E‑NEWSLETTER – MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS №2 (72)

Epi­graph:

“The mass media from the Inter­net to tra­di­tion­al media are a bat­tle­field nowa­days. And we will not win this war with­out reli­able, capa­ble, big-head­ed, and smart fight­ers,” Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka

“It is deeply regret­ful that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ue to cre­ate a cli­mate of harass­ment and fear among and towards mem­bers of the media, delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ing and sti­fling free and inde­pen­dent voic­es,” OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media, Tere­sa Ribeiro.

CONTENTS

SITUATION IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JANUARY – APRIL 2023 (REVIEW)

MAIN EVENTS IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JANUARY – APRIL 2023

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists

Pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and mass media

Appli­ca­tion of anti-extrem­ism leg­is­la­tion to lim­it free­dom of expres­sion and access to infor­ma­tion

Events in the state media sec­tor

RATING LISTS, INDEXES, STATISTICS

SITUATION IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JANUARY – APRIL 2023 (REVIEW)

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and media resources since the begin­ning of 2023. Numer­ous media con­tin­ued their activ­i­ty for the Belaru­sian audi­ence from abroad.

• 33 media work­ers were in cus­tody at the end of April 2023. 9 sen­tences in crim­i­nal cas­es have been pro­nounced since the begin­ning of the year. Jour­nal­ists were pun­ished with restric­tion of lib­er­ty or impris­on­ment for the terms of up to 12 years. New crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against 3 jour­nal­ists with­in the peri­od under review.

• The author­i­ties con­tin­ued to use anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion at a large scale as a basis for pros­e­cut­ing the media, jour­nal­ists, blog­gers and ordi­nary cit­i­zens for express­ing their views on socio-polit­i­cal mat­ters, which dif­fered from the offi­cial nar­ra­tive. As of April 2023, 16 media orga­ni­za­tions were labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ in Belarus.

• Cen­sor­ship was present in the infor­ma­tion space. The num­ber of inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion sources was fur­ther shrink­ing inside Belarus.

• The author­i­ties took mea­sures to for­mal­ize and ide­ol­o­gize the activ­i­ty of the state media, open­ly declar­ing the pri­or­i­ty of pro­pa­gan­da and the fight against dis­sent in their activ­i­ties in the con­di­tions of the alleged “hybrid war” “against Belarus and Rus­sia.”

MAIN EVENTS IN MASS MEDIA FIELD IN JANUARY – APRIL 2023

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists

Sev­er­al “high-pro­file” cas­es against jour­nal­ists end­ed with crim­i­nal sen­tences with­in the peri­od under review.  

On Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, the Hrod­na Region­al Court sen­tenced Andrei Pachobut, a jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na and a mem­ber of the non-reg­is­tered “Union of Poles of Belarus”, to 8 years of impris­on­ment on charges of ‘incit­ing enmi­ty’ and ‘call­ing for sanc­tions’ (Arti­cles 130 and 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus, respec­tive­ly).

On March 17, 2023, Mary­na Zolata­va, Edi­tor-in-chief, TUT.BY News Por­tal and Lud­mi­la Chek­ina, Direc­tor Gen­er­al, TUT.BY News Por­tal were sen­tenced to 12 years of impris­on­ment each. More­over, L. Chek­ina was oblig­ed to pay a fine of BYN 37,000 (around USD 12,000). Both of them were charged under Arti­cle 130, part 3 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (‘incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hatred or enmi­ty based on racial, nation­al, reli­gious, lin­guis­tic or oth­er social affil­i­a­tion, com­mit­ted by a group of per­sons or which result­ed in seri­ous con­se­quences’) and Arti­cle 361, part 3 (‘calls for actions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus, car­ried out with the use of mass media or the glob­al Inter­net’). Lud­mi­la Chek­ina was also charged with ‘large scale tax eva­sion’ (Arti­cle 243, part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus). The tri­al took place behind closed doors.

On March 17, 2023, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist, the founder and the edi­tor of ‘Our Opin­ion’ Web-site for expert com­mu­ni­ty as well as the edi­tor of ‘Belorusskiy Yezhed­nevnik’ Web-resource was sen­tenced to 10 years of impris­on­ment togeth­er with a researcher Tat­siana Kuz­i­na for express­ing her opin­ion about the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus. The author­i­ties charged her on the grounds of three arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus:  Arti­cle 357 (‘facil­i­ta­tion of activ­i­ties, aimed at seiz­ing pow­er’), Arti­cle 361 (‘call­ing for acts aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty’), and Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing oth­er social enmi­ty’).

On March 23, 2023, Henadz Mazhey­ka, a jour­nal­ist of ‘Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da in Belarus’ was sen­tenced to three years in prison. (The news­pa­per reporter had been detained in Moscow and deport­ed to Belarus in Octo­ber 2021.)

The per­se­cu­tion was caused by a pub­li­ca­tion on the KP.BY Web-site, where a com­put­er pro­gram­mer Andrei Zeltser, who shot down a KGB offi­cer and got mur­dered him­self at the thresh­old of his pri­vate apart­ment, was pos­i­tive­ly char­ac­ter­ized by his for­mer class­mate.

Although the news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al delet­ed the text in sev­er­al min­utes after its pub­li­ca­tion, the Web-site KP.BY was blocked on deci­sion of Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus in con­nec­tion with pub­lish­ing infor­ma­tion that ‘facil­i­tates form­ing the sources of threats to the nation­al secu­ri­ty’. Mazhey­ka was pre­sent­ed charges on two arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus – Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing the racial, nation­al, reli­bi­ous or oth­er social enmi­ty) and Arti­cle 368 (‘an insult to the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’).  

On March 23, 2023, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka, a for­mer employ­ee of the state ANT TV chan­nel was sen­tenced to three years in prison under Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘incit­ing enmi­ty’). It should be men­tioned that used to be the head of the pres­i­den­tial pool of jour­nal­ists. How­ev­er, he resigned in protest against vio­lence in August 2020. The jour­nal­ist was crim­i­nal­ly charged for pub­li­ca­tions in ” Vkon­tak­te” and Insta­gram, which in the judge’s opin­ion were aimed at “form­ing a neg­a­tive stereo­type and under­min­ing trust in law enforce­ment offi­cers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the author­i­ties, and ulti­mate­ly weak­en­ing the cur­rent sys­tem of gov­er­nance.”

On April 6, 2023, Kantsantsin Zalatych, direc­tor of ‘Belorusy I Rynok’ news­pa­per was sen­tenced to four years in prison. His case was con­sid­ered behind closed doors. He was charged with com­mit­ting the crimes, men­tioned in four arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus: Arti­cle 426 He was charged with com­mit­ting crimes men­tioned in four arti­cles of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus: Arti­cle 426 (‘exceed­ing author­i­ty or duties’), Arti­cle 130 (‘incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social enmi­ty’), Arti­cle 369 (‘insult­ing a gov­ern­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tive). And Arti­cle 368 (‘insult­ing the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus’).

There was filed a range of new crim­i­nal cas­es again jour­nal­ists. A jour­nal­ist Pavel Pad­abed from Min­sk con­tributed pub­li­ca­tions to a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media. (He had been detained on Jan­u­ary 20, 2023.) The reporter was charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in extrem­ist for­ma­tions (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Anoth­er jour­nal­ist Vyachaslau Laza­rau was accused of ‘facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties’ (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code). The lat­ter had been detained on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2023.

Anoth­er crim­i­nal case was filed against Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, the founder and Edi­tor-in-chief of ‘Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta’ (Mal­adziech­na). The deten­tion fol­lowed a range of crim­i­nal police search­es in the region­al media on March 15. 2023. The Chief Edi­tor was charged with dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus (Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus, as if the infor­ma­tion pub­lished in the news­pa­per was aimed at “caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to state and pub­lic inter­ests, under­min­ing the author­i­ty of the coun­try and its gov­ern­ment, caus­ing dam­age to nation­al inter­ests, desta­bi­liz­ing the sit­u­a­tion among the cit­i­zens of Belarus, form­ing false ideas about non-ful­fill­ment of the rights and free­doms of cit­i­zens in the coun­try”.

Blog­gers faced more crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in Belarus. Thus five ‘admin­is­tra­tors’ of the Black Book of Belarus Telegram chan­nel were sen­tenced in absen­tia to 12 years in prison each on Jan­u­ary 18, 2023. The Telegram chan­nel pub­lished infor­ma­tion about the gov­ern­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tives, who were con­nect­ed to per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion. The list of pros­e­cut­ed blog­gers includ­ed Zmit­si­er Navosha, a civ­il soci­ety activist, a jour­nal­ist, and a co-founder of pop­u­lar sport Web-resources Tribuna.com and Sports.ru.

The crim­i­nal cas­es were filed by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Belarus on Arti­cle 130 (‘incite­ment of hos­til­i­ty’) and Arti­cle 203–1 (‘ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of per­son­al data’) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus. It was the first case of appli­ca­tion of the insti­tu­tion of “spe­cial court pro­ceed­ings” (con­vic­tion of polit­i­cal emi­grants in absen­tia).

Pressure on journalists and mass media

21 search­es took place in jour­nal­ists’ hous­es and media edi­to­r­i­al offices in Belarus in the peri­od of Jan­u­ary – March 2023. 22 cas­es of deten­tion were record­ed dur­ing the peri­od. Jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to inter­ro­ga­tions, admin­is­tra­tive charges in the form of arrests (10), fines (3), and oth­er types of pres­sure.

The impris­oned jour­nal­ists were sub­ject­ed to bru­tal treat­ment in the colonies. It was report­ed that Siarhei Sat­suk, the for­mer edi­tor of the ‘Yezhed­nevnik’ online pub­li­ca­tion, had prob­lems with access to the med­i­cines he must take con­stant­ly. The wives of impris­oned jour­nal­ists Dzia­n­is Ivashyn and Andrey Pachobut expressed con­cern about the phys­i­cal con­di­tion of their hus­bands, who have health prob­lems but do not receive qual­i­fied med­ical care behind bars.

Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion of human rights defend­ers, while stay­ing in the pen­i­ten­tiary of Navap­o­latsk colony, Ihar Losik went on hunger strike for a long time, and then he cut his hands and neck. Con­se­quent­ly, he was sent to the med­ical ward.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the edi­to­r­i­al office of “Intex-press” news­pa­per (Baranavichy, Brest region) was searched and tech­ni­cal equip­ment was seized. In March 2023, search­es and deten­tions of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists took place across the coun­try, includ­ing the edi­to­r­i­al offices of region­al news­pa­pers “Info-Kury­er” (Slut­sk, Min­sk region) and “Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta” (Mal­adzech­na, Min­sk region).

The pres­sure on these pub­li­ca­tions was of a ‘com­plex’ nature. It had already been applied by the author­i­ties and includ­ed inter­ro­ga­tions, deten­tions and admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion of employ­ees, removal of equip­ment, refusal to dis­trib­ute print runs, harass­ment in pro-gov­ern­ment media, recog­ni­tion of their con­tent as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. Con­se­quent­ly, “Info-Kury­er” was forced to ter­mi­nate its activ­i­ty after 23 years of work. (“Rehiyanal­naya Gaze­ta” was pub­lished only on social media at that moment of time).

The media that con­tin­ued to oper­ate in Belarus, faced cen­sor­ship and oth­er restric­tions. Thus, onliner.by and officelife.by were forced to delete cer­tain con­tent from their Web pages. The lat­ter was tem­porar­i­ly blocked for pub­lic access.

Two inde­pen­dent online media were deprived of their domain names in the *.by zone.

Application of anti-extremism legislation to limit freedom of expression and access to information

On March 24, the law “On Amend­ments to the Codes on Crim­i­nal Respon­si­bil­i­ty” entered into force, adding new cat­e­gories of “extrem­ist” crimes to the Crim­i­nal Code, includ­ing Arti­cle 289–1 (‘pro­pa­gan­da of ter­ror­ism or its pub­lic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion’) with the max­i­mum sanc­tion of 7 years of impris­on­ment). This arti­cle is like­ly to be used for pros­e­cu­tion for cov­er­ing any kind of vio­lent resis­tance to the author­i­ties.

Arti­cle 369–1 (‘dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus’) was sup­ple­ment­ed with respon­si­bil­i­ty for ‘spread­ing know­ing­ly false infor­ma­tion that dis­cred­its the armed forces of the Repub­lic of Belarus, oth­er troops and mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, as well as para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

The prac­tice of rec­og­niz­ing inde­pen­dent media resources as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” con­tin­ued dur­ing the peri­od under review. Dur­ing the first months of 2023, they list of “extrem­ist for­ma­tions” was sup­ple­ment­ed by “Brest­skaya gaze­ta” and “Malan­ka Media”, as well as volkovysk.by News Web­site for the town of Vaukavysk, Hrod­na region.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was labeled as an ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tion’ by the KGB on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023. (It is worth men­tion­ing that BAJ was liq­ui­dat­ed by the Supreme Court of Belarus in August 2021, and the orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues its work in exile.)

There were reg­is­tered more often the cas­es of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for any form of coop­er­a­tion with inde­pen­dent mass media, which had been includ­ed in the list of ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions.’ Thus, in Jan­u­ary 2023, Darya Losik, the wife of Ihar Losik, a con­vict­ed employ­ee of Radio Lib­er­ty and the admin­is­tra­tor of the ‘Belarus of the Brain’ (‘Belarus Halauno­ha Mozha’) Telegram chan­nel, was sen­tenced to two years in prison for an inter­view with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel about her hus­band’s sit­u­a­tion.

A new trend appeared dur­ing the peri­od under review, when apart for civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ordi­nary cit­i­zens who com­ment­ed on some social and polit­i­cal events for jour­nal­ists were per­se­cut­ed, too.

There con­tin­ued the prac­tice of bring­ing peo­ple to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” (Arti­cle 19.1 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es), includ­ing repost­ing and for­ward­ing pub­li­ca­tions in chat rooms. Since almost all inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion resources have become “banned”, it is con­sid­ered a crime to dis­sem­i­nate vir­tu­al­ly any infor­ma­tion that the author­i­ties do not want. Dur­ing the peri­od of Jan­u­ary-March 2023, human rights defend­ers learned about 111 detainees, whose lib­er­ty was restrict­ed for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. The courts increas­ing­ly began to pun­ish peo­ple with admin­is­tra­tive arrests rather than fines.

Events in the state media sector

Ide­ol­o­giza­tion of the state media activ­i­ties and their reori­en­ta­tion to pure­ly pro­pa­gan­da work con­tin­ued dur­ing the peri­od under review.

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Uladz­imir Pert­sou not­ed at a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the region­al press on Jan­u­ary 20, 2023, that jour­nal­ists of the state media are front-line fight­ers of the infor­ma­tion resis­tance, who take the brunt of the ene­my forces: “There is an infor­ma­tion war going on against Belarus and Rus­sia. And we are not los­ing the bat­tle yet.”

At the same time, polit­i­cal purges con­tin­ued among state media employ­ees. It became known that 8 peo­ple were fired at Homiel TV com­pa­ny at the end of 2022. Also, Andrei Rasa­fonau, the jour­nal­ist of “Dragichyn­s­ki ves­nik” region­al news­pa­per was deprived of his job.  

In March 2023, Andrei Pinchuk, the hon­ored direc­tor of sports broad­casts was detained in a TV stu­dio, tak­en to the police in hand­cuffs for a “pre­ven­tive inter­view” and fired for his side­line remarks.

New inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions were intro­duced against state media and pro­pa­gan­dists. In par­tic­u­lar, the Belaru­sian TV and Radio Com­pa­ny was exclud­ed from the list of Olympic games broad­cast­ers for the com­ing 10 years.

Ukraine intro­duced sanc­tions against the odi­ous pro­pa­gan­dists Ryhor Azaron­ak, Ihar Tur, and Ali­ak­san­dr Shpak­ous­ki as well as Ali­ak­san­dr Aseyen­ka, Direc­tor Gen­er­al of CTB TV Chan­nel on Jan­u­ary 15, 2023.

More­over, the Embassy of Ukraine sent a note of protest to the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Belarus in con­nec­tion with the video shown on state tele­vi­sion, which claimed that the embassy oper­ates as a ‘recruit­ment cen­ter’ for send­ing ‘mer­ce­nar­ies’ to Ukraine.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the Tik­Tok social media blocked and then delet­ed the account of ‘Min­skaya Prau­da’ with around 70,000 sub­scribers. The state peri­od­i­cal is pub­lished by Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

RATING LISTS, INDEXES, STATISTICS

Accord­ing to Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF), Belarus ranks third in the world for the num­ber of female jour­nal­ists in prison (10 peo­ple), after Chi­na and Iran. While women make up 13% of impris­oned jour­nal­ists in all coun­tries of the world, this fig­ure reach­es 30% in Belarus.