he gave five months before the media out­let was declared an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion.» Accord­ing to the indict­ment, he did it «know­ing in advance about the extrem­ist activ­i­ties, imple­ment­ed by the mem­bers of the infor­ma­tion resource, which is banned in Belarus, in order to devel­op and pro­mote the mass media of such ori­en­ta­tion and engage more cit­i­zens in sim­i­lar activ­i­ties.»

The first sen­tence for «deny­ing the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple» (arti­cle 130–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code) was hand­ed down to the ‘Odnok­lass­ni­ki’ social media com­mu­ni­ty admin­is­tra­tor Andrei Sav­it­sky in Min­sk on Octo­ber 30, 2024. More­over, he was accused of insult­ing Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka and sen­tenced to three years in prison.  

Propaganda activity of state-owned media

The offi­cial author­i­ties and state-owned media inten­si­fied cen­sor­ship and pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties on the eve of the “elec­tion cam­paign”.

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Marat Markau not­ed that his gov­ern­men­tal agency pays more and more atten­tion to “reg­u­la­tion of infor­ma­tion space”. In par­tic­u­lar, he said that around 14,000 Web-resources were blocked in Belarus as of Sep­tem­ber 1, 2024. More­over, over 5,000 Web­sites were labeled as “extrem­ist con­tent”. The num­ber of banned online resources increased almost 35 times, com­pared to the peri­od 2015–2020.

The VIDEOBEL.BY mul­ti­me­dia Web-por­tal start­ed its oper­a­tion on Sep­tem­ber 12, 2024. It is sup­posed to accu­mu­late socio-polit­i­cal con­tent from lead­ing Belaru­sian state media and con­duct live broad­casts, in par­tic­u­lar from events with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. 

‘The First News’ state-owned TV chan­nel start­ed broad­cast­ing its pro­grams in Belarus on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2024. It was includ­ed in the manda­to­ry pub­licly avail­able pack­age of TV Pro­grams. The con­tin­u­ous news broad­cast­ing for many hours is a pecu­liar fea­ture of this TV chan­nel. 

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion report­ed that it had set require­ments for five own­ers of Web-resources that dis­trib­ute TV pro­duc­tion to pro­vide gen­er­al access to the manda­to­ry pub­lic pack­age of TV pro­grams. 

In Novem­ber 2024, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion urged the dis­trib­u­tors of print­ed pro­duc­tion to con­duct an audit of print­ed pub­li­ca­tions and remove from sale those items that may “harm nation­al inter­ests”. A spe­cif­ic list of pub­li­ca­tions was not pro­vid­ed, but it referred to those that, alleged­ly:

• dis­tort his­tor­i­cal truth and jus­tice,
• pro­mote non-tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al rela­tions, reli­gious intol­er­ance, vio­lence, cru­el­ty and pornog­ra­phy, incite hos­til­i­ty and hatred,
• pro­mote sub­cul­tures that are non-tra­di­tion­al for Belaru­sian soci­ety,
• pro­vide sex­u­al edu­ca­tion for chil­dren and can have a neg­a­tive impact on their phys­i­cal and men­tal devel­op­ment, dis­tort­ing the idea of true fam­i­ly val­ues.

On Novem­ber 5, 2024, the Union State Media Com­pa­ny was estab­lished at a meet­ing of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of the Union State. Also, its char­ter and the com­po­si­tion of its Super­vi­so­ry Board were approved. Report­ed­ly, it is planned that the lat­ter will be deal­ing with fund­ing con­tent pro­duc­tion about the main events and achieve­ments of the Union of Belarus and Rus­sia. It is sug­gest­ed that the fund­ed con­tent will be dis­trib­uted on oth­er media plat­forms, too.

More­over, a res­o­lu­tion on devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy for the for­ma­tion of the Union States’ com­mon infor­ma­tion space was adopt­ed. 

On Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024, the Russ­ian Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office rec­og­nized the activ­i­ties of the ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel as «unde­sir­able». The depart­ment not­ed in its offi­cial press-release that «one of the key tasks for the Pol­ish ‘Bel­sat’ orga­ni­za­tion is to dis­cred­it the domes­tic and for­eign pol­i­cy of Russ­ian author­i­ties, cre­ate a neg­a­tive image of the coun­try, and crit­i­cize inte­gra­tion process­es with­in the Union State of Rus­sia and Belarus.»