MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS 2024

Mass media in Belarus 2024. Down­load PDF.

Pho­to: BAJ

CONTENTS

CONDITIONS FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY IN 2024

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

 VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS’ AND MEDIA RIGHTS

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion

Oth­er kinds of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and mass media

 THE USE OF ANTI-EXTREMIST LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

 RESTRICTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION BY ADMINISTRATIVE MEASURES

 EVENTS IN THE STATE MEDIA FIELD

 CONDITIONS FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY IN 2024

The sit­u­a­tion of inde­pen­dent media sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Belarus in 2024 was deter­mined by the con­tin­u­a­tion of repres­sive gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies, which inten­si­fied on the eve of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s elec­tion, sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

In par­tic­u­lar, the author­i­ties con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers, cen­sor­ship in the media space, and pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties of state-owned media, estab­lished by the Union State of Belarus and Rus­sia.  Among oth­er, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued the fol­low­ing repres­sive activ­i­ties:

• large-scale crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of media work­ers in Belarus and the announce­ment of sen­tences ‘in absen­tia’ in rela­tion to the jour­nal­ists, who were forced to flee the coun­try,
• putting pres­sure on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and blog­gers with the use of harass­ment, search­es, and deten­tion (among oth­er, tar­get­ing the exiled jour­nal­ists’ rel­a­tives and arrest­ing their pri­vate prop­er­ty in Belarus),
• ‘strug­gle with extrem­ism’ to restrict free­dom of expres­sion and lim­it access to inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion. As of Sep­tem­ber 1, 2024, there were about 14,000 blocked Inter­net resources in Belarus,
• fur­ther label­ing of inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion sources as ‘extrem­ist groups,’ and pros­e­cu­tion for any form of inter­ac­tion with them,
• cen­sor­ship that went beyond the tra­di­tion­al ‘fight against extrem­ism,’ e.g. the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion demand­ed to exclude from sale the print­ed pub­li­ca­tions that ‘may harm nation­al inter­ests,’
• the pro­pa­gan­da endeav­ors of Belaru­sian state media expand­ed to the new­ly cre­at­ed online resources and a news TV chan­nel,
• manda­to­ry broad­cast­ing of state TV chan­nels by all TV pro­gram dis­trib­u­tors, endorsed by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion under threat of block­ing their oper­a­tion for refus­ing to com­ply,
• estab­lish­ment of a media com­pa­ny of the Union State of Rus­sia and Belarus and the announce­ment of a strat­e­gy devel­op­ment on form­ing a com­mon media space of the Union State.

Belarus ranked 167^th in the Press Free­dom Index pub­lished by Reporters With­out Bor­ders, falling ten posi­tions com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

The posi­tion of Belarus also dete­ri­o­rat­ed in the glob­al Inter­net free­dom rank­ing com­piled by the Free­dom House human rights orga­ni­za­tion, where it got only 22 points out of 100 as a coun­try with the unfree Inter­net, com­pared to 25 points a year before.

Accord­ing to Reporters with­out Bor­ders, keep­ing 40 media work­ers behind bars, Belarus appeared on the 4^th posi­tion among the coun­tries with near­ly a half of all detained jour­nal­ists in the world. Belarus has been over­passed by only three coun­tries in this shame­ful list: Chi­na (124 impris­oned media work­ers), Myan­mar (61 impris­oned jour­nal­ists), and Israel (41 jour­nal­ists in jail).

45 jour­nal­ists were in prison at the end of 2024, com­pared to 32 media work­ers behind bars in 2023.

The list of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers includ­ed top man­agers of TUT.by news por­tal Mary­na Zolata­va and Lyud­mi­la Chek­ina, sen­tenced to 12 years in prison each as well as a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist and the edi­tor of ‘Belaru­sian Year­book’ peri­od­i­cal pub­li­ca­tion Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, sen­tenced to 10 years in prison.

At the same time, the con­vict­ed jour­nal­ists Kseniya Lut­ski­na, Andrei Tolchyn, Dzmit­ry Luk­sha and his wife Pali­na Palavin­ka were par­doned and released from cus­tody on human­i­tar­i­an grounds dur­ing the year of 2024.

The exiled inde­pen­dent media out­lets faced an eco­nom­ic cri­sis sub­ject to the sus­pen­sion of fund­ing for for­eign media orga­ni­za­tions by the US Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing the fund­ing through the Unit­ed States Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID). Reporters With­out Bor­ders called on Euro­pean gov­ern­ments to increase sup­port to the neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed Belaru­sian media out­lets in exile. Accord­ing to the RSF report the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media out­lets were able to adapt quick­ly under the new cir­cum­stances due to finan­cial sup­port from inter­na­tion­al donors. Thus, they shift­ed their focus on jour­nal­ist inves­ti­ga­tions and cov­er­age of nation­al events, pay­ing less atten­tion to region­al news, devel­oped their rep­re­sen­ta­tion on social media such as Telegram with the total num­ber of 1.3 mil­lion sub­scribers in 2023, YouTube with the total num­ber of 21 mil­lion views a year, as well as Insta­gram and Tik­Tok.

Some impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and media work­ers in exile were hon­ored with a num­ber of awards in 2024.

Thus, the Pol­ish edi­to­r­i­al of the renowned ‘Newsweek’ peri­od­i­cal edi­tion (US) award­ed the impris­oned jour­nal­ist Andrej Pachobut (Andrzej Poc­zobut) with the Tere­sa Taran­s­ka Prize in the ‘Fig­ure of the Decade’ cat­e­go­ry.

The War­saw city coun­cilors award­ed him the title of hon­orary cit­i­zen of the Pol­ish cap­i­tal. ‘In such a sit­u­a­tion, when we can­not force the regime to release him, we can make sure that there is no silence around his case, that there is pub­lic­i­ty, so that the Lukashen­ka regime can­not be calm and think that every­one has for­got­ten about such cas­es. We will stand up for Poc­zobut, for all pris­on­ers of con­science in Belarus, and we will try to sup­port their rel­a­tives and the peo­ple who are fight­ing for their release,’ Pol­ish politi­cian Robert Tyszkiewicz said on this occa­sion.

The impris­oned edi­tor-in-chief of TUT.BY news por­tal Mary­na Zolata­va was award­ed the Johann-Philipp-Palm prize as a ‘per­son of extra­or­di­nary courage and sin­cer­i­ty’ in 2024. She was nom­i­nat­ed by Reporters With­out Bor­ders.

‘In the face of enor­mous obsta­cles and repres­sive mea­sures by the state appa­ra­tus, Mary­na Zolata­va has proven her­self to be a per­son of extra­or­di­nary courage and sin­cer­i­ty,’ stat­ed ‘Reporters With­out Bor­ders’ and the advi­so­ry board of the Palm Foun­da­tion.

Ivon­ka Survi­la, the Chair­per­son of the Coun­cil of the Belaru­sian Peo­ple’s Repub­lic signed decrees on awards for mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to the Belaru­sian peo­ple on the occa­sion of the 106th anniver­sary of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence of the Belaru­sian Peo­ple’s Repub­lic. The Order of the Pur­suit medal was award­ed to Radio Svabo­da jour­nal­ist Ale­na Rad­ke­vich, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the nation­al move­ment of the ear­ly 1980s and con­tributed to the non-cen­sored press devel­op­ment.

On June 27, 2024, the Krzysztof Michal­s­ki Prize for Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile was award­ed for the first time in War­saw. It was estab­lished at the end of 2023 by the Insti­tute for Human Sci­ences (Vien­na) and the Aus­tri­an Embassy in Poland. The awards were pre­sent­ed to Fio­dar Pauli­uchen­ka, Edi­tor-in-chief of Reform.news in the nom­i­na­tion of ‘Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism’, Ale­na Kavalchuk in the nom­i­na­tion of ’Future Tal­ents’, and Ali­ak­sei Martsinke­vich in the nom­i­na­tion of ‘Ana­lyt­i­cal jour­nal­ism’.

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

Amend­ments to the Belarus law ‘On Adver­tis­ing’ were intro­duced on Jan­u­ary 4 and 6, 2024.  They includ­ed a wide range of issues: the pro­ce­dure for plac­ing adver­tise­ments, the dura­tion of adver­tis­ing in the media, require­ments for adver­tis­ing cer­tain types of goods and ser­vices, etc. Among oth­er things, new require­ments were intro­duced for adver­tis­ing on the Inter­net. Pre­vi­ous­ly, it was not spec­i­fied for online adver­tise­ments that they can be pub­lished only by the orga­ni­za­tions and cit­i­zens, includ­ed in the ‘State Reg­is­ter of Adver­tis­ers’ formed by the Min­istry of Anti­mo­nop­oly Reg­u­la­tion and Trade. How­ev­er, the new ver­sion of the law no longer includes the excep­tion for online adver­tis­ing that affects blog­gers in a neg­a­tive way.

The Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter under the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus issued Order No. 69 on April 4, 2024. It pro­vides for the can­cel­la­tion of domain names of Inter­net resources includ­ed in the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als. This func­tion is per­formed by the admin­is­tra­tor of the nation­al domain zone. The can­celed domains are added to the list and become unavail­able for reg­is­tra­tion.

The Coun­cil of Min­is­ters adopt­ed Ordi­nance No. 665 on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2024. It out­lined a new list of TV pro­grams includ­ed in the manda­to­ry pub­licly avail­able TV pro­gram pack­age. The recent­ly cre­at­ed ‘Prime News’ state-owned TV chan­nel was men­tioned in it.

On Decem­ber 3, 2024, a new edi­tion of Pres­i­den­tial Decree No. 630 ‘On the Response of Offi­cials to Crit­i­cal State­ments in State Mass Media’ from 1997 was adopt­ed. The new goal of the decree is stat­ed to be ‘the objec­tive reflec­tion of social­ly sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion in mass media and on Inter­net resources, the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and prompt res­o­lu­tion of prob­lems cov­ered in them.’ Pre­vi­ous­ly, it con­cerned ‘strength­en­ing exec­u­tive dis­ci­pline, increas­ing the role of state mass media in the socio-polit­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic pub­lic life.’ This change indi­cates the high atten­tion paid by the state to con­trol the con­tent of pub­li­ca­tions in mass media.

Gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies and state orga­ni­za­tions are still oblig­ed to con­sid­er crit­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions about them in the state-owned media, to take mea­sures and to update the media on the out­come of their actions. (At the same time, the term for report­ing after such pub­li­ca­tions in the state media was reduced from one month to 15 days). In addi­tion, gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies are now required to con­duct inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic infor­ma­tion, which appears in any media and on Inter­net resources. (Such infor­ma­tion is defined in the decree as ‘infor­ma­tion on burn­ing socio-eco­nom­ic and socio-polit­i­cal issues’ as well as ‘crit­i­cal mate­ri­als and oth­er rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion of pub­lic inter­est’). The edi­to­r­i­al offices of state-owned media have been oblig­ed to cre­ate Inter­net resources for inter­ac­tion with cit­i­zens and legal enti­ties ‘for the pur­pose of col­lect­ing prompt­ly the pub­licly sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion’ and com­pre­hen­sive­ly dis­cussing the pub­li­ca­tions with cit­i­zens and orga­ni­za­tions.

Accord­ing to the Belarus law ‘On the Nation­al Bud­get 2025’ adopt­ed on Decem­ber 13, 2024, bud­get expen­di­tures for state-owned mass media were slight­ly increased (by 5.7%). How­ev­er, the increase applied only to the TV and radio broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies. Few­er funds were allo­cat­ed to print media, pub­lish­ing, and oth­er activ­i­ties in the mass media field in com­par­i­son with the bud­get allo­ca­tions in 2024.

VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS’ AND MEDIA RIGHTS

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists con­tin­ued in rela­tion to both the media work­ers inside the coun­try and in exile. The so-called spe­cial pro­ceed­ings with tri­als in absen­tia were held on the reg­u­lar basis. All in all, 15 ver­dicts were hand­ed down in crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists, 5 of them in absen­tia in 2024.

Ali­ak­san­dr Ziank­ou, a pho­tog­ra­ph­er from Barysau (Min­sk region) was sen­tenced to three years in prison under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group’) on Jan­u­ary 30, 2024. Alleged­ly, his pho­tos were shown on one of the Web-resources rec­og­nized as an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion.

On March 18, 2024, Pavel Marinich, the head of ‘Malan­ka Media’ that con­tin­ues to oper­ate in exile as well as four oth­er indi­vid­u­als involved in the case, were sen­tenced in absen­tia to 4 years of impris­on­ment, alleged­ly, for ‘ille­gal actions to dis­rupt the Nation­al ref­er­en­dum in 2022’ (Arti­cle 191 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

Andrei Tolchyn, a for­mer free­lance jour­nal­ist from Homiel was sen­tenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison on two crim­i­nal charges, for the alleged ‘slan­der­ing of the pres­i­dent’ (Arti­cle 367 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code) on March 21, 2024. (The media work­er coop­er­at­ed with Bel­sat TV chan­nel in the past.)

A free­lance jour­nal­ist Ihar Kar­ney was con­vict­ed after a court tri­al in Min­sk for the alleged ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion’ (which appeared to be the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists) and sen­tenced to three years in prison and a fine in the amount of 20,000 Belaru­sian rubles (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) on March 22, 2024.

On April 2, 2024, Ales Marchanka, a for­mer employ­ee of Bel­sat TV chan­nel was sen­tenced to three years in prison by the Min­sk City Court for the alleged ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group’ (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

Anton Kazel­s­ki, a cam­era­man of Belaru­sian ANT TV chan­nel was put on tri­al on May 28, 2024. The media work­er was sen­tenced to 3 years of impris­on­ment, report­ed­ly, for his com­ments in 2020, when he was alleged­ly call­ing for protests. The sen­tence was hand­ed down under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: Arti­cle 361 (calls for sanc­tions and oth­er actions aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty’) and Arti­cle 130 (incite­ment of hos­til­i­ty or dis­cord’).

The Brest Region­al Court sen­tenced a local jour­nal­ist Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk to five years of impris­on­ment and a 46,000 Br (approx. USD 14,000) fine on June 3, 2024. She used to work for the region­al ‘Brest’ TV com­pa­ny and col­lab­o­rat­ed ear­li­er as a free­lancer with a num­ber of region­al media.

The court found the jour­nal­ist guilty under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: ‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code), ‘incit­ing hos­til­i­ty or dis­cord’ (Part 3 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code), ‘par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist group’ (Part 3 of Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

The Min­sk Region­al Court pro­nounced ver­dicts in absen­tia to 20 peo­ple in the so-called ‘Tsikhanouskaya’s Ana­lysts’ case on July 2, 2024. The Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus rec­og­nized them as par­tic­i­pants of ‘Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s Ana­lysts’ extrem­ist group. The jour­nal­ists of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media Yury Drakakhrust and Han­na Liubako­va were crim­i­nal­ly charged in absen­tia. Each of the media work­ers was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison.

Two jour­nal­ists from Mahilou Ales Sabaleus­ki and Yauhien Hlushk­ou were sen­tenced to 4 and 3 years in prison respec­tive­ly and huge fines in the amount of 8,000 Belaru­sian rubles each by the Mahilou Region­al Court on July 31, 2024.  The court found the jour­nal­ists guilty under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: ‘cre­ation of an extrem­ist group or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it’ (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an armed for­ma­tion or armed con­flict on the ter­ri­to­ry of a for­eign state, mil­i­tary actions, recruit­ment, or prepa­ra­tion for such par­tic­i­pa­tion’ (Arti­cle 361–3 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

On August 2, 2024, a court ver­dict in absen­tia was announced to Ales Kirke­vich, who was found guilty of ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and sen­tenced to 7 years of impris­on­ment and a fine in the amount of 24,000 Belaru­sian rubles.

The case of jour­nal­ist Uladz­imir Khilmanovich was con­sid­ered by the Hrod­na Region­al Court in accor­dance with the so-called spe­cial pro­ceed­ings ‘in absen­thia’. The media work­er was accused of ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ and ‘tak­ing part in an extrem­ist group’ (Arti­cles 361–4 and 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code). On August 19, 2024, the jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced in absen­tia to 5 years of impris­on­ment in a high secu­ri­ty colony and fined 40,000 Belaru­sian rubles.

A for­mer jour­nal­ist of ‘Media-Palessie’ Yauhen Nikalayevich was sen­tenced to 1.5 years in prison for the alleged ‘arrange­ment of actions that gross­ly vio­late the pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’ (Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code) by the Pin­sk City and Dis­trict Court on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2024. The jour­nal­ist cov­ered protest actions in Pin­sk as a video cor­re­spon­dent in 2020. He was detained and beat­en hard in cus­tody lat­er. Con­se­quent­ly, Yauhen Nikalayevich fled Belarus after serv­ing his admin­is­tra­tive arrest. How­ev­er, he returned to Belarus and was detained in ear­ly 2024.

A jour­nal­ist Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison for pub­li­ca­tions in the ‘Die Tageszeitung’ news­pa­per (Ger­many) that alleged­ly con­tained defam­a­to­ry state­ments. The judge of Min­sk City Court found the jour­nal­ist guilty under four arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: ‘libel­ing the pres­i­dent of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 367), ‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 369–1), ‘incite­ment of racial, eth­nic, reli­gious or oth­er social hos­til­i­ty or dis­cord’ (Arti­cle 130), and ‘insult­ing the pres­i­dent of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 368).

A free­lance jour­nal­ist from Brest Dani­il Palian­s­ki and the own­er of s13.ru News Web­site from Hrod­na Siarhei Chabot­s­ka were tak­en to cus­tody in the sec­ond half year of 2024. D. Palian­s­ki was accused of ‘high trea­son’ (Arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

2024. Chabot­s­ka was detained on Octo­ber 23, 2024. He was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to three terms of 15-days’ admin­is­tra­tive arrest for the alleged ‘dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als.’ How­ev­er, a crim­i­nal case was filed in rela­tion to him under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code some­time lat­er. The web­site s13.ru oper­at­ed until recent­ly, when it was labeled by the Belaru­sian KGB as an ‘extrem­ist group’ on Novem­ber 5, 2024. It is high­ly prob­a­ble that the crim­i­nal charges might be relat­ed to the Web-site own­er­ship.

A jour­nal­ist Ihar Ilyash was detained and tak­en to cus­tody on Octo­ber 22, 2024. He is the hus­band of jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va). Report­ed­ly, he was arrest­ed for being inter­viewed about his wife’s sit­u­a­tion in prison by the media, which were labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by Belaru­sian author­i­ties as well as for coop­er­a­tion with the Ukrain­ian col­leagues.

Accord­ing to updates at the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary 2025, Ihar Ilyash was accused of ‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’ (arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code). The Min­sk City Court start­ed con­sid­er­ing the crim­i­nal case on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2025. On March 13, an adjourn­ment was announced in the pro­ceed­ings for exam­i­na­tion of pub­li­ca­tions on March 13, 2025.

 Report­ed­ly, numer­ous crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile in 2024. The list of affect­ed media work­ers includ­ed the Deputy Chair­per­son of BAJ Barys Haret­s­ki, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists Zmitser Kaza­ke­vich, Iry­na Char­ni­au­ka, Zmitser Lupach, Ihar Kazmi­ar­chak, Zmitser Pankavets as well as the founder and head of Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Cen­ter (BIC) Stanis­lau Ivashke­vich, the author of his video pro­grams Siarhei Chaly, three for­mer BIC employ­ees Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich, Ali­ak­sei Karpe­ka, and Vol­ha Alkhi­men­ka, who cur­rent­ly work as the jour­nal­ists of ‘Bureau Media’, and oth­ers.

Accord­ing to the BAJ sources, the pri­vate prop­er­ty of 4 media work­ers was seized as part of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in 2024. Also, report­ed­ly, no less than 21 Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists were includ­ed in the Russ­ian data­base of ‘want­ed’ indi­vid­u­als.

The author­i­ties mon­i­tored blog­gers’ activ­i­ty, track­ing any crit­i­cal expres­sions about the regime in pow­er.

On 5 April 2024, the Stolin Dis­trict Court announced a ver­dict in the crim­i­nal case against blog­ger Ali­ak­san­dr Ihnat­siuk, who was con­vict­ed under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus: ‘arrange­ment of actions that gross­ly vio­late the pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’ (Arti­cle 342–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) with ref­er­ence to protest actions in Stolin and Min­sk, ‘libel­ing the pres­i­dent of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 367–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code), and ‘black­mail­ing’ (Arti­cle 208–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code). The blog­ger was sen­tenced to 6 years in prison and fined 8,000 Belaru­sian rubles. Also, he was ruled to pay 1,800 Belaru­sian rubles to cov­er prop­er­ty dam­ages.

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. He was con­vict­ed under two ‘polit­i­cal’ arti­cles of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code: ‘dis­cred­i­ta­tion of Belarus’ (Arti­cle 369–1) and ‘insult to a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ (Arti­cle 369).

The exiled blog­gers faced crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion ‘in absen­tia’.

Thus, blog­gers Andrei Pavuk and his ex-wife Vol­ha Pavuk were sen­tenced to 12 and 8 years in prison respec­tive­ly as well as huge fines under 13 and 8 arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code in June 2024. Both were accused of man­ag­ing their ‘Rud­abel­skaya Pakazukha’ media project.

An opera singer Marhary­ta Liauchuk, a blog­ger Ilya Saliank­ou, and a musi­cian Uladzis­lau Navazhy­lau were also sen­tenced to impris­on­ment ‘in absen­tia’ for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in this project.

A crim­i­nal case was filed against the blog­ger Anton Matol­ka in Belarus under 13 arti­cles of Belarus Crim­i­nal Code. The case was referred to the court at the end of 2024. Among oth­er things, the cre­ator of ‘Belaru­sian Hayun’ Telegram chan­nel and pre­vi­ous­ly an urban­ist blog­ger was accused of an attempt to seize pow­er, extrem­ism and high trea­son.

Fol­low­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of a civ­il law­suit against blog­gers Raman Pratasievich, Yan Rudzik, and Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, who had already been con­vict­ed in a crim­i­nal case ear­li­er (the last two defen­dants were con­vict­ed ‘in absen­tia’), a court deci­sion was announced on May 7, 2024. Accord­ing­ly, they were ruled to pay more than 24.5 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles to cov­er the dam­ages of var­i­ous gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, which were alleged­ly caused by their calls for protests. 21 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles out of this sum are to be paid out on a sol­idary basis with the sim­i­lar­ly con­vict­ed con­sul­tant for the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Svabo­da Ihar Losik and oth­er indi­vid­u­als.

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 was 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. Sim­i­lar sup­ple­men­tary crim­i­nal cas­es were also filed against the impris­oned jour­nal­ist Miko­la Dzi­adok, who was to be released from cus­tody on April 25, 2025, and a mil­i­tary ana­lyst and blog­ger Yahor Lebyadok.

Oth­er kinds of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and mass media

Accord­ing to the BAJ sources, 30 jour­nal­ists were detained, and 66 jour­nal­ists’ hous­es as well as edi­to­r­i­al offices were sub­ject­ed to police search­es in 2024. Also, the Belaru­sian media work­ers were pun­ished 19 times by admin­is­tra­tive arrests with­in the peri­od under review.

As part of polit­i­cal purges, Natalia Zhuk­ouskaya, the pre­sen­ter of Alfa Radio broad­cast­er, which is part of the ‘SB. Belarus Today’ state-owned hold­ing com­pa­ny, and Dzmit­ry Kulik­ous­ki, the Alfa Radio sound engi­neer were detained for sup­port­ing post-elec­tion protests on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2024. Both were most prob­a­bly fired after­wards.

The law enforce­ment con­tin­ued large-scale repres­sions, tar­get­ed at inde­pen­dent media work­ers. The inten­si­fied arbi­trary per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists was appar­ent­ly caused by the approach­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Belarus.

Report­ed­ly, at least sev­en for­mer employ­ees of ‘Intex-press’ news­pa­per were detained in Baranavichy (Brest region) at the begin­ning of Decem­ber 2024. Most prob­a­bly, they were crim­i­nal­ly charged for the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist group.

Large-scale pres­sure on jour­nal­ists who were forced to leave Belarus and con­tin­ue to work abroad was car­ried out through search­es at their places of reg­is­tra­tion in their native coun­try with­in the frame­work of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in absen­tia, intim­i­da­tion of rel­a­tives, threats to con­fis­cate prop­er­ty for the ben­e­fit of the state (includ­ing hous­ing).

Thus, crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tors searched and seized the apart­ment, owned by Zmit­si­er Kaza­ke­vich, a jour­nal­ist from Vit­sieb­sk, on May 16, 2024. Video footage was tak­en, depict­ing the employ­ees of the Min­istry of Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tions break­ing down the door to the journalist’s pri­vate res­i­dence. The footage was lat­er used in the broad­cast of the ANT state-owned TV chan­nel. The pre­sen­ter Ihar Tur not­ed that the apart­ment would be sold, and the cash would be trans­ferred to com­pen­sate for the dam­age, caused by the West­ern sanc­tions on Belarus.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­is­tered 26 search­es in the peri­od of June-July 2024. 21 of these search­es took place in the apart­ments of media pro­fes­sion­als who fled Belarus and con­tin­ue to work in the media in exile. In most cas­es, the law enforce­ment agents showed search war­rants with­in crim­i­nal cas­es, filed against the tar­get­ed media work­ers.

The prac­tice of con­vict­ing the exiled jour­nal­ists for the alleged admin­is­tra­tive offens­es ‘in absen­tia’ con­tin­ued in 2024. Thus, Ale­na Shabunia, asso­ci­at­ed with Bel­sat TV chan­nel, was fined 2,800 Belaru­sian rubles in Vit­seb­sk. Accord­ing to the mailed pro­to­cols, she was charged with the ‘dis­sem­i­na­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ (Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es).

The exiled media work­ers encoun­tered pres­sure on their rel­a­tives in Belarus as well as harass­ment in Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da pub­li­ca­tions. Thus, the exiled jour­nal­ists Dzmit­ry Lupach from Hly­bokaye, Vit­sieb­sk region and Ihar Kazmer­chak from Vor­sha, Vit­sieb­sk region were harassed with pub­li­ca­tions in the state-owned media con­tain­ing insults and slan­der in rela­tion to them.

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, using dehu­man­iz­ing rhetoric in rela­tion to the media work­er.

In addi­tion, secu­ri­ty forces wrote in their Telegram chan­nel that search­es in Melkaziorau’s house and inter­ro­ga­tions of his rel­a­tives would be car­ried out with spe­cial treat­ment.

On July 23, 2024, the Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion (GUBOPiK) rep­re­sen­ta­tives announced that they had filed crim­i­nal cas­es against two hosts of the ‘Zerka­lo’ Tik­Tok chan­nel and forced their par­ents to record a video reel with words of con­dem­na­tion against their chil­dren.

THE USE OF ANTI-EXTREMIST LEGISLATION TO RESTRICT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Per­se­cu­tion for dis­loy­al­ty and dis­sent under the guise of com­bat­ing extrem­ism con­tin­ued in 2024. The online space remained the main area of ​​this fight.

In addi­tion, the author­i­ties orga­nized ‘pre­ven­tive’ talks at uni­ver­si­ties, state orga­ni­za­tions, and enter­pris­es, where ide­o­log­i­cal work­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies dwelt upon ‘exter­nal ene­mies,’ the dan­ger of destruc­tive online resources and ‘extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy’ attrib­uted to the oppo­si­tion and inde­pen­dent media. They kept warn­ing the pub­lic against sub­scrib­ing to Telegram chan­nels banned by the author­i­ties and any forms of ‘extrem­ism.’

11 inde­pen­dent media projects were labeled as ‘extrem­ist group­ings’ by the Belaru­sian gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties in 2024.

The list of affect­ed media includes the Belaru­sian ‘Radio Racy­ja’ based out of Bia­lystok (Poland), DW Беларусь, UDF — Belarus News, ‘This is Min­sk, Baby’ (includ­ing the blog­ger Usi­aslau Pashkevich’s (aka ‘Tuteyshy Shli­akht­sich’) accounts on social media, ZnadNiemna.pl News Web-site, pub­lished by the Union of Poles in Belarus, which is not rec­og­nized by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, ‘Why are you lying?’ media project, which deals with ana­lyz­ing the state pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques, s13.ru Hrod­na City Web-site, as well as the media projects ‘Pozirk’, Orsha.eu, Media IQ, and ‘The Ordi­nary Morn­ing’. More­over, the Web-resources ‘We Are Not Slaves’, ‘The Peo­ple’s Reporter’ (a project of ex-polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and blog­gers Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau and Siarhei Pia­trukhin) as well as the blog­ger Aleh Zhalnou’s social media were labeled as extrem­ist for­ma­tions, too.

It was for the first time that the author­i­ties applied a new prac­tice of adding new names to the ini­tial­ly pub­lished lists of indi­vid­u­als, asso­ci­at­ed with extrem­ist group­ings. This new prac­tice affect­ed the ‘Zerka­lo’ and KYKY.ORG media projects in 2024.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued liq­ui­da­tion of legal enti­ties of orga­ni­za­tions, pre­vi­ous­ly labeled as extrem­ist group­ings.

On March 11, 2024, the old­est Belaru­sian News Agency Bela­PAN Closed Join-Stock Com­pa­ny was liq­ui­dat­ed by court as request­ed by the Pub­lic Prosecutor’s office of Per­shamays­ki City Dis­trict of Min­sk. The Bela­PAN employ­ees were sen­tenced to long terms of impris­on­ment in 2022.

Ten impris­oned jour­nal­ists and the impris­oned blog­ger Ali­ak­san­dr Ihnat­siuk were added by the author­i­ties to the List of cit­i­zens of Belarus, for­eign cit­i­zens or state­less per­sons, involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties in 2024.

Also, the jour­nal­ists Yury Drakakhrust, Han­na Liubako­va, and Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk were labeled by the KGB as relat­ed to ‘ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties’.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of cit­i­zens for any inter­ac­tion with the inde­pen­dent mass media, labeled as ‘extrem­ist group­ings.’ 

Thus, on April 19, 2024, the Min­sk City Court sen­tenced Nas­tas­sia Mat­si­ash, to two years in prison on charges of the alleged ‘par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’ for work­ing as a lan­guage con­sul­tant for the Bel­sat TV chan­nel from 2021 to 2023.

Event host and actor Kiryl Allahverdyan was detained on June 2, 2024 for hav­ing been filmed in satir­i­cal videos for the Bel­sat TV chan­nel wear­ing a police uni­form.

A his­to­ri­an Ihar Mel­nikau was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2024 for being inter­viewed by the ‘Euro­pean Radio for Belarus’ five months before the media out­let was declared an ‘extrem­ist group­ing.’ 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.’

As before, the con­tent of inde­pen­dent media and per­son­al pages of prode­mo­c­ra­t­ic jour­nal­ists and civ­il soci­ety activists was broad­ly rec­og­nized as extrem­ist mate­ri­als in 2024. Tik­Tok and X accounts were often tar­get­ed by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. It was for the first time in his­to­ry that an account on Threads was includ­ed in the list of extrem­ist pub­li­ca­tions.

Also, it was reg­is­tered for the first time that the con­tent of a Web-resource on LGBTQ+ issues was includ­ed in the list of ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als.’ In par­tic­u­lar, the social media of Belaru­sian trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty were banned in the coun­try.

On Feb­ru­ary 13, 2024, the con­tent of ‘BAJ. Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists’ Telegram chan­nel (t.me/bajmedia) was labeled by the regime in pow­er as ‘extrem­ist con­tent’. A sim­i­lar ‘extrem­ist’ label­ing affect­ed the baj.media pages on Tik­Tok social media on March 18, 2024.

In addi­tion to Belaru­sian online media, a num­ber of for­eign media appeared on the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als, includ­ing ‘Cur­rent Time TV’ media project (6 top­i­cal edi­to­ri­als), two arti­cles under the titles ‘Our Pushkin’ and ‘Broth­er Peo­ple’ on the Web-site of Die Tageszeitung news­pa­per from Ger­many as well as the YouTube chan­nel of UNIAN News Agency and eight Telegram Web resources from Ukraine.

On April 4, 2024, the Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter under the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus pub­lished an order that pro­vid­ed for can­cel­la­tion of domain names of Web-resources includ­ed in the Nation­al List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als. The nation­al domain zone admin­is­tra­tor was autho­rized to imple­ment the order.

Reform.by and Media-Polesye.by were among the first media out­lets affect­ed by the new legal pro­vi­sions.

The Belaru­sian peo­ple were fre­quent­ly pros­e­cut­ed for dis­trib­ut­ing ‘extrem­ist’ media pro­duc­tion under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (‘Dis­tri­b­u­tion, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­porta­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts con­tain­ing calls for extrem­ist activ­i­ties or pro­mot­ing such activ­i­ties’).

Most of them were pros­e­cut­ed for com­ments, likes, reposts of online pub­li­ca­tions and oth­er form of online activ­i­ty even in case when the orig­i­nal pub­li­ca­tions had been pro­duced before the moment of time, when the orig­i­nal sources were labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. 

It was for the first time in May 2024 that a crim­i­nal case was filed for ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ due to a sin­gle repost of a news item from an ‘extrem­ist group­ing’ web­site. Pre­vi­ous­ly, such cas­es used to be clas­si­fied as admin­is­tra­tive offens­es. The Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus (GUBOPiK) com­ment­ed upon the new law appli­ca­tion prac­tice as fol­lows: ‘It was enough to send a sin­gle mes­sage to pub­lic chats, pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished by an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion, to ini­ti­ate a crim­i­nal case under Art. 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus. This right­eous method will be fur­ther active­ly used from now on and such delib­er­ate actions will be severe­ly pun­ished.’

It is obvi­ous that secu­ri­ty forces pub­lish such posts with the pur­pose of intim­i­dat­ing Inter­net users who look for unbi­ased infor­ma­tion from inde­pen­dent media sources.

An admin­is­tra­tive case for keep­ing ‘extrem­ist’ books was filed in 2024.

Thus, report­ed­ly, a res­i­dent of Kobryn (Brest region), who kept the ‘banned’ book by Uladz­imir Arlou ‘Home­land: A Sto­ry for Chil­dren. From Rahne­da to Kast­siush­ka’ on a shelf was pun­ished with 10 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest on June 1, 2024. The court not­ed that keep­ing the book on the shelf is regard­ed as pub­lic demon­stra­tion of ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als.’

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 of impris­on­ment in a penal colony.

The crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion was ground­ed on the pub­li­ca­tion, where the defen­dant alleged­ly ‘denied the mass exter­mi­na­tion of civil­ians in the vil­lage of Khatyn by sol­diers of the 118th Schutz­mannschaft Bat­tal­ion of the Secu­ri­ty Police and the SS Spe­cial Bat­tal­ion under the com­mand of O. Dirlewanger in the frame­work of a puni­tive oper­a­tion on March 22, 1943.’

RESTRICTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION BY ADMINISTRATIVE MEASURES

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and oth­er gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies lim­it­ed access to the ‘unwant­ed’ infor­ma­tion through cen­sor­ship restric­tions.

The grounds for these restric­tions went beyond the ‘fight against extrem­ism’ and vio­la­tion of Mass Media Law.

On April 8, 2024, bas­ing on the rul­ing of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus took retal­ia­to­ry mea­sures in rela­tion to for­eign media for the first time in his­to­ry. Sub­ject to the intro­duc­tion of a ban on the activ­i­ties of cer­tain Belaru­sian mass media out­lets in Latvia, Lithua­nia and Esto­nia, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­men­tal agency decid­ed to restrict access to a num­ber of media out­lets from these coun­tries on the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus. (A list of tar­get­ed for­eign media out­lets wasn’t pro­vid­ed at that).

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly mon­i­tored online pub­li­ca­tions, ini­ti­at­ed block­ing of Web­sites and issued warn­ings to their pub­lish­ers.

On Sep­tem­ber 20, 2024, the recent­ly appoint­ed Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Marat Markau not­ed dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on ‘Inter­na­tion­al Stan­dards in the Elec­toral Process: Expe­ri­ence and Devel­op­ment Per­spec­tives’ that the gov­ern­men­tal agency under his lead­er­ship 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 between the years 2015–2020.

Thus, the Web­site of ‘Bureau Media’ inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism media project – buromedia.io was blocked for pub­lic access in approx­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes after post­ing a pub­li­ca­tion about the Belaru­sian Red Cross on its pages on Jan­u­ary 5, 2024.

Web-users’ access to ‘My Brest’ region­al news Web-resource www.mybrest.by  was restrict­ed sub­ject to the ‘revealed’ vio­la­tion of mass media law, due to the pub­lished hyper­link to the alleged­ly ‘extrem­ist’ belsat.eu Web-site in their online pub­li­ca­tion that was post­ed back in 2017.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus restrict­ed access to the Web­sites baranovichi24.by (due to the pub­lished link to an ‘extrem­ist’ media) and Katolik.life (no rea­son pro­vid­ed). The lat­ter was pre­vi­ous­ly blocked in Rus­sia, prob­a­bly since it touched upon the top­ic of the war in Ukraine.

On August 2, 2024, the ‘Chan­nel 8’ TV pro­gram edi­to­r­i­al received a writ­ten warn­ing from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ‘for vio­lat­ing the require­ments of the nation­al leg­is­la­tion on mass media’ by means of dis­sem­i­na­tion of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion.

Pub­lic access to the Russ­ian ‘Okko’ online cin­e­ma was ‘tem­po­rary sus­pend­ed’ in Belarus once again on Octo­ber 1, 2024.

The media busi­ness was accused of vio­lat­ing Arti­cle 38 of the Belarus Law on Mass Media by means of ‘post­ing pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion aimed at pro­mot­ing vio­lence and cru­el­ty on this Web-resource.’ The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion didn’t dis­close the essence of claims at that.

Cen­sor­ship was observed in dif­fer­ent forms, and the cir­cle of affect­ed enti­ties sur­passed mass media.

The stat­ed-owned CTV chan­nel cen­sored the broad­cast of the Euro­pean Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship, hav­ing tak­en the last-minute deci­sion to avoid show­ing the match­es of the Ukrain­ian nation­al team to the Belaru­sian audi­ence.  It was done despite the fact that the match­es had been includ­ed in the TV pro­gram.

The web­sites of state-owned media out­lets (‘Home­l­skaya Prau­da,’ ‘Home­l­skiya Vedamast­si,’ ‘Belarus 4 Homel,’ ‘First City TV Chan­nel,’ as well as dis­trict news­pa­pers) and Web-resources of local admin­is­tra­tions in the Gomel region intro­duced a kind of ‘self-cen­sor­ship’ in May 2024. They blocked access to their pages for vis­i­tors from abroad.

The ‘Belaru­sian N‑corpus‘ Web-resource with a col­lec­tion of texts in mod­ern Belaru­sian lan­guage and ref­er­ences to Web­sites in Belaru­sian was affect­ed by polit­i­cal cen­sor­ship, too. Pub­lic access to its Web­pages was restored in near­ly half a year since their block­ing. How­ev­er, the resumed ver­sion lacked near­ly 90% of the orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished texts, includ­ing the pub­li­ca­tions of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian mass media there. The revived data­base of Web-resources cur­rent­ly includes the state-owned online media, name­ly the ‘BelTA’ News Agency, the ‘Zvi­az­da’ news­pa­per, and the Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s offi­cial Web­site.

The Web-archive of ‘Cul­ture and Art’ hold­ing com­pa­ny that unites the ‘Cul­ture’ dai­ly news­pa­per and the ‘Art’ mag­a­zine was blocked for pub­lic access in June 2024. The Web-resource wasn’t updat­ed since 2021. How­ev­er, it remained acces­si­ble for users. It con­tained online exhibits, rep­re­sent­ing the whole his­to­ry of Belaru­sian art, includ­ing the infor­mal art, since the begin­ning of the 21^st cen­tu­ry. Among oth­er it con­tained quite a few pub­li­ca­tions about the peo­ple of cul­ture and art, who appeared in prison or in exile, and whose works of art do not meet the cur­rent ide­o­log­i­cal require­ments.

Pub­li­ca­tion of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly loy­al pro-gov­ern­men­tal mate­ri­als about Belaru­sian cul­ture on the hold­ing company’s new Web­site (https://kultura-info.by) start­ed in the sum­mer of 2022.

The entire man­age­ment of ‘Letapis’ film stu­dio, which is a divi­sion of the ‘Belarus­film’ nation­al film com­pa­ny, was dis­missed for polit­i­cal rea­sons in 2024. The stu­dio is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing doc­u­men­taries.

Hali­na Adamovich, a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and a prizewin­ner at numer­ous film fes­ti­vals, was dis­missed, too. The gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties had cer­tain ques­tions regard­ing the direc­tor’s films. A phono­gram ded­i­cat­ed to Ukraine in one of her films was the last straw that led to the dis­missal.

Fol­low­ing a range of insults and accu­sa­tions in pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram chan­nels in Feb­ru­ary 2024, the ‘Mila’ store chain was forced to delete a post on Insta­gram fea­tur­ing a famous pre­sen­ter Yauhen Per­lin, who resigned from the state TV after the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

The pres­sure affect­ed blog­gers from Homel, Mak­sim Fil­ipovich and Yauhen Katl­yarou, who were clear­ly loy­al to the author­i­ties. In Jan­u­ary 2024, they were forced to delete (or make pri­vate) hun­dreds of their pre­vi­ous videos of a crit­i­cal nature. M. Fil­ipovich did this after serv­ing a 15-day admin­is­tra­tive arrest, and Yauhen Katl­yarou did this after a record­ing of a con­ver­sa­tion with a local gov­ern­men­tal man­ag­er was pub­lished. Appar­ent­ly, it had some unpleas­ant con­se­quences for him. Katl­yarou did not man­age to avoid crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in the future.

Some Belaru­sian exiled media were banned both in Belarus and Rus­sia.

On Jan­u­ary 26, 2024, the Russ­ian Min­istry of Jus­tice labeled the media out­let ‘Vot Tak’ as a for­eign agent. This is an inter­na­tion­al project of the Bel­sat TV chan­nel in the Russ­ian lan­guage, aimed at the post-Sovi­et audi­ence. Since 2020, it has been oper­at­ing as an online media por­tal, pub­lish­ing news, ana­lyt­ics, expert opin­ions, reports, and inter­views. The pub­li­ca­tion employs jour­nal­ists from Rus­sia, Belarus, Ukraine, and oth­er coun­tries in the region.

On June 25, 2024, the Bel­sat TV chan­nel was blocked for pub­lic access in Rus­sia (among oth­er for­eign media) in response to the blocked access to a num­ber of Russ­ian media in the EU.

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.’ 

The Reform.news online media out­let received a mes­sage from the ‘Roskom­nad­zor’ super­vi­so­ry agency in Rus­sia on August 19, 2024. The Russ­ian gov­ern­men­tal agency noti­fied the media edi­to­r­i­al about their plan to block the Russ­ian users’ access to the Web-resource, in case the Reform.news team fails to delete pub­li­ca­tions from their Web-pages with­in 24 hours. The online media out­let is banned in Belarus.

On Novem­ber 12, 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.

‘The List of print­ed pub­li­ca­tions con­tain­ing mes­sages and (or) mate­ri­als, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of which may harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus’ was approved at a meet­ing of the Nation­al Com­mis­sion for the Eval­u­a­tion of Sym­bols, Attrib­ut­es, and Infor­ma­tion­al Prod­ucts on Novem­ber 21, 2024. The list con­sists of 35 items, includ­ing man­ga, nov­els on LGBTQ+ top­ics, erot­ic prose, and unof­fi­cial inter­pre­ta­tions of the his­to­ry of Belarus. Con­se­quent­ly, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion banned dis­tri­b­u­tion of these pub­li­ca­tions on the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus under the threat of can­celling the print­ed press dis­trib­u­tors’ cer­tifi­cates of state reg­is­tra­tion as per Arti­cle 33 of the Belarus Law ‘On Pub­lish­ing Activ­i­ties.’

EVENTS IN THE STATE MEDIA FIELD

The pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties of state media con­tin­ued against the back­ground of ongo­ing repres­sions in rela­tion to the non-state media resources and fur­ther ide­ol­o­giza­tion of dif­fer­ent spheres of life in Belarus in 2024. These activ­i­ties were also observed in the frame­work of the Union State of Belarus and Rus­sia with­in the peri­od under review.

In par­tic­u­lar, a res­o­lu­tion on found­ing the Union State’s media com­pa­ny with the pur­pose of cre­at­ing and pro­mot­ing com­mon media nar­ra­tives was signed at a meet­ing of the Supreme State Coun­cil of the Union State of Belarus and Rus­sia in St. Peters­burg on Jan­u­ary 29, 2024. The idea of start­ing the enti­ty had been artic­u­lat­ed by Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka repeat­ed­ly for sev­er­al years in a row.

Accord­ing to Mak­sut Sha­dayev, Russia’s Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Devel­op­ment, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the media hold­ing will embrace the cur­rent­ly exist­ing two week­ly news­pa­pers – ‘Soyuz­noe Veche’ and ‘Soyuz. Belarus – Rus­sia’ as well as the Union State’s TV and Radio Com­pa­ny first of all. The media out­lets are sup­posed to ensure the imple­men­ta­tion of ‘the uni­fied and coor­di­nat­ed media pol­i­cy’.

One bil­lion Russ­ian rubles (about 11 mil­lion USD) will be allo­cat­ed for the launch of the media hold­ing from the bud­get of the Union State. Its head­quar­ters will be based out of Moscow, and its rep­re­sen­ta­tive office will be locat­ed in Min­sk. It is planned to estab­lish a ‘resource hub’ with­in the hold­ing, which will cre­ate con­tent for dis­tri­b­u­tion through elec­tron­ic media.

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 the pro­duc­tion of con­tent 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 State’s com­mon infor­ma­tion space was adopt­ed.

The cre­ation of media hold­ings in the form of joint edi­to­r­i­al offices of local state news­pa­pers con­tin­ued in Belarus, too.

Thus, it was announced that three such news­rooms would be cre­at­ed in the Brest region dur­ing the meet­ing of Brest Region­al Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee on Jan­u­ary 25, 2024.

Tat­siana Hahaka­va, the head of the Main Depart­ment of Ide­o­log­i­cal Work and Youth Affairs at Brest Region­al Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee not­ed dur­ing the meet­ing that ‘work in the Web-space is task #1 for mod­ern mass media.’ There­fore, blog­gers were recruit­ed to work in the edi­to­r­i­al offices of two media out­lets in the region. The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Piart­sou attend­ed the meet­ing in Brest. He not­ed in his speech that Belarus had devel­oped ‘an effec­tive sys­tem of pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion.’ How­ev­er, accord­ing to him, ‘it needs sharp­en­ing and refor­mat­ting in some places that has been com­plet­ed by 97% in the Brest region.’

On April 8, 2024, the for­mer Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Piart­sou was appoint­ed to the new posi­tion of Deputy Head of the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion. At the same time, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka artic­u­lat­ed the need ‘to tight­en up and put in order all the mass media and ide­o­log­i­cal work’ as well as to focus on the issues of pro­pa­gan­da and counter-pro­pa­gan­da.

The state author­i­ties and mass media inten­si­fied their pro­pa­gan­da efforts on the eve of the most recent ‘elec­tion cam­paign’ and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, the vot­ing day dur­ing anoth­er ‘elec­tion’ of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

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 media out­let.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion offi­cials stat­ed on Novem­ber 14, 2024 that fol­low­ing the recent mon­i­tor­ing of the Inter­net, they had urged five own­ers of Web-resources that dis­trib­ute TV pro­duc­tion to stop vio­lat­ing the legal norms of Belarus Law ‘On Mass Media’ and pro­vide gen­er­al access to the manda­to­ry pub­lic pack­age of TV pro­grams. The gov­ern­men­tal agency threat­ened to lim­it access to these Web-resources in case of non-com­pli­ance with the set require­ments. It had already restrict­ed access to the ‘Okko’ online cin­e­ma from Rus­sia for fail­ing to meet the require­ments ear­li­er.

Pro­pa­gan­da activ­i­ties of Belaru­sian state-owned media led to the intro­duc­tion of addi­tion­al restric­tive mea­sures in rela­tion to them.

In March 2024, the Lat­vian Nation­al Coun­cil for Elec­tron­ic Media (NEPLP) took a deci­sion to ban access to the Web­sites of the state-owned ANT TV chan­nel (ont.by) and the ‘SB. Belarus Today’ (sb.by) media hold­ing for being relat­ed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of aggres­sive Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and hate speech.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus respond­ed with a state­ment, blam­ing the Lat­vian author­i­ties of ‘imper­mis­si­ble actions aimed at lim­it­ing free­dom of speech and pur­pose­ful­ly depriv­ing the Lat­vian cit­i­zens of their right to receive com­plete and unbi­ased infor­ma­tion.’

As report­ed in April 2024, the sus­pen­sion of the Belaru­sian State TV and Radio company’s mem­ber­ship in the Euro­pean Broad­cast­ing Union (EBU) would be indef­i­nite until the sit­u­a­tion improve­ment in the future. It was ini­tial­ly set from May 2021 to July 2024. And it was moti­vat­ed by the lack of objec­tiv­i­ty, free­dom and inde­pen­dence of the press, the con­tin­u­ous wave of repres­sion against jour­nal­ists as well as the broad­cast­ing of so-called ‘repen­tant’ videos, equat­ed to tor­ture.

Against the back­ground of inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus start­ed to apply the mech­a­nism of their cir­cum­ven­tion, refer­ring to the law that had been adopt­ed in 2023. The legal act allows the use of objects of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty with­out get­ting the con­sent of their copy­right hold­ers if the lat­ter are includ­ed in the list of legal enti­ties from the so-called ‘unfriend­ly’ coun­tries. The Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions (FIFA) and the Union of Euro­pean Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions (UEFA) were includ­ed in this list by the min­is­te­r­i­al decrees of Feb­ru­ary 14^th and Feb­ru­ary 19^th respec­tive­ly. Con­se­quent­ly, it became pos­si­ble to broad­cast inter­na­tion­al foot­ball cham­pi­onships in Belarus with­out obtain­ing the appro­pri­ate per­mis­sions from the non-res­i­dent copy­right hold­ers.

The state media in Belarus cir­cum­vent­ed the imposed sanc­tions, vio­lat­ing the rules of broad­cast­ing sports com­pe­ti­tions.

On June 7, 2024, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion sup­ple­ment­ed the list of sports com­pe­ti­tions that can be broad­cast in Belarus with­out the rights hold­ers’ con­sent. These are the Nations League match­es and friend­ly match­es with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Belaru­sian nation­al foot­ball team. They were allowed to be shown with­out UEFA’s con­sent.

On July 28, 2024, the ‘Belarus 5’ state TV chan­nel showed part of a swim­ming com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the Olympic Games, where a Belaru­sian ath­lete par­tic­i­pat­ed, hav­ing no rights to broad­cast it. (The video footage was nei­ther pro­mot­ed nor com­ment­ed on in any way).

On August 5, 2024, the Euro­pean Union intro­duced new sanc­tions against a num­ber of Belaru­sian law-enforce­ment offi­cers and pro­pa­gan­dists, includ­ing Iry­na Akulovich, the CEO of ‘BelTA’ News Agency, Dzmit­ry Zhuk, the ex-head of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s press ser­vice, and Miki­ta Rachy­lous­ki, the host of ‘Sen­ate’ TV pro­gram on the CTV chan­nel. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus called these sanc­tions the ‘gross­est vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law’ in a cor­re­spond­ing state­ment, deliv­ered on the same day.