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The Ministry of Information of Belarus has decided to block the access of Belarusian users to the website of our organization — the main independent journalistic association of the country. In August this year, the Supreme Court canceled our registration status.

According to the decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, groups of citizens united with the help of Belsat online media were recognized as extremist groups and banned from operating in the Republic of Belarus.

The winners of the Free Media Awards were awarded in Hamburg, all this year's winners being Belarusians. The winners were announced back in August. These are Katsiaryna Barysevich, Katsiaryna Andreyeva, Daria Chultsova, Natallia Lubneuskaya, the TUT.BY media outlet, and the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

The situation in Belarusian mass media field has critically aggravated since the time of Presidential election a year ago.

The website of Russia’s Regnum news agency stopped being accessible to users in Belarus on Saturday. 

This follows from the response of the KGB Office for Grodno Region received by the journalist's wife Volha Ivashyna.

Journalist Iryna Slaunikava and her husband Aliaksandr Loika were arrested for "distribution of extremist materials" for 15 days each. This verdict was pronounced by the Pershamaiski District Court of Minsk.

Peter Limbourg, director-general of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), has condemned the blocking of the DW website and a number of other media outlets in Belarus, saying that it is an “act of desperation” on the part of the Belarusian authorities.

Three more news websites were made inaccessible to users in Belarus on October 28 by order of the country’s information ministry. The sites are those of Belarus’ newspaper Novy Čas, as well as of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle and of Current Time TV, a Russian-language television channel launched by U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty with participation of Voice of America.

The content of the local news site ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY has been designated extremist at the request of the Barysaŭ District Prosecutor’s Office, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on Monday. ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY covers news in Barysaŭ and Žodzina, two cities in the Minsk region. According to the ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY editorial team, some 100,000 people visit the website every day. In addition, the “extremist” label has been slapped on the content of a Telegram chat that unites residents of the city of Šarkaŭščyna in the Viciebsk region. The decision has been made at the request of the Šarkaŭščyna District Prosecutor’s Office.

 The news website Telegraf.by has been inaccessible to Belarusian users after being blocked by the country’s authorities.

Minsk, 21 October. A prominent journalist was rearrested immediately after being released in a courtroom in the Mahilioŭ region on Wednesday, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ).

Novy Chas newspaper employees stopped responding to messages on the morning of October 20. It later became known that journalists' homes and the editorial office were being searched. After the searches, Siarhei Pulsha and Aksana Kolb were interrogated and released.

 The detention of BelaPAN Director General Iryna Lieŭšyna has been extended by two more months, according to her daughter, Hanna.Dzmitryj Navažylaŭ, BelaPAN’s former director general, is likely to have had his detention extended, too.

Andrej Skurko, a prominent journalist and the head of the online publication Naša Niva’s advertising and marketing department, was not released on October 17 after a three-month detention.