Restrictions on Freedom of the Internet / 1.10.2015–31.12.2016

1 Octo­ber-31 Decem­ber 2015

On 3 Octo­ber, approx­i­mate­ly at noon, mas­sive DDoS-attacks were launched against the web sites of the non-gov­ern­men­tal news agency Bela­PAN. As a result, the web sites naviny.by and belapan.by became unavail­able to the users; since 5 Octo­ber, they resumed their func­tion­ing but with inter­rup­tions. On 5 Octo­ber, the Bela­PAN news agency made a state­ment regard­ing the DDoS-attacks, where they were linked to the pub­li­ca­tion of a series of arti­cles about the reli­gious and polit­i­cal event “Prayer for Belarus” in the online news­pa­per Naviny.by. The arti­cle crit­i­cized the meth­ods of orga­niz­ing these events and quot­ed stu­dents who had come to the event with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the head of state “under a quo­ta”. On 5 Octo­ber, the BAJ also released a state­ment regard­ing the attack on the web sites of Bela­PAN con­sid­er­ing it to be an “attempt to pun­ish Belapan.com and Naviny.by for car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al duties” and a “gross inter­fer­ence in the work of inde­pen­dent media” dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. The jour­nal­is­tic asso­ci­a­tion urged to stop any attacks on the inde­pen­dent mass media in order to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens to receive infor­ma­tion from dif­fer­ent sources.

On 12 Octo­ber, in the night after the elec­tions, inde­pen­dent news sites nn.by, charter97.org, belaruspartisan.org, naviny.by, euroradio.fm were unavail­able from 1.20 to 1.35. At 1.35 the access was restored.

2016

On 15 Feb­ru­ary, there was no access to the web site of the Bela­PAN news agency because of a hack­er attack. It was not the first hack­er attack at web sites of the news agency dur­ing impor­tant pub­lic events. As Bela­PAN point­ed out, “It hap­pened on the day of impor­tant events in the country’s life: a ral­ly of indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neurs on the Kas­trych­nit­ska­ja Square in Min­sk and a EU Coun­cil meet­ing in Brus­sels where the ques­tion of lift­ing sanc­tions from most Belaru­sian offi­cials was con­sid­ered”.

On 2 March, the web sites nn.by (Nasha Niva) and ej.by (Ezhed­nevnik) received the writ­ten warn­ings of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion for vio­la­tions of the Law on mass media. This infor­ma­tion was post­ed on the min­istry’s web site under the title “The Law on mass media must be respect­ed”. NN.by was warned for the pub­li­ca­tion enti­tled “Belarus at the red lev­el of demo­graph­ic secu­ri­ty: a dis­trict cen­tre dies every year”. In the ministry’s opin­ion, it dis­cred­its the effi­cien­cy of the government’s demo­graph­ic pol­i­cy. Ej.by was warned for «dis­cred­it­ing the armed forces of the Repub­lic of Belarus” – the text about the com­bat readi­ness of the Belaru­sian army was accom­pa­nied by a pho­to­graph of Ger­man mil­i­tary equip­ment of the Sec­ond World War era.

On 6 June, Andrej Pavuk, an admin­is­tra­tor of the group Rud­abiel­sk Win­dows Dress­ing in the Odnok­lass­ni­ki social net­work was fined for 2,100,000 BYR (about 92 Euro) under Arti­cle 9.2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus (“Slan­der”). The deci­sion was tak­en by Judge Uladz­imir Vasilieus­ki from the Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict court in the Homiel region. The report was drawn up at the request of Siarhiej Zarych­ny, deputy direc­tor for ide­ol­o­gy, cul­ture and youth in the Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. The com­plaint to the police was caused by a post by Andrej Pavuk, where he sus­pect­ed the offi­cial of cor­rup­tion. The admin­is­tra­tor recog­nised that he had want­ed to ask a ques­tion but it had come out as an asser­tion. He apol­o­gized to the com­plainant in court but the lat­ter did not accept the apolo­gies.

On 16 August, the web site of the Mahil­iou branch of the human rights cen­tre Vias­na mspring.online was inac­ces­si­ble because of the activ­i­ties of unknown per­sons. Accord­ing to jour­nal­ist of the web site Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou Jr., some­one attempt­ed to block access of the sys­tem admin­is­tra­tor to the web site. In fact, the web site was com­plete­ly destroyed. It took six hours to restore the web site. The jour­nal­ists of mspring.online linked the attempt to hin­der the Mass-media in Belarus: 2016 21 work of the web site with the elec­tions to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Nation­al Assem­bly of the Repub­lic of Belarus. In fact, the web site was the only inde­pen­dent online resource in Mahil­iou that pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about the elec­tion cam­paign on a reg­u­lar basis.

On 26 Sep­tem­ber, the Cen­tral­ny dis­trict court in Min­sk decid­ed to block the web site of the anar­chist group­ing Pramien, pramen.io, in the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus because of the alleged­ly “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” pub­lished on this web site. “The true rea­son is that our web site rep­re­sents an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial point of view on the events in Belarus and the world”, said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the group­ing. “Its block­ing is a log­i­cal step of the state in destroy­ing any media out­side of its con­trol”.

On 25 August, a judge of the Cen­tral­ny dis­trict court in Min­sk found “extrem­ist” nine arti­cles pub­lished on the web site 1863x.com in con­nec­tion with the crim­i­nal case of Eduard Palchys, the detained edi­tor of the web site. The tri­al was held in closed ses­sion. Accord­ing to Palchys’ lawyer, Han­na Bakhtsi­na, the court con­sid­ered only the con­clu­sions of the exper­tise and not the mate­ri­als from the web site. Eduard Palchys (pen-name Jhon Sil­ver) is a founder of 1863x.com – a blog devot­ed to the analy­sis of cur­rent polit­i­cal events in Belarus, Rus­sia and Ukraine as well as the Belaru­sian his­to­ry and cul­ture. In 2015, he was charged with incit­ing hatred on grounds of race, nation­al­i­ty, reli­gion, lan­guage or oth­er social iden­ti­ty (Arti­cle 130, Part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) as well as with dis­tri­b­u­tion of porno­graph­ic mate­ri­als (Arti­cle 343 of the Crim­i­nal Code). In Octo­ber 2015, he left Belarus to avoid the pros­e­cu­tion and was put on the inter­na­tion­al want­ed list; he was then detained in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion when cross­ing the bor­der between Ukraine and Rus­sia on 23 Jan­u­ary 2016. Eduard Palchys was trans­ferred from the deten­tion facil­i­ty in Bryan­sk to the pre­tri­al deten­tion cen­tre in Min­sk in late May. He remained in cus­tody await­ing the tri­al. Belaru­sian human rights organ­i­sa­tions have rec­og­nized Eduard Palchys a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and the case against him – a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed one. On 28 Octo­ber, the city court in Min­sk sen­tenced blog­ger Eduard Palchys to one year and nine months of cus­to­di­al restraint with­out send­ing him to prison. The blog­ger was found guilty of incit­ing hatred on the grounds of race, nation­al­i­ty, reli­gion, lan­guage or oth­er social iden­ti­ty (Arti­cle 130, Part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) as well as with dis­trib­ut­ing porno­graph­ic mate­ri­als (Arti­cle 343 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Eduard Palchys was released from cus­tody in the court­room. Tak­ing into account the time Palchys spent in cus­tody and in a spe­cial med­ical facil­i­ty dur­ing the foren­sic exam­i­na­tion, the remain­der of the sen­tence amount­ed to two months.

On 26 Sep­tem­ber, the Cen­tral­ny dis­trict court in Min­sk decid­ed to block the web site of the anar­chist group­ing Pramien, pramen.io, because of the alleged­ly “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” pub­lished on this web site. “The true rea­son is that our web site rep­re­sents an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial point of view on the events in Belarus and the world”, said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the group­ing. “Its block­ing is a log­i­cal step of the state in destroy­ing any media out­side of its con­trol”.

On 6 Decem­ber, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of the Repub­lic of Belarus arrest­ed blog­gers Yuri Pavlovets (in Min­sk) and Dmit­ry Alimkin (in Brest) and opened crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against them for incit­ing hatred (Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus) based on their pub­li­ca­tions on the Russ­ian web sites Reg­num, Lenta.ru, and EADai­ly. On 9 Decem­ber, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of the Repub­lic of Belarus report­ed the arrest of Sergey Shiptenko, a staffer of the Russ­ian web site Reg­num in the frame­work of the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion under Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus. The pro­ceed­ings were opened on sus­pi­cion of “com­mit­ting delib­er­ate acts aimed at incit­ing nation­al and oth­er social enmi­ty among dif­fer­ent groups of pop­u­la­tion of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and the Repub­lic of Belarus as well as enmi­ty on the grounds of nation­al, lin­guis­tic and oth­er social iden­ti­ty, expressed in the prepa­ra­tion and online pub­li­ca­tion of arti­cles under the pen name Artur Grig­oriev”. The sus­pects’ hous­es were searched and their equip­ment was seized. Ini­tial­ly, it was report­ed that the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings were opened under Arti­cle 130, Part 3of the Crim­i­nal Code (com­mit­ting a crime by a group of per­sons), which pro­vides for a pun­ish­ment of impris­on­ment for five to twelve years. Sub­se­quent­ly, the charge was changed to Part 1 of this arti­cle, which allows for alter­na­tive forms of pun­ish­ment (fine, arrest, restric­tion of lib­er­ty for up to ten years or impris­on­ment for the same peri­od). The basis for open­ing the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings was estab­lished by the let­ters of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee about the pres­ence of signs of extrem­ism in pub­li­ca­tions of these authors. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion referred to a con­clu­sion of the Repub­li­can expert com­mis­sion under the Min­istry for the eval­u­a­tion of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts for the pur­pose of iden­ti­fy­ing pres­ence or absence of signs of extrem­ism in them. The opin­ions of Belaru­sian pub­lic about the deten­tion of authors of Reg­num have remained divid­ed. Many have seen these actions as direct­ed at the defence of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty but oth­ers have seen them as a threat to free­dom of expres­sion. The edi­to­r­i­al board of Reg­num described the actions of Belaru­sian law-enforce­ment bod­ies as “provoca­tive and treach­er­ous against Belarus and Rus­sia”. Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF) called on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to imme­di­ate­ly release the detainees. “The posts of these three blog­gers are con­tro­ver­sial but that does not jus­ti­fy their impris­on­ment,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk. “Accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, their pro­vi­sion­al deten­tion is nei­ther nec­es­sary nor pro­por­tion­ate”.

On 26 Decem­ber, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus issued a writ­ten warn­ing to the inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion online por­tal Vit­sieb­s­ki Kur­jer (vkurier.by) “for spread­ing false infor­ma­tion that could harm the pub­lic inter­est”. The offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion pub­lished on the web site of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion failed to spec­i­fy the kind of infor­ma­tion in ques­tion.

On 31 Decem­ber, it became known from the reply of a deputy min­is­ter of infor­ma­tion to the BAJ’s inquiry that from Jan­u­ary to Novem­ber 2016 the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued fif­teen warn­ings: sev­en to mass media and eight to online infor­ma­tion resources. In total, dur­ing 2016, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued six­teen warn­ings (eight to mass media and eight to online infor­ma­tion resources). Besides, in 2016, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion decid­ed to restrict access to forty-sev­en infor­ma­tion resources and restored access to one resource. Twen­ty-one out of them were blocked for dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion aimed at sell­ing nar­cot­ic drugs, thir­teen – for dis­sem­i­nat­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als, eleven – for improp­er adver­tis­ing, and two – for the pro­mo­tion of pornog­ra­phy, vio­lence and cru­el­ty.