Mass media in Belarus in 2022. Annual review

The author­i­ties con­tin­ued putting sys­temic pres­sure on the media and jour­nal­ists in all forms:

• 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.

Maria Ordzhonikidze, direc­tor of the ‘Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists’ Foun­da­tion drew atten­tion to the fol­low­ing trend:

“In 2020, over 1.5 thou­sand attacks were reg­is­tered, includ­ing legal harass­ment (attack through weaponiz­ing law, wrong­ful depri­va­tion of lib­er­ty), on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus. In 2021, there were some 1000 cas­es. In 2022, the num­ber dropped down to three hun­dred. It’s not that the inten­si­ty of attacks has decreased: there just isn’t any­one to attack – some have been expelled from the coun­try, and some have been jailed. We call this Turk­m­eniza­tion.” (“We don’t want Belarus to become an infor­ma­tion black hole.” Dis­cus­sions at Free Jour­nal­ism Forum | baj.by)

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 — “Flag­pole” 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. 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 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. Two of them were the so-called “samiz­dat”, i.e., protest print news­pa­pers pub­lished and dis­trib­uted by non-pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists.

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 ‘Flag­pole’, 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.

The pro­ce­dure of block­ing the unde­sired Web-resources was changed. Where­as pre­vi­ous­ly ISPs were required to check the list of Web­sites to restrict access once a day, now they are required to do so every three hours dur­ing the day and block access to them with­in four hours on putting them on the ban list.

Apart from that, the pres­i­den­tial decree, dat­ed Octo­ber 18, 2022, sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fied the access of spe­cial ser­vices to the con­tent of online resources. Accord­ing­ly, the spec­i­fied telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers and own­ers of Inter­net resources will be required to reg­is­ter in a spe­cial infor­ma­tion sys­tem for elec­tron­ic inter­ac­tion with spe­cial ser­vices with­in a three-month peri­od and set up their resources for unhin­dered online access for law enforce­ment offi­cers.

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).

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.

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-owned media work­ers were fired for mak­ing state­ments deemed dis­loy­al by the regime in pow­er, while oth­er employ­ees were sub­ject­ed to rep­ri­mands.

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”.

Apart from the UNESCO prize, on the same day, the BAJ was award­ed the Free­dom of the Press 2022 award of the Swedish sec­tion of Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF) and the Dif­fer­ence Day Hon­orary Title for Free­dom of Expres­sion, pre­sent­ed by two uni­ver­si­ties in Brus­sels (ULB and VUB).