MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS IN 2022

MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS IN 2022

CONDITIONS OF INPEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS AND MEDIA RIGHTS

Crim­i­nal Cas­es

The case of Siarhei Sat­suk

The case of Kseniya Lut­ski­na

The case of Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va) and Darya Chultso­va

The case of Dzia­n­is Ivashyn

The case of Andrzej Poc­zobut

The case of TUT.by

The case of Valeriya Kast­si­uho­va

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin

The case of Nasha Niva

The case of Bela­PAN

The case of Henadz Mazhei­ka

The case of Iry­na Slau­nika­va

The case of Andrei Kuzniechyk

The case of Aleh Hruzdzilovich

The case of Dzmit­ry Luk­sha

The case of Svi­at­lana Gar­da

The case of Ihar Kazmer­chak

The case of Aksana Kolb

The case of Yury Hantsare­vich

The case of Kanstantsin Zalatykh

The case of Ales Lyu­bianchuk

The case of Yury Hlad­chuk and Yulia Mudreuslaya

The case of Ivan Murauy­ou

The case of Inna Mozhchanka

The case of Yauhien Merkis

The case of Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Snezhana Inanets

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of blog­gers

Pros­e­cu­tion of infor­mal press dis­trib­u­tors

Deten­tions and admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists

Appli­ca­tion of leg­is­la­tion on coun­ter­ac­tion to extrem­ism

Restric­tion of access to infor­ma­tion

Events in the state media sec­tor

CONDITIONS OF INPEPENDENT MEDIA SECTOR ACTIVITY

Repres­sive poli­cies of Belaru­sian author­i­ties in rela­tion to the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and mass media con­tin­ued in 2022. They were imple­ment­ed in the form of a broad­er scope of activ­i­ties that had fea­tures of cen­sor­ship and fight with dis­sent. The full-scale mil­i­tary aggres­sion of Rus­sia against Ukraine since Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022 was sup­port­ed by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. It had an impact on the applied poli­cies. In par­tic­u­lar, the author­i­ties sup­pressed dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about the rea­sons and the progress of mil­i­tary actions that dif­fered from the Russ­ian point of view. Also, they per­se­cut­ed peo­ple for expres­sion of sup­port to Ukraine and anti-war state­ments.

The con­tin­u­ous repres­sions against the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media sec­tor were char­ac­ter­ized by con­sis­ten­cy and cru­el­ty. The meth­ods of pres­sure includ­ed:

• crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists,

• obstruc­tion of their activ­i­ties by law enforce­ment agen­cies,

• appli­ca­tion of leg­is­la­tion on coun­ter­ing extrem­ism to lim­it the influ­ence of inde­pen­dent media,

• admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion.

Belarus ranked 153 out of 180 in the «Press Free­dom Index 2022», pub­lished on the eve of the World Press Free­dom Day. It was the worst result among the states locat­ed in Europe (along­side Rus­sia).

17 sen­tences were passed in media-relat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es dur­ing the year of 2022. Jour­nal­ists and oth­er media work­ers were sen­tenced to 1.3 — 14 years of impris­on­ment.

It was short­ly before the end of her prison term that jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, who was sen­tenced to two years in prison in 2020, was also found guilty of ‘high trea­son’ (arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and sen­tenced addi­tion­al­ly to eight years of impris­on­ment, on top of the ini­tial sen­tence. 11 new crim­i­nal cas­es against jour­nal­ists and oth­er media work­ers were filed in 2022. They are still to be con­sid­ered by courts. 

33 jour­nal­ists were impris­oned at the end of 2022. Accord­ing to the ‘Reporters With­out Bor­ders’ inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion, Belarus clos­es the top five coun­tries in the world with the largest num­ber of jour­nal­ists behind bars and holds the 4^th posi­tion as for the num­ber of impris­oned female jour­nal­ists (9) in the coun­try.

The law enforce­ment agen­cies con­tin­ued to put pres­sure on inde­pen­dent media rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In 2022, the BAJ reg­is­tered 43 cas­es of deten­tion of jour­nal­ists and 55 search­es. The jour­nal­ists were fined four times and sen­tenced 20 times to dif­fer­ent terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest. In addi­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies sum­moned jour­nal­ists for ques­tion­ing, vis­it­ed rel­a­tives and searched the homes of jour­nal­ists, includ­ing those who had left Belarus.

As before, anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion was used by the regime in pow­er as a weapon in the fight against the inde­pen­dent press. Pri­mar­i­ly, it was used as a basis for restrict­ing access to the con­tent of inde­pen­dent media and per­se­cut­ing peo­ple for any par­tic­i­pa­tion in their activ­i­ties.

Thus, the first crim­i­nal case under the new “extrem­ist” arti­cle of the Crim­i­nal Code 130–2 (‘denial of the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple’) was ini­ti­at­ed in con­nec­tion with pub­li­ca­tions in inde­pen­dent media — “Flag­stock” and “Zerka­lo”. Also, mil­i­tary expert Yahor Lebi­adok was charged with assist­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code for his com­ments to the Euro­pean Radio for Belarus. (It should be under­scored that the radio sta­tion was rec­og­nized as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” after the inter­view).

Over 5,000 «extrem­ist crimes» were reg­is­tered by the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office dur­ing the first eleven months of 2022. 76% of this num­ber were posts on the Inter­net at that. They were usu­al­ly con­nect­ed to the events of 2020. The online state­ments were defined by the author­i­ties as ‘slan­der­ing the state and top lead­er­ship’, ‘insult­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials’, ‘delib­er­ate incite­ment of hatred’, and ‘dis­cred­i­ta­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus’.

On June 14, 2022, the Supreme Court of Belarus rec­og­nized the ‘TUT BY MEDIA’ Ltd., which used to be the largest online resource of Belarus, as an ‘extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion’. The com­pa­ny employ­ees are under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion now.

The author­i­ties con­tin­ued to include Web­sites and pages of inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions on social media in the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als. Their employ­ees, who were under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and pre­sent­ed charges under cer­tain arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code, were includ­ed in the lists of “extrem­ists” and “ter­ror­ists”. Also, 9 inde­pen­dent media out­lets were rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” by the regime in pow­er dur­ing the year of 2022.

All in all, pub­li­ca­tions of approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 Web-resources (most­ly Telegram-chan­nels and groups) were rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ by courts in 2022.

Also, more than 100 Web-resources were rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ by the KGB or the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs.

As before, this deci­sion entailed the mass pros­e­cu­tion of Inter­net users for the alleged dis­sem­i­na­tion of “extrem­ist” media con­tent.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion con­tin­ued their repres­sive activ­i­ty on restrict­ing access to the ‘unde­sir­able’ infor­ma­tion, ban­ning the inde­pen­dent mass media activ­i­ties and act­ing as a cen­sor.

Accord­ing to offi­cial reports, the regime in pow­er restrict­ed access either ful­ly or par­tial­ly to 3,002 Web-resources (main­ly, Telegram chan­nels and chats) with­in the peri­od of Jan­u­ary – Novem­ber 2022. (To be com­pared to a bit more than 5,000 Web-resources, sub­ject­ed to such restric­tions dur­ing sev­en pre­ced­ing years.)

The list of blocked mass media includ­ed ‘‎Viach­erni Babruysk’, ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’, ‘Nar­o­d­naya Volya’, Pol­ish Radio, CityDog.io, s13.ru, ‘Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance’ et al. The VK social media blocked a range of pages and groups of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent mass media, includ­ing ‘Charter’97’ and ‘Flag­stock’, fol­low­ing a com­plaint of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus, as well as ‘Zerka­lo’ and the Belaru­sian edi­tion of ‘Media Zone’ on demand of the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office of Rus­sia.

As a result of this pol­i­cy, Belarus wors­ened by three points its posi­tion in the glob­al ‘Free­dom on the Net — 2022’ annu­al rank­ing, com­piled by the ‘Free­dom House’ human rights orga­ni­za­tion, get­ting 28 points out of 100. The pre­ced­ing year of 2021 had been far from being easy at that.

It was a new phe­nom­e­non in 2022 that the Web-audi­ence from Rus­sia was deprived of access to a num­ber of Belaru­sian news Web­sites, since the lat­ter cov­ered the mil­i­tary con­flict in Ukraine. In par­tic­u­lar, the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion blocked access to the news Web­sites Zerkalo.io, Nasha Niva, Euro­pean Radio for Belarus, Media-Palessie, Sal­i­dar­nasts et al., by deci­sion of the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Roskom­nad­zor).

Prac­ti­cal­ly all major inde­pen­dent news Web-resources con­tin­ued their work from abroad. Some media out­lets were forced to relo­cate their edi­to­r­i­al teams once again after the out­break of war in Ukraine at that.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists also con­tin­ued its activ­i­ty in exile.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was award­ed with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Prize for Con­tri­bu­tion to Press Free­dom in Mon­te­v­ideo on May 3, 2022.

“By award­ing the prize to the BAJ, we are stand­ing by all jour­nal­ists around the world who crit­i­cize, oppose and expose author­i­tar­i­an politi­cians and regimes, by trans­mit­ting truth­ful infor­ma­tion and pro­mot­ing free­dom of expres­sion”, said Alfred Lela, Chair of the Prize‘s inter­na­tion­al jury. “Today we salute and praise them; we find a way to say: we are with you, and we val­ue your courage”.

CHANGES IN LEGISLATION

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2022, a repub­li­can ref­er­en­dum on intro­duc­ing amend­ments and addi­tions to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus was held. As a result, the notion of ‘ide­ol­o­gy of the Belaru­sian state’ was intro­duced into Arti­cle 4 (for which there is no def­i­n­i­tion). The ide­ol­o­gy of the Belaru­sian state is now the only ide­ol­o­gy that is not cov­ered by the con­sti­tu­tion­al ban on estab­lish­ing it as oblig­a­tory for the cit­i­zens. Arti­cle 4 now reads as fol­lows:

«Democ­ra­cy in the Repub­lic of Belarus is car­ried out on the basis of the ide­ol­o­gy of the Belaru­sian state, as well as the diver­si­ty of polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions and opin­ions.

The ide­ol­o­gy of polit­i­cal par­ties, reli­gious or oth­er pub­lic asso­ci­a­tions, and social groups may not be estab­lished as oblig­a­tory for cit­i­zens.”

Arti­cle 54 was sup­ple­ment­ed with part 2: “Preser­va­tion of the his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of the hero­ic past of the Belaru­sian peo­ple, patri­o­tism is the duty of every cit­i­zen of the Repub­lic of Belarus”, which in fact restricts free­dom of opin­ion, in par­tic­u­lar regard­ing his­tor­i­cal events, and should be con­sid­ered in the con­text of the appli­ca­tion of the laws “On pre­vent­ing Nazism reha­bil­i­ta­tion” (of May 14, 2021) and “On the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple”.

The law of Jan­u­ary 5, 2022 “On the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple” leg­is­lat­ed the con­cept of “geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple: these are “atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by Nazi crim­i­nals and their accom­plices, nation­al­ist for­ma­tions dur­ing the Great Patri­ot­ic War and the post-war peri­od, aimed at the sys­tem­at­ic phys­i­cal destruc­tion of the Belaru­sian peo­ple by mur­der and oth­er acts rec­og­nized as geno­cide in accor­dance with leg­isla­tive acts and norms of inter­na­tion­al law”. At the same time, the “post-war peri­od” means the time before Decem­ber 31, 1951, and the “Belaru­sian peo­ple” are Sovi­et cit­i­zens who lived on the ter­ri­to­ry of the BSSR dur­ing the spec­i­fied peri­od. This ignores the pro­vi­sions of the Con­ven­tion on the Pre­ven­tion and Pun­ish­ment of the Crime of Geno­cide of 1948, which is referred to in the pre­am­ble of the Law: accord­ing to Arti­cle 2 of the Con­ven­tion, geno­cide can only be direct­ed against “a nation­al, eth­nic, racial or reli­gious group as such”. This law also includes a new arti­cle 130–2 “Denial of the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple” in the Crim­i­nal Code, accord­ing to which pub­lic denial of the legal­ly fixed inter­pre­ta­tion of the his­tor­i­cal events of 1941–1951 is a crime and is pun­ish­able by up to 10 years in prison. This inno­va­tion is also a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al stan­dards for free­dom of expres­sion.

On March 31, the pres­i­den­tial decree No 131 «On devel­op­ment of mass media» was signed. The aim of its adop­tion was stat­ed to be to ensure sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic posi­tion of the nation­al mass media and pro­duc­tion of the nec­es­sary amount of high-qual­i­ty Belaru­sian con­tent, and the rea­son was stat­ed to be the impo­si­tion of sanc­tions against Belarus in the con­di­tions of the geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict. The decree estab­lish­es a 10% adver­tis­ing fee for out­door and trans­port adver­tis­ing, and a 20% adver­tis­ing fee in oth­er cas­es. The fee is to be paid by adver­tis­ers and is to be used to sub­si­dize state media. In addi­tion, the val­ue added tax rate for data trans­mis­sion ser­vices has been changed from 25% to 26%.

Decree No. 269 of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters of April 29, 2022 “On mea­sures to imple­ment Decree No. 131 of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus of March 31, 2022” defines how the extra per­cent­age of tax intro­duced by Decree No. 131 will be spent. For this pur­pose, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion cre­ates a Com­mis­sion to deter­mine the recip­i­ents of sub­si­dies to finance the pro­duc­tion (reim­burse­ment of pro­duc­tion costs) of Belaru­sian (nation­al) con­tent and the amount of these sub­si­dies, which is to work «on a vol­un­tary basis». This body is to form «uni­fied approach­es to the deter­mi­na­tion of recip­i­ents of sub­si­dies and their amounts» and to con­sid­er quar­ter­ly appli­ca­tions of media edi­to­r­i­al offices.

On March 22, pres­i­den­tial Decree No. 116 «On news aggre­ga­tors on the glob­al com­put­er net­work Inter­net» was signed, aimed at pre­vent­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­ri­als from Inter­net resources, access to which is lim­it­ed. This doc­u­ment intro­duces a new con­cept of a «news aggre­ga­tor»: an inter­net resource owned by a legal enti­ty or indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neur, which hosts at least 50 news items per day for five con­sec­u­tive days, and the num­ber of news items bor­rowed from var­i­ous sources exceeds 50 per­cent of the total num­ber of items per day. Excep­tions are state media and online retail­ers. The news web­sites are oblig­ed, under threat of being blocked by a deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, to pre­vent dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­ri­als from «blocked» resources and hyper­links to them, as well as to pro­vide the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion with «the infor­ma­tion it needs to analyse the infor­ma­tion» with­in five work­ing days.

On 19 Sep­tem­ber, the Oper­a­tive Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­tre under the Pres­i­dent (OAC), the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus and the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued Deci­sion No. 5/14/15, which changed the pro­ce­dure for restrict­ing (resum­ing) access to Inter­net resources. Where­as pre­vi­ous­ly Inter­net providers would check the restrict­ed list once a day, they are now required to do so every three hours dur­ing the day and to restrict access to a par­tic­u­lar «banned» inter­net resource with­in four hours of its inclu­sion in the list.

On 18 Octo­ber, pres­i­den­tial Decree No 368 «On inter­ac­tion between telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion oper­a­tors, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers and own­ers of Inter­net resources with bod­ies engaged in oper­a­tional and inves­tiga­tive activ­i­ties» was signed, which pro­vides for the cre­ation of a spe­cial infor­ma­tion sys­tem of elec­tron­ic inter­ac­tion with spe­cial ser­vices. The OAC and the KGB have been iden­ti­fied as those who can mon­i­tor users. Where­as pre­vi­ous­ly real-time sur­veil­lance was car­ried out only on users of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors, now it will become manda­to­ry for telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers and own­ers of Inter­net resources. Those iden­ti­fied by the OAC and the KGB will be required to reg­is­ter with the sys­tem with­in three months and set up their resources for unim­ped­ed online access by secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Fail­ure to com­ply with these require­ments will result in the block­ing of access to «offend­ing» web­sites.

VIOLATIONS OF JOURNALISTS AND MEDIA RIGHTS

Crim­i­nal cas­es

Dur­ing the year 17 crim­i­nal cas­es were adju­di­cat­ed: jour­nal­ists and media work­ers received prison sen­tences from 1.3 to 14 years. Dur­ing the year, 11 new crim­i­nal cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed.

At the end of Decem­ber 2022, 33 jour­nal­ists were impris­oned. Accord­ing to the inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tion Reporters with­out Bor­ders, Belarus was in the bot­tom five coun­tries with the largest num­ber of jour­nal­ists behind bars and was in fourth place for the num­ber of impris­oned female jour­nal­ists (9).

The case of Siarhei Sat­suk

On March 25, 2020 Siarhei Sat­suk, a well-known inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and the edi­tor of “Yezhed­nevnik” online media out­let, was detained. One of his high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tions was a series of arti­cles in “Yezhed­nevnik” about cor­rup­tion in the Belaru­sian health­care sys­tem. Lat­er, a num­ber of high-rank­ing offi­cials of the Min­istry of Health were found guilty of cor­rup­tion. On March 23, 2020, the «Yezhed­nevnik» web­site (ej.by) pub­lished a col­umn by Siarhei Sat­suk «Who is sow­ing pan­ic around the coro­n­avirus, the pres­i­dent or web­sites and chan­nels?» In this piece the author ques­tioned the offi­cial sta­tis­tics on the inci­dence of coro­n­avirus in Belarus. Two days after­wards, on 25 March, he was detained and tak­en into cus­tody. The rea­son for the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion under Arti­cle 430 of the Crim­i­nal Code (bribery) was the alleged receipt of mon­ey by Siarhei Sat­suk for prepar­ing and pub­lish­ing an arti­cle about cor­rup­tion. Sat­suk’s deten­tion and the ini­ti­a­tion of the crim­i­nal case against him pro­voked sharp crit­i­cism from the Belaru­sian and inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. On the tenth day after his arrest, the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor reversed the deci­sion to place him in cus­tody. The jour­nal­ist was released, but the crim­i­nal case against him was not dropped.

On Decem­ber 8, 2021, Siarhei Sat­suk was detained again. On the same day he was searched and inter­ro­gat­ed by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. The ej.by web­site was blocked at the same time. After the inter­ro­ga­tion on the old bribery case the jour­nal­ist was tak­en into cus­tody. Lat­er he was charged with two more charges: incite­ment of racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social enmi­ty or dis­cord and abuse of pow­er or offi­cial author­i­ty. Min­sk City Court pro­nounced the sen­tence on Siarhei Sat­suk on Octo­ber 26, 2022. He was sen­tenced to eight years’ impris­on­ment in a strict regime penal colony, hav­ing been found guilty of receiv­ing a large-scale bribe (Arti­cle 430, part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code), abuse of pow­er (Arti­cle 426), as well as of incit­ing social hatred (Arti­cle 130). 

The case of Kseniya Lut­ski­na

Kseniya Lut­ski­na, a for­mer employ­ee of the state-owned Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny and win­ner of state awards for achieve­ments in her pro­fes­sion, was arrest­ed, togeth­er with the staff of the Belaru­sian Press Club, on  Decem­ber 22, 2020 by offi­cers of the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment. On Decem­ber 31 they were charged with an offence under Arti­cle 243 (part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code (tax eva­sion on a par­tic­u­lar­ly large scale). After the Press Club case was dropped in August 2021 and all of its defen­dants, who had peti­tioned for clemen­cy, were released, a new crim­i­nal case was brought against Lut­ski­na, who suf­fered from a grow­ing tumour in her brain but remained in cus­tody. She was charged with con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al means (Arti­cle 357 of the Crim­i­nal Code), moti­vat­ed by the fact that she «head­ed a group of infor­ma­tion sup­port and coun­ter­ac­tion to state media» in the Coor­di­na­tion Coun­cil of the Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion, and tried to cre­ate a pub­lic Belaru­sian inter­ac­tive tele­vi­sion to «con­ceal and dis­tort the real facts, esca­late the protest activ­i­ty, stim­u­late a split in the Belaru­sian soci­ety, form a neg­a­tive opin­ion among peo­ple about the activ­i­ties of state bod­ies”. On Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, Min­sk City Court sen­tenced Kseniya Lut­ski­na to eight years in prison.

The case of Kat­siary­na Andreye­va (Bakhvala­va) and Darya Chultso­va

On Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021, jour­nal­ists of the Bel­sat TV chan­nel Kat­siary­na Andreye­va and Darya Chultso­va) were sen­tenced to two years in prison for alleged­ly orga­niz­ing actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order (Arti­cle 342 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code), for hav­ing con­duct­ed a live broad­cast of the vio­lent dis­per­sal of peace­ful demon­stra­tors who came to pay trib­ute to Roman Ban­daren­ka in the yard of his apart­ment build­ing on Novem­ber 15, 2020. On April 7, 2022, it became known that five months before her release from prison, Andreye­va had been charged with «trea­son against the state» (Arti­cle 356 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code). Her case was con­sid­ered in cam­era by the Gomel Region­al Court, and on July 13, 2022 a sec­ond sen­tence of eight years and three months in a rein­forced regime penal colony was hand­ed down.

Darya Chultso­va was released on  Sep­tem­ber 3, 2022, hav­ing served her entire sen­tence.

The case of Dzia­n­is Ivashyn

Inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was arrest­ed on March 12, 2021 in Hrod­na and charged under Art. 365 of the Crim­i­nal Code (inter­fer­ence in the activ­i­ties of a police offi­cer), which car­ries a max­i­mum penal­ty of three years impris­on­ment. Ivashyn worked for the Novy Chas news­pa­per. He was also the author and edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ser­vice of the Inform­Na­palm web­site. The last arti­cle he pub­lished in the Novy Chas was about for­mer mem­bers of the Ukrain­ian Berkut spe­cial unit alleged­ly involved in vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers in 2014 in Kyiv, who had tak­en a job with the Belaru­sian police (the arti­cle was writ­ten using data from open sources). On Sep­tem­ber 2, 2021, he was charged again. On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022 Ivashyn was con­vict­ed in a closed tri­al under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: 365 (inter­fer­ence in the activ­i­ties of an inter­nal affairs offi­cer) and 356 (part 1) (high trea­son). The State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee accused the jour­nal­ist of coop­er­a­tion with the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, Ukrain­ian diplo­mats. He was sen­tenced to 13 years and 1 month in prison and fined 4,800 rubles. He must also pay com­pen­sa­tion to nine vic­tims in the amount of 2,000 rubles each. Who these vic­tims were was not known to the pub­lic. In total, the jour­nal­ist has to pay more than 9000 dol­lars.

The case of Andrzej Poc­zobut

Andrzej Poc­zobut, a jour­nal­ist of Pol­ish descent from Hrod­na, an employ­ee of the Pol­ish news­pa­per Gaze­ta Wybor­cza as well as the news­pa­per Nad Niem­nem, was arrest­ed togeth­er with sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the Union of Poles in Belarus on March 25, 2021. He was tak­en into cus­tody and charged under Arti­cle 130 (part 3) of the Crim­i­nal Code (incite­ment of racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or dis­cord). He faced five to 12 years’ impris­on­ment. Accord­ing to the offi­cial ver­sion, since 2018 mem­bers of the Union of Poles held a series of ille­gal events with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of minors in Hrod­na and oth­er cities of the region «to hon­our mem­bers of anti-Sovi­et gangs who act­ed dur­ing and after the Great Patri­ot­ic War, com­mit­ting rob­bery, killing peace­ful pop­u­la­tion of Belarus, destruc­t­ing prop­er­ty». These actions of the author­i­ties took place against the back­ground of the anti-Pol­ish pro­pa­gan­da spread by the state media, which described Poland as an aggres­sor that alleged­ly had ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims to the Repub­lic of Belarus. In August 2022, Andrzej Poc­zobut faced a new charge: he was addi­tion­al­ly charged with «call­ing for restric­tive mea­sures (sanc­tions) aimed at caus­ing dam­age to nation­al secu­ri­ty» (Arti­cle 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

On Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, Hrod­na Region­al Court sen­tenced Andrzej Poc­zobut to 8 years of impris­on­ment to be served in a max­i­mum secu­ri­ty penal colony.

The case of TUT.by

On May 18, 2021 the Belaru­sian author­i­ties launched an unprece­dent­ed attack on tut.by, the most influ­en­tial inde­pen­dent news resource in Belarus (ear­li­er, on Jan­u­ary 19, TUT BY Media Ltd was stripped of its media sta­tus by a court deci­sion). The Depart­ment for Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions opened a crim­i­nal case against its employ­ees under Arti­cle 243 (part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code (large-scale tax eva­sion). On that day, search­es were con­duct­ed in the offices of tut.by in Min­sk, Brest, Viteb­sk, Mahil­iou and Hrod­na, as well as in the offices of the asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies hoster.by, av.by and rabota.by in Min­sk and in the homes of a num­ber of employ­ees. On the same day, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus blocked tut.by for access both from Belarus and from abroad. The deci­sion was tak­en on the basis of the noti­fi­ca­tion of the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office, which found «numer­ous facts of vio­la­tion of the Law on mass media» and, in par­tic­u­lar, referred to the pub­li­ca­tion of mate­ri­als orig­i­nat­ing from the BYSOL Foun­da­tion, an ini­tia­tive to raise funds to sup­port vic­tims of polit­i­cal repres­sion in Belarus (leg­is­la­tion pro­hibits media to dis­trib­ute mate­ri­als on behalf of non-reg­is­tered orga­ni­za­tions).

A crim­i­nal case for tax eva­sion on a par­tic­u­lar­ly large scale was opened (Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Alleged­ly, being a res­i­dent of the Hi-Tech Park, TUT BY Media received rev­enues for about a year with­out hav­ing the right to do so. As part of the case, 13 employ­ees of TUT.by and relat­ed com­pa­nies were placed under deten­tion or house arrest:

1. edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va;

2. gen­er­al direc­tor Liud­mi­la Chek­ina

3. chief accoun­tant Angela Asad (released on March 11, 2022, but remained charged)

4. deputy direc­tor Iry­na Rybal­ka (released on March 11, 2022, but remained charged);

5. chief engi­neer Ala Lap­at­ka;

6. edi­tor-in-chief Vol­ha Loi­ka;

7. jour­nal­ist Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va;

8. deputy chief accoun­tant Mary­ja Novik (released on March 11, 2022, but remained charged);

9. deputy gen­er­al direc­tor for tech­ni­cal issues Ali­ak­san­dr Daine­ka;

10. man­ag­er Andrei Audziejeu;

11. direc­tor of hoster.by Siarhei Paval­ishau (released on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021);

12. gen­er­al direc­tor of Rock­et­Da­ta Darya Danila­va;

13. lawyer Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka (house arrest);

14. for­mer lawyer Iry­na Kast­si­uchen­ka (house arrest).

After some time, the com­pa­ny paid the dam­ages cal­cu­lat­ed by the inves­ti­ga­tion — more than EUR 1,120,000. Nine of the defen­dants in the case applied for exemp­tion from crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty, and their cas­es did not go to tri­al.

In Octo­ber 2021 the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus informed that a new crim­i­nal case was brought against employ­ees of TUT.by — for incite­ment of hatred (part 3 Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

Five employ­ees were charged under oth­er arti­cles. In Jan­u­ary 2022 edi­tor Vol­ha Loi­ka and jour­nal­ist Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va were released from pre-tri­al deten­tion due to the change of pre­ven­tive mea­sure. They secret­ly left the coun­try and were put on the want­ed list, as was the lawyer Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka.

On April 25, 2022, Darya Danila­va was sen­tenced to 1 year and 4 months impris­on­ment under Arti­cle 342 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code (par­tic­i­pa­tion in acts gross­ly vio­lat­ing pub­lic order). She was released in the court­room, as she had served her entire sen­tence while under inves­ti­ga­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 9, 2023 the chief edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va and the gen­er­al direc­tor Liud­mi­la Chek­ina stood tri­al. Both were charged under part 3 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (incite­ment of racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or dis­cord on racial, nation­al, reli­gious, lin­guis­tic or oth­er social belong­ing, com­mit­ted by a group of per­sons or result­ing in grave con­se­quences) and part 3 of Arti­cle 361 (calls to actions aimed at dam­ag­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus, com­mit­ted through mass media or the Inter­net glob­al com­put­er net­work). Liud­mi­la Chek­ina was also charged with large-scale tax eva­sion (Arti­cle 243 part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code). The tri­al was held behind closed doors. On March 17, 2023, Judge Valiantsi­na Zianke­vich sen­tenced both for­mer employ­ees of TUT.by to 12 years of impris­on­ment. Liud­mi­la Chek­ina was also ordered to pay a fine of 37,000 rubles.

The case of Valeriya Kast­si­uho­va

On June 30, 2021 Valeriya Kast­si­uho­va, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, ana­lyst, founder and edi­tor of the expert com­mu­ni­ty web­site «Nashe Mne­nie», edi­tor and author of “Belaru­sian Year­book”, head of the expert group for mon­i­tor­ing «Belarus in Focus», was detained after a search of her home by KGB offi­cers. Her arrest was pre­ced­ed by an appear­ance on Euro­ra­dio, where she answered ques­tions about whether the release of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers could be achieved by sanc­tions and whether a rift with the West would pro­voke a rapid deep­en­ing of Belarus’ inte­gra­tion with Rus­sia. Since then she has been in cus­tody. Kast­si­uho­va was charged under three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: Arti­cle 357, part 1 (aid­ing and abet­ting acts aimed at seiz­ing pow­er), Arti­cle 361, part 3 (call­ing for acts harm­ful to nation­al secu­ri­ty) and Arti­cle 130, part 3 (incit­ing oth­er social enmi­ty and dis­cord). On March 17, 2023, she was sen­tenced (togeth­er with researcher Tat­siana Kuz­i­na) to ten years» impris­on­ment.

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin

On June 3, 2021 Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin, a sports jour­nal­ist and con­trib­u­tor to Tribuna.com and the author of the Youtube chan­nel Chest­nok, was arrest­ed. He was charged under Arti­cle 342 part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) and sen­tenced by judge Siarhei Shaty­la to two years in prison on Jan­u­ary 19, 2022.

The case of Nasha Niva

On July 8, 2021 the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion com­plete­ly blocked the access to the web­site of the online week­ly news­pa­per «Nasha Niva» (nn.by) on the basis of a noti­fi­ca­tion from the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office «for dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion which is pro­hib­it­ed by Arti­cle 38 part 1 of the Law on Mass Media». The offices and homes of four of its employ­ees were searched. Two of them, Yahor Martsi­novich and Andrei Skurko, were charged with caus­ing prop­er­ty dam­age with­out signs of theft (Arti­cle 216 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and tak­en into cus­tody — they alleged­ly paid util­i­ty bills for the edi­to­r­i­al office at the res­i­den­tial rate. On March 15, 2022 they were both sen­tenced to two and a half years’ impris­on­ment at Zavod­sky dis­trict court in Min­sk (judge Angela Kast­siuke­vich).

The case of Bela­PAN

On 18 August 2021 search­es were con­duct­ed at the office of the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN and the homes of its staff in Min­sk as part of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them). Bela­PAN web­sites (belapan.by and belapan.com) were com­plete­ly blocked. Six staff mem­bers were ques­tioned by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee’s Office. On the evening of the same day the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee pub­lished a state­ment that a tax inspec­tion of Bela­PAN had been ini­ti­at­ed and vio­la­tions of tax leg­is­la­tion had already been revealed. Bela­PAN direc­tor Iry­na Leushy­na and its for­mer direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, who became the defen­dants in the case under part 2 of Arti­cle 243 (tax and duties eva­sion) of the Crim­i­nal Code, were tak­en into cus­tody. On Novem­ber 18, 2021 it became known that both jour­nal­ists were also charged with «estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion» (Arti­cle 361 part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code). This was pre­ced­ed by the recog­ni­tion as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion of «a group of cit­i­zens of Belarus from among the staff of Bela­PAN news agency».

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, a for­mer Bela­PAN employ­ee, media man­ag­er and founder of the online edi­tion journalby.com, has been in cus­tody since Jan­u­ary 12, 2021 (as has his part­ner Iry­na Zlobi­na, whom he mar­ried already behind bars). Ini­tial­ly they were both charged under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of events gross­ly vio­lat­ing pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) for «financ­ing per­sons involved in mass dis­or­der and oth­er protests». On August 31, 2021, fol­low­ing the arrest of Ali­ak­san­drau’s for­mer Bela­PAN col­leagues, he was addi­tion­al­ly charged with tax eva­sion. Ali­ak­san­drau and Zlobi­na were also involved in the Bela­PAN case, which was tried in cam­era for four months. On Octo­ber 6, 2022, the court sen­tenced media man­ag­er Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau to 14 years in prison, his wife Iry­na Zlobi­na to 9 years, for­mer Bela­PAN agency direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau to 6 years and Bela­PAN edi­tor-in-chief and direc­tor Iry­na Leushy­na to 4 years:

● Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Iry­na Zlobi­na were charged under Arti­cle 342 (part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code for prepar­ing «at least 260 per­sons to take part in group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order» (this is how the inves­ti­ga­tion inter­pret­ed their pay­ment of fines, lawyer’s bills, etc. They were also charged under Arti­cle 356 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code (trea­son against the state) for assist­ing the ByHelp Foun­da­tion in activ­i­ties «aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus»;

● Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau and Iry­na Leushy­na were accused of cre­ation and lead­er­ship of an extrem­ist group of Bela­PAN work­ers and oth­er per­sons under Arti­cle 361 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code;

● Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were accused of tax eva­sion under Arti­cle 243 (part 2) of the Crim­i­nal Code (the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee stat­ed that Bela­PAN employ­ees alleged­ly evad­ed tax­es by 449 thou­sand rubles for six years and received con­cealed fund­ing from for­eign orga­ni­za­tions in the amount of 1.6 mil­lion dol­lars since 2014).

The case of Henadz Mazhei­ka

Henadz Mazhei­ka, a jour­nal­ist for “Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da v Belarusi”, was detained in Moscow by spe­cial ser­vices and deport­ed to Min­sk on Octo­ber 1, 2021. The rea­son for his deten­tion was his arti­cle on the web­site kp.by, pub­lished in the evening of Sep­tem­ber 28. In it, a for­mer class­mate pos­i­tive­ly described the pro­gram­mer Andrei Zeltser, a par­tic­i­pant in the trag­ic inci­dent in which a KGB offi­cer and him­self were killed. Although the edi­to­r­i­al board removed the text a few min­utes lat­er, the next day the site kp.by was blocked by a deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion in con­nec­tion with the pub­li­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion «con­tribut­ing to the for­ma­tion of sources of threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty». Henadz Mazhei­ka, placed in cus­tody, was charged under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code — 130 (incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social enmi­ty or dis­cord) and 368 (insult­ing the pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus). In con­nec­tion with these events the Russ­ian office of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da decid­ed to close its office of CJSC BelKP-PRESS that had been pub­lish­ing Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da in Belarus since 1994. On March 23, 2023, Min­sk City Court sen­tenced Henadz Mazhei­ka to three years of impris­on­ment.

The case of Iry­na Slau­nika­va

Iry­na Slau­nika­va (for­mer employ­ee of the TV chan­nel Bel­sat) was detained at Min­sk air­port on Octo­ber 30, 2021, when she and her hus­band returned from hol­i­day. After 30 days of admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion she was not released and was charged under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code. On August 3, 2022 Slau­nika­va was sen­tenced to five years’ impris­on­ment under two crim­i­nal arti­cles in the Homel Region­al Court: 342 (organ­i­sa­tion of group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) and 361 part 1 (estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion or lead­er­ship of such for­ma­tion or a struc­tur­al sub­di­vi­sion with­in it). The court’s deci­sion was not affect­ed by the fact that she coop­er­at­ed with Bel­sat TV chan­nel before the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs rec­og­nized it as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion».

The case of Andrei Kuzniechyk

Andrei Kuzniechyk, a free­lance jour­nal­ist for Radio Svabo­da, was detained on Novem­ber 25, 2021. After his deten­tion, the secu­ri­ty forces briefly man­aged to gain con­trol over the Telegram chan­nel Radio Svabo­da. The next day, Kuzniechyk was sen­tenced to admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion, then twice more — for a total of 30 days — but he was nev­er released. On Decem­ber 23, Kuzniechyk’s rel­a­tives were informed that a crim­i­nal case was opened against him. While the jour­nal­ist was under admin­is­tra­tive arrest, on  Decem­ber 3, the court rec­og­nized as extrem­ist mate­ri­als the chan­nels of Radio Svabo­da in Telegram and YouTube, as well as pages in social net­works. On June 8, 2022 Radio Svabo­da jour­nal­ist Andrei Kuzniechyk was sen­tenced to six years in a strict regime penal colony under Arti­cle 361–1 part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (estab­lish­ment or par­tic­i­pa­tion in the extrem­ist for­ma­tion). The tri­al was held behind closed doors, there­fore, the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances of the case are unknown.

The case of Aleh Hruzdzilovich 

On Decem­ber 23, 2021 Aleh Hruzdzilovich, a jour­nal­ist of Radio «Svabo­da» was detained. In the sum­mer of 2020 he was active­ly cov­er­ing socio-polit­i­cal events in Belarus, hold­ing pop­u­lar Radio Svabo­da web­casts from protest actions, although in August 2020 he was denied accred­i­ta­tion by the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs togeth­er with the major­i­ty of for­eign media jour­nal­ists. Hruzdzilovich was first detained on July 16, dur­ing a mass search of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus, and spent ten days in cus­tody. Upon his release, the jour­nal­ist remained a sus­pect and had to sign an under­tak­ing to appear. On Decem­ber 23, masked men took Hruzdzilovich from his home in Min­sk, break­ing down the doors, after which it became known that his pre­ven­tive mea­sure was changed. The jour­nal­ist became a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case brought under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) — he was charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unsanc­tioned action at a time when he had already been stripped of his accred­i­ta­tion as a jour­nal­ist by the Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry. On 3 March 2022, the court of Savet­s­ki Dis­trict of Min­sk sen­tenced him to one year and a half of impris­on­ment. After nine months behind bars, Aleh Hruzdzilovich was released on the basis of a peti­tion for clemen­cy. He imme­di­ate­ly left Belarus.

The case of Dzmit­ry Luk­sha

On March 11, 2022, Dzmit­ry Luk­sha (ex-Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny work­er), a free­lance cor­re­spon­dent of the Kaza­kh TV chan­nel Khabar 24, was detained and tak­en into cus­tody. A crim­i­nal case was brought against him under two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code — Arti­cle 369–1 (dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus) and Arti­cle 342 (orga­ni­za­tion or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the group actions that gross­ly vio­late the pub­lic order). It is known that the rea­son for this was his lat­est sto­ry shown by a Kaza­kh chan­nel. Accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tion, Luk­sha, in order to dis­cred­it the coun­try, with the help of a cam­era­man and with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of his wife, pre­pared a series of videos con­tain­ing delib­er­ate­ly false infor­ma­tion. On Decem­ber 2, 2022, the judge Natalia Buguk sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to four years in a gen­er­al regime penal colony and a fine of 16,000 rou­bles.

The case of Svi­at­lana Gar­da

On March 14, 2022 infor­ma­tion about a crim­i­nal case against Svi­at­lana Gar­da (at that time she was out of Belarus), head of the net­work media out­let Media-Pole­sie, for abuse of pow­er under Arti­cle 424 of the Crim­i­nal Code (for fail­ure to make tax pay­ments and oblig­a­tory deduc­tions) was issued by the Luninets dis­trict pros­e­cu­tor’s office.

The case of Ihar Kazmer­chak

On April 1, 2022 a crim­i­nal case was opened against Ihar Kazmer­chak, the founder of the region­al news web­site Orsha.eu, who left Belarus (Arti­cle 368 of the Crim­i­nal Code for insult­ing the pres­i­dent). In Decem­ber it became known that Kazmer­chak was put on an inter­state want­ed list with­in the CIS.

The case of Aksana Kolb

On 20 April 2022, Aksana Kolb, the ‘Novy Chas’ newspaper’s Edi­tor-in-chief, was arrest­ed (novychas.by was blocked in Belarus in Octo­ber 2021, but con­tin­ued to oper­ate).

On June 15, 2022, she sen­tenced to 2.5 years of restric­tion of free­dom with a refer­ral to an open cor­rec­tion­al insti­tu­tion, being found guilty under part 1 of Arti­cle 342 of the Belarus Crim­i­nal Code (arrange­ment and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them). She fled Belarus lat­er.

The case of Yury Hantsare­vich

Yury Hantsare­vich, a cor­re­spon­dent of ‘Intex-press’ peri­od­i­cal (Baranavichy, Brest region), was detained on May 5, 2022. A crim­i­nal case was filed against him under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (assis­tance to extrem­ist activ­i­ty) after­wards. It relat­ed to the trans­fer of pho­tos of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment to the ‘Zerka­lo’ and ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ pub­li­ca­tions. On July 14, 2022, he was sen­tenced to 2 years and 6 months of impris­on­ment.

The case of Kanstantsin Zalatykh

Kanstantsin Zalatykh, Direc­tor of ‘Belarusy i Rynak’ news­pa­per, was detained by KGB offi­cers on the morn­ing of May 18, 2022. He was charged with com­mit­ting crimes under four arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: 426 (abuse of pow­er or offi­cial author­i­ty), 130 (incite­ment of racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or dis­cord), 369 (insult­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial) and 368 (insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus). On April 6, 2022, Min­sk City Court sen­tenced Zalatykh to four years in prison, hav­ing heard his case in cam­era.

The case of Ales Lyu­bianchuk

A crim­i­nal police search was car­ried out at the house of jour­nal­ist Ales Lyu­bianchuk in the vil­lage of Kryvichi, Iuye dis­trict, Hrod­na region on May 26, 2022. Con­se­quent­ly, he was detained as part of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and tak­en to a tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Min­sk. He was charged under Arti­cle 361–1(3) of the Crim­i­nal Code (estab­lish­ment of or par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion). The jour­nal­ist’s case was heard in Min­sk City Court and on Octo­ber 27, 2022 Lyu­bianchuk was sen­tenced to three years’ impris­on­ment.

The case of Yury Hlad­chuk and Yulia Mudreuskaya

On 16 June 2022 Yury Hlad­chuk, edi­tor-in-chief of ABW.by and Yulia Mudreuskaya, edi­tor of spe­cial projects, were detained.  Yury Hlad­chuk was kept in cus­tody until his tri­al in Decem­ber, when he was sen­tenced to 2.5 years of impris­on­ment under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) and Arti­cle 368 (insult of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus). Yulia Mudreuskaya. She was charged under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code and sen­tenced to a year and a half of impris­on­ment.

The case of Ivan Murauy­ou

Ivan Murauy­ou, jour­nal­ist, cam­era­man and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, was detained on August 29, 2022 in Min­sk by offi­cers of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee; after­wards he was charged under Part 3 Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion or par­tic­i­pa­tion in it). The rea­son for the pros­e­cu­tion was a video for the inves­ti­ga­tion of jour­nal­ist Stanis­lau Ivashke­vich, which was broad­cast­ed on Bel­sat TV chan­nel in July of the same year — a sto­ry titled «Lil­ia Lukashenko’s friend and oli­garchs became ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the ortho­pe­dists’ case». On Decem­ber 26, 2022 the Min­sk City Court sen­tenced Murauy­ou to two and a half years in prison. 

The case of Inna Mozhchanka

On Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022 Brest Region­al Court found the for­mer BelTA jour­nal­ist Inna Mozhchanka guilty on charges of insult­ing a pub­lic offi­cer (Arti­cle 369 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and incit­ing social hatred (Arti­cle 130, part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) and sen­tenced her to three years in a strict regime colony to be served under the gen­er­al regime. Inna Mozhchanka was detained in Sep­tem­ber 2021 in con­nec­tion with her neg­a­tive state­ments on social media about the deceased KGB offi­cer.

The case of Yauhien Merkis

On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, jour­nal­ist and local his­to­ri­an Yauhien Merkis, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, was detained in Homiel. It was report­ed that his case con­cerned alleged calls for sanc­tions. Lat­er it became known that the jour­nal­ist was charged under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (pro­mo­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty). He remained in cus­tody.

The case of Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka

On Sep­tem­ber 16, 2022, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka, a for­mer employ­ee of the ONT TV chan­nel, who head­ed the pres­i­den­tial pool of jour­nal­ists, was detained and sen­tenced twice to admin­is­tra­tive arrest (in August 2020, he resigned in protest against vio­lence, after which he worked in the PR sphere, being an employ­ee of Bela­gro). When Sem­chanka was not released on Octo­ber 13, 2022, it became known that a crim­i­nal case was opened against him under Arti­cle 130 (part 1) of the Crim­i­nal Code for incit­ing hatred. His case was heard in Min­sk City Court on 23 March 2023, with the judge sen­tenc­ing him to three years in prison.

The case of Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Snezhana Inanets

The spouse jour­nal­ists Ali­ak­san­dr Lychau­ka and Sni­azhana Inanets, who were detained on Octo­ber 6, 2022, were charged under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them) in con­nec­tion with par­tic­i­pa­tion in protests in 2020 and sub­scrip­tion to «destruc­tive» Telegram chan­nels. On Jan­u­ary 13, 2023, Inanets was sen­tenced to two years’ and Lychau­ka to three years of restrict­ed free­dom with­out refer­ral to an open prison.

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of blog­gers

In 2022, the insti­tu­tion of «spe­cial pro­ceed­ings» under the new Arti­cle 468–27 of the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure Code — crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against an accused per­son who is out­side the Repub­lic of Belarus and evades appear­ing before the body con­duct­ing the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings — start­ed to be applied. As a result of its intro­duc­tion it became pos­si­ble to con­vict polit­i­cal emi­grants in absen­tia, in par­tic­u­lar oppo­si­tion-mind­ed blog­gers.

On Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022 the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee ini­ti­at­ed the first «spe­cial pro­ceed­ing» — a case under Arti­cle 130 (incit­ing hatred) and Arti­cle 203–1 (ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of per­son­al data) against five «admin­is­tra­tors» of the Telegram chan­nel Black Book of Belarus, which pub­lished infor­ma­tion about gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, accused of being involved in the per­se­cu­tion of the oppo­si­tion. Among them was Dzmit­ry Navosha, pub­lic fig­ure and jour­nal­ist, co-founder of Sports.ru. On Jan­u­ary 18, 2023 all of the accused were sen­tenced in absen­tia to 12 years of impris­on­ment.

On Decem­ber 30, 2022, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office announced that the crim­i­nal case against the blog­gers Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, Yan Rudzik, and Raman Pratasievich, who had been involved in the activ­i­ties of the NEXTA and ‘Belarus of the Brain’ Telegram chan­nels was direct­ed to court. (The Telegram chan­nels active­ly cov­ered the post-elec­tion protests of 2020.)

The case con­sid­er­a­tion start­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2023. It was held in the order of spe­cial pro­ceed­ings in rela­tion to Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la and Yan Rudzik, who were out­side Belarus. Raman Prata­se­vich was under house arrest in Belarus since he had been detained fol­low­ing a forced land­ing of a Ryanair plane fly­ing from Athens to Vil­nius in Min­sk on May 23, 2021, and appeared before the court. The accused were charged with com­mit­ting at least 1,586 crimes under ten arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code, alleged­ly, “in order to imple­ment a com­mon con­spir­a­to­r­i­al plan to seize state pow­er in Belarus in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way.”

Pros­e­cu­tion of infor­mal press dis­trib­u­tors

On Decem­ber 12, 2022, Aleh Hau­ry­lau, a train­er from Sal­i­horsk (Min­sk region), was sen­tenced to 10 years in prison in a high secu­ri­ty colony. He had been detained for dis­trib­ut­ing protest news­pa­pers in Decem­ber 2021. Ini­tial­ly, he was charged with slan­der­ing the pres­i­dent (Arti­cle 367 of the Crim­i­nal Code). How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the results of the “exam­i­na­tion” of “Chest­naya Gaze­ta” pub­li­ca­tions, the list of charges was sup­ple­ment­ed by four more arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code: Arti­cle 361 (‘calls for actions aimed at caus­ing harm to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus’), Arti­cle 341 (‘defile­ment of build­ings and dam­age to prop­er­ty’), Arti­cle 361- 4 (‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty’), and Arti­cle 130 (incite­ment of hos­til­i­ty or dis­cord).

On Octo­ber 26, 2022, Andrei Fomin was detained, pre­sent­ed charges under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘arrange­ment and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’), and placed in cus­tody. The per­son admit­ted being the edi­tor and author of arti­cles for the ‘Vest­ni­ki’ net­work of protest news­pa­pers, pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by activists of local ini­tia­tives. (The net­work pub­li­ca­tions merged into one ‘Belarus­ki Vest­nik’ news­pa­per in March 2022.)

Deten­tions and admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reg­is­tered 40 cas­es of deten­tion of jour­nal­ists and 55 search­es (5 of them were con­duct­ed in media edi­to­r­i­al offices) in 2022. Also, the jour­nal­ists were impris­oned 20 times and fined four times on admin­is­tra­tive charges dur­ing the year. More­over, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies sum­moned jour­nal­ists for inter­ro­ga­tions, vis­it­ed the rel­a­tives and searched the homes of jour­nal­ists who had left Belarus. In fact, all non-state media and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, as alter­na­tive sources of infor­ma­tion, were under close con­trol of law enforce­ment agen­cies with­in the peri­od under review.

E.g., Siarhei Serabro, the ‘Vit­sieb­sk People’s News’ Web-site edi­tor and pho­tog­ra­ph­er was detained at Vit­sieb­sk rail­way sta­tion on Feb­ru­ary 28. The author­i­ties assumed that he was going to shoot a protest against the war in Ukraine there. The media worker’s mobile phone was tak­en away from him, and he spent about two hours at the police sta­tion. On August 23, he was also sum­moned to the Viteb­sk region­al depart­ment of GUBOPiK (Main Depart­ment for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs), where he was inter­ro­gat­ed for an hour, and then they took his writ­ten expla­na­tions about the cov­er­age of protest ral­lies after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020.

The inde­pen­dent Web-pub­li­ca­tion ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ and its Edi­tor-in-chief Ana­tol Sanat­sen­ka were sub­ject­ed to large-scale per­se­cu­tion in 2022, too. The jour­nal­ist was twice detained and sen­tenced to admin­is­tra­tive arrest in mid-Sep­tem­ber. Police search­es were con­duct­ed in his and his col­leagues’ apart­ments. The tech­ni­cal equip­ment was seized. Pub­lic access to ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ news­pa­per Web­site was blocked on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022. And Babruysk City and Dis­trict Court labeled its con­tent as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022.

A five-minute sto­ry about the ‘Babruys­ki Kury­er’ news­pa­per and its employ­ees appeared on the Telegram chan­nel of the ‘ZefirFM’ local state radio on Octo­ber 6, 2022. The text of the sto­ry was read by Mikalay Silk­ou, the ‘Babruyskaye Zhyt­st­sio’ pro-gov­ern­ment newspaper’s edi­tor-in-chief. The main atten­tion in the sto­ry was giv­en to Ana­tol Sanat­sen­ka, who was serv­ing an admin­is­tra­tive arrest at that time. In par­tic­u­lar, he was unfound­ed­ly accused of beg­ging for mon­ey from the Unit­ed States and Ger­many, pub­lish­ing «fake news» about the ter­ror­ist attack in the Min­sk metro and hav­ing links with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel that had been rec­og­nized as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion».

This approach became typ­i­cal for liq­ui­da­tion or ‘cen­sor­ing’ inde­pen­dent media in Belarus: search­es at edi­to­r­i­al offices, seizure of tech­ni­cal equip­ment, deten­tions and inter­ro­ga­tions of employ­ees as well as their pros­e­cu­tion with the prac­ti­cal­ly simul­ta­ne­ous recog­ni­tion of the con­tent as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’.

Con­se­quent­ly, it was impos­si­ble to con­tin­ue the activ­i­ty of the affect­ed media out­lets either par­tial­ly or in full.

Appli­ca­tion of leg­is­la­tion on coun­ter­ac­tion to extrem­ism

The trend of using anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to restrict access to infor­ma­tion dis­trib­uted by inde­pen­dent media and to hold peo­ple account­able for any par­tic­i­pa­tion in their activ­i­ties con­tin­ued and expand­ed in 2022.

Thus, on June 14, 2022, the Supreme Court of Belarus rec­og­nized the ‘TUT BY MEDIA’ Ltd., which used to be the largest online resource of Belarus, as an ‘extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion’. The com­pa­ny employ­ees are under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion now. Ihar Lut­s­ki, the ex-Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion stat­ed in this respect as fol­lows:  

“There took place a direct encroach­ment on the sov­er­eign­ty and inde­pen­dence of our coun­try. The fund­ing of these non-state media was car­ried out from abroad, and it was also coor­di­nat­ed from abroad. The cur­rent ver­dict on TUT.BY is a vivid exam­ple of that. They have been rec­og­nized as extrem­ist!”  

The Minister’s posi­tion con­cerned prac­ti­cal­ly all non-state mass media that was con­firmed by the gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies.

The author­i­ties con­tin­ued to include the con­tent of Web­sites and pages in the social media, owned by inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions, to the lists of ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ and label the inde­pen­dent media as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’, as well as include their crim­i­nal­ly pros­e­cut­ed employ­ees to the lists of ‘extrem­ists’ and ‘ter­ror­ists’. The Web­sites and online com­mu­ni­ties of the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent mass media (over 40 media out­lets, all in all), appeared in the list of ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’. More­over, the ‘Church’ Web­site and social media that cov­ered the activ­i­ties of Greek Catholic con­gre­ga­tion in Belarus were includ­ed in the ‘extrem­ist’ list, too.

The inde­pen­dent media ‘Nasha Niva’, ‘Flag­stock’, ‘KYKY.ORG’, ‘Euro­ra­dio’, ‘Charter’97’ as well as the so-called ‘samiz­dat’, i.e. the print­ed  protest news­pa­pers, which were pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by non-pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists (‘Hon­est News­pa­per’, ‘Belaru­sian Newslet­ter’, ‘Protest Belarus’, ‘Protest Homiel’, ‘The Belaru­sians’ Word’, and ‘‘7Chizhey’ News­pa­per’) were labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ by deci­sions of KGB and the Min­istry of Inte­ri­or dur­ing the year of 2022.

By March 2023, 18 media orga­ni­za­tions were labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’, includ­ing the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

More than 1,500 Web-resources were labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ dur­ing the year of 2022. More­over, pub­li­ca­tions of approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 Web-resources (main­ly, Telegram chan­nels and Web-com­mu­ni­ties) were rec­og­nized by courts as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als.’

As before, it entailed mass admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of Web-users for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of “extrem­ist” media con­tent (in par­tic­u­lar, under Arti­cle 19.11 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, which pro­vides for up to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest). The appli­ca­tion of this arti­cle was pecu­liar enough, since the author­i­ties pre­sent­ed admin­is­tra­tive charges to peo­ple for reposts of mate­ri­als, which had been pub­lished many years ear­li­er and which weren’t includ­ed in the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als at the moment of their dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The “strug­gle with extrem­ism” was used as the basis for bring­ing a large num­ber of cit­i­zens to crim­i­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty. More than 5,000 «extrem­ist crimes» were record­ed by the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office in the first eleven months of 2022. At the same time, 76% of this num­ber of cas­es were expres­sions of opin­ion on the Web, usu­al­ly in the con­text of the events of 2020, which were defined by the author­i­ties as ‘slan­der­ing the state and top gov­ern­men­tal lead­er­ship, insult­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, delib­er­ate­ly incit­ing hatred, dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’.

The first crim­i­nal case under the “extrem­ist” Arti­cle 130–2 (‘denial of the geno­cide of the Belaru­sian peo­ple’) includ­ed in the Crim­i­nal Code in 2022 was filed in con­nec­tion with pub­li­ca­tions in inde­pen­dent media — “Flag­stock” (Homiel) and “Zerka­lo” — con­cern­ing the bur­ial places of the vic­tims of Stal­in­ist repres­sions.

The author­i­ties start­ed crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for any form of coop­er­a­tion with Inter­net resources rec­og­nized as extrem­ist for­ma­tions (see more details in ‘Crim­i­nal Cas­es’). Shar­ing infor­ma­tion, includ­ing pho­tos and videos, reg­is­tra­tion in bots, giv­ing an inter­view, etc. were the grounds for ini­ti­at­ing cas­es under Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty’), which pro­vides for pun­ish­ment of up to sev­en years in prison. Thus, Yury Hantsare­vich, a cor­re­spon­dent of ‘Intex-Press’ news­pa­per (Baranavichy, Brest region) was sen­tenced to 2.5 years in prison for shar­ing pho­tos of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment with ‘Zerka­lo’ and ‘Radio Lber­ty’. Yahor Lebi­adok, a mil­i­tary expert and Darya Losik, the wife of Igor Losik (a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and employ­ee of Radio Lib­er­ty), were con­vict­ed for being inter­viewed by the media, rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions”, to five and two years in prison, respec­tive­ly.

The employ­ees of media out­lets rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” were often pros­e­cut­ed under Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘cre­at­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion’), which pro­vides for a sanc­tion of up to 10 years in prison. Most of them were detained before the orga­ni­za­tions to which they were asso­ci­at­ed would be rec­og­nized as «extrem­ist groups», that is, the arti­cle is retroac­tive. For exam­ple, Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau (detained in Jan­u­ary 2021), Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, and Iry­na Leushy­na (detained in August 2021) were accused of cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group from among the Bela­PAN employ­ees and oth­er per­sons, as well as lead­ing such a for­ma­tion, although the Bela­PAN News Agency was labeled by the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs on Novem­ber 1, 2021 only (see more details in ‘Crim­i­nal cas­es’).

The List of cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, for­eign cit­i­zens or state­less per­sons involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties was pub­lished by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties for the first time in his­to­ry on March 23, 2022. It turned out to include blog­gers Siarhey Pia­trukhin and Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau, who were serv­ing prison sen­tences at that time. A jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va and a philoso­pher Uladz­imir Matske­vich were clas­si­fied as such per­sons some time lat­er.

Inclu­sion in this list impos­es a num­ber of restric­tions regard­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions, as well as the right to engage in cer­tain occu­pa­tions and hold cer­tain posi­tions.

A blog­ger and a ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ employ­ee Ihar Losik, who was sen­tenced to 15 years of impris­on­ment in a high secu­ri­ty colony, a jour­nal­ist and a leader of the Poles’ Union in Belarus Andrzej Poc­zobut, for­mer employ­ees of TUT.BY (Mary­na Zolata­va, Edi­tor-in-chief, Liud­mi­la Chek­ina, Direc­tor, and jour­nal­ists Vol­ha Loi­ka and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va), who were under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, as well as Aleh Hau­ry­lau, the dis­trib­u­tor of the «Chest­naya Gaze­ta» samiz­dat pub­li­ca­tion, were includ­ed in the List of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als involved in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties by the KGB, which means a ban on finan­cial trans­ac­tions with their par­tic­i­pa­tion.

RESTRICTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion con­tin­ued its repres­sive activ­i­ty on restrict­ing access to the ‘unde­sir­able’ infor­ma­tion by tak­ing admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures, ban­ning the activ­i­ty of inde­pen­dent media and car­ry­ing out the censor’s func­tions.

It affect­ed the oper­a­tion of Belaru­sian and for­eign mass media in 2022. The Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine start­ed on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, and it played its role in this process.

Thus, pub­lic access to 6 Ukrain­ian news Web-resources was blocked on the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus as soon as the war start­ed, includ­ing ‘Gor­don’, ‘Obozre­va­tel’, RBK-Ukraine, InfoRe­sist, ‘Novoye Vre­mya’ (‘New Time’), and ‘Focus’, since the Web-resources cov­ered the mil­i­tary con­flict in Ukraine in the way that dif­fered from the offi­cial inter­pre­ta­tion of Russ­ian-Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da.

The block­ing of users’ access from Rus­sia to the Belaru­sian Web-resources for the same rea­son was a new phe­nom­e­non in 2022.

By deci­sions of the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Roskom­nad­zor) or the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, the news web­sites Zerkalo.io, Nasha Niva, Euro­ra­dio, Media-Pole­sie, Sal­i­dar­nasts and oth­ers were blocked on the ter­ri­to­ry of Rus­sia. The «VKon­tak­te» social media blocked a num­ber of pages and groups of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent Web-resources, includ­ing «Char­ter-97» and «Flag­stock» on the com­plaint of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus, «Zerka­lo» and the Belaru­sian «Medi­a­zone» at the request of the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office of Rus­sia.

Accord­ing to the offi­cial sta­tis­tics, the gov­ern­ment restrict­ed access, to 3,002 Web-resources (main­ly Telegram chan­nels and chats), either in whole or in part, in Jan­u­ary-Novem­ber 2022. At the same time, just over 5,000 Web-resources were sub­ject to such restric­tions over the pre­vi­ous sev­en years. Among the media that suf­fered from the block­age of pub­lic access to their web­sites were Vech­erny Bobruisk, Bobruisk Couri­er, Nar­o­d­naya Volya, Pol­ish Radio, CityDog.io, s13.ru and oth­ers.

The year 2022 was marked by changes in the pro­ce­dure for block­ing the unwant­ed sites, as well as in arrang­ing the access of spe­cial ser­vices to the con­tent of Inter­net resources (see more details in “Changes in leg­is­la­tion”).

Cen­sor­ship was de-fac­to present in Belarus, includ­ing the state media sec­tor

In March 2022, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued warn­ings to two pop­u­lar Belaru­sian radio sta­tions, ‘Radio Rocks‑M’ and ‘Radio B A’, in con­nec­tion with the ‘dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­ri­als that don’t belong to the con­tents of the spe­cial­iza­tion, which is out­lined in the radio outlet’s reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments.’

The news Web­site Blizko.by was tem­porar­i­ly blocked for pub­lic access by deci­sion of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus. As soon as it was unblocked, the Web-users couldn’t find polit­i­cal news items, includ­ing the archived ones, on its pages any longer.

At least three state media work­ers were fired for mak­ing state­ments deemed dis­loy­al by the regime in pow­er, while oth­er employ­ees were sub­ject­ed to rep­ri­mands.

The Bel­Busi­ness­Chan­nel TV stopped broad­cast­ing its pro­grams with­out expla­na­tion of rea­sons in 2022. It was the only TV chan­nel on busi­ness in Belarus, deal­ing with rebroad­cast­ing the pro­grams of the Russ­ian RBC TV chan­nel and film­ing orig­i­nal pro­grams on Belaru­sian issues. The ‘UzHo­rak’ region­al news­pa­per (Hor­ki, Mahilou region) ter­mi­nat­ed its pub­li­ca­tion, refrain­ing from the expla­na­tion of rea­sons in pub­lic, in 2022. The old­est Belaru­sian news­pa­per ‘Belarusy i Rynak’ ceased its pub­li­ca­tion in 2022, fol­low­ing the order, issued by the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

The num­ber of non-state print media reg­is­tered by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreased from 764 to 560 media out­lets in 2022. (At the same time, the num­ber of state-owned media out­lets changed from 414 to 403 with­in the same peri­od of time.). It should be not­ed that the absolute major­i­ty of non-state print­ed pub­li­ca­tions that have retained their reg­is­tra­tion deal with adver­tis­ing, com­mer­cials, rep­re­sent the so-called “yel­low press” and do not deal with socio-polit­i­cal issues.

EVENTS IN THE STATE MEDIA SECTOR

On March 25, 2022, a gov­ern­men­tal meet­ing was held with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka on cur­rent issues of the mass media activ­i­ties. Among oth­er top­ics, the meet­ing par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed the draft Decree No. 131 con­cern­ing adver­tis­ing in the media (see more details in “Changes in Leg­is­la­tion”). Lukashen­ka stat­ed that “adver­tis­ing should be on patri­ot­ic pro-gov­ern­ment (not in terms of own­er­ship) chan­nels that pro­tect the state.” The meet­ing par­tic­i­pants also talked about the dif­fi­cul­ties of fund­ing state-owned media in the con­text of inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions and the need to opti­mize their activ­i­ties in the con­text of a “full-scale infor­ma­tion war” against the Belaru­sian state. It was claimed that state-run media were increas­ing­ly inter­cept­ing the agen­da on the Inter­net. How­ev­er, it was not­ed that they were not dom­i­neer­ing there yet.

On August 26, 2022, Uladz­imir Piart­sou, Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus stat­ed that the expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing a media hold­ing in the Min­sk region would be imple­ment­ed in all regions of the coun­try, since, accord­ing to his words, «it is the only way to keep the audi­ence of respec­tive dis­tricts under the cur­rent con­di­tions of trans­for­ma­tion.» Accord­ing­ly, the edi­to­r­i­al offices of dis­trict state-owned news­pa­pers will be enlarged. They will have cen­tral­ized man­age­ment and a uni­fied edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy for all.

Despite the fact that state-owned print media are fund­ed from the bud­get, the prac­tice of com­pul­so­ry sub­scrip­tion to such pub­li­ca­tions for employ­ees of state-owned enter­pris­es and insti­tu­tions con­tin­ued in the coun­try. (The employ­ees were threat­ened with non-renew­al of their con­tracts, depri­va­tion of bonus­es or under­pay­ment in the amount of the sub­scrip­tion cost.) Also, it was report­ed that post offices received assign­ments on sub­scrib­ing peo­ple to gov­ern­men­tal pub­li­ca­tions with the spe­cif­ic planned num­ber of sub­scrip­tions indi­cat­ed there.

It is planned to spend 162.4 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles from the state bud­get on state media in 2023. Out of this amount, 133.6 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles have been allo­cat­ed for tele­vi­sion and radio, 9.1 mil­lion for print media, and 19.7 mil­lion for “oth­er” media.

The fund­ing of CJSC ‘Cap­i­tal Tele­vi­sion’ (CTV chan­nel) will increase 4.7 times. It is planned to allo­cate 4.66 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles for the needs of the Sec­ond Nation­al TV Chan­nel, which is 44% more than in 2022. The Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny will receive 120.5 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles. Although com­pared to last year, the increase in its fund­ing amount­ed to only 5%, accord­ing to Res­o­lu­tion of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters No. 751, it received the redis­trib­uted unspent funds from the state bud­get for 2022, which were ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be used for pay­ing the exter­nal debt of Belarus but were not spent sub­ject to the refusal of Belarus gov­ern­ment to pay the debt in for­eign cur­ren­cy.

Sup­ple­men­tary sanc­tions in rela­tion to the Belaru­sian state-owned media were intro­duced at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el in 2022, since the coun­try was con­sid­ered as an aggres­sor in the Russ­ian – Ukrain­ian con­flict.

The ‘Globe­cast’ com­pa­ny took a deci­sion to dis­con­nect ‘Belarus-24’ TV chan­nel from satel­lite broad­cast­ing to a num­ber of coun­tries in the Euro­pean and Pacif­ic region in June 2022. This deci­sion caused out­rage from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

The same reac­tion was caused by Telegram’s deci­sion to com­plete­ly remove the odi­ous pro-gov­ern­men­tal chan­nels ‘Zhel­tye Slivy’ (‘Yel­low Plums’ / ‘Yel­low Leaks’) and ‘Vashi Slivy’ (‘Your Plums’ / ‘Your Leaks’), which pub­lished ‘repen­tant’ videos with detainees and insults against oppo­nents of the author­i­ties in Belarus.

The Union of Euro­pean Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions (UEFA) has exclud­ed the Belaru­sian State TV and Radio Com­pa­ny from the list of offi­cial broad­cast­ers of the League of Nations. Con­se­quent­ly, the match­es of the nation­al foot­ball team can no longer be watched on TV in Belarus. (They used to be broad­cast by the ‘Belarus 5’ TV chan­nel in the past.)