The authorities seized BAJ’s domain name and email address. Using Belarusian hosting and domain name providers is not safe anymore. BAJ to appeal to ICANN

Jan­u­ary 3 the Oper­a­tional Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­ter under the Pres­i­dent of Belarus announced that it had decid­ed to sus­pend the del­e­ga­tion of the domain name baj.by, whose own­er was alleged­ly involved in the detect­ed vio­la­tions.

Ear­li­er, the OAC, through the reg­is­trar com­pa­ny OOO Otkry­tyi Kon­takt, sent a notice to the domain own­er request­ing doc­u­ments con­firm­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of per­son­al infor­ma­tion. Efforts from the author­i­ties in this regard began prompt­ly after the BAJ released its stance on host­ing a region­al Inter­net Gov­er­nance Forum in Min­sk.

OOO Otkry­tyi Kon­takt first offered the domain own­er to send a pass­port scan by e‑mail, but a few days lat­er report­ed that the OAC insist­ed on a per­son­al vis­it of the own­er to the office.

In reply, Aleh Ahe­jeu, the deputy chair­man of BAJ and the offi­cial own­er of the domain, informed OOO Otkry­tyi Kon­takt that the inter­net domain reg­is­tra­tion guide­lines do not pro­vide for “per­son­al vis­its” to the reg­is­trar’s office. It is worth not­ing that domains in the .by zone can be owned by for­eign­ers. Fur­ther­more, all the required doc­u­ments have already been sub­mit­ted, as con­firmed by the reg­is­ter­ing com­pa­ny itself.

Despite this, the OAC decid­ed to deprive BAJ of the Belaru­sian domain name.

“We con­sid­er the depri­va­tion of a domain name as theft. Fur­ther­more, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties vio­lat­ed the prop­er­ty right, in addi­tion to fla­grant­ly breach­ing the right to free­dom of expres­sion.

For almost 20 years, the inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists had a web­site on this domain name and used it to pro­mote human rights val­ues, stan­dards of jour­nal­is­tic work, and the right to expres­sion. For 20 years, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties have been wag­ing a war on free­dom of expres­sion.

But even the most severe actions, such as direct con­fis­ca­tion, will not result in the halt­ing of inde­pen­dent media activ­i­ty or the denial of truth­ful infor­ma­tion sources to the peo­ple of Belarus. BAJ will not allow the author­i­ties to legit­imize repres­sion, state cen­sor­ship, and pres­sure on inde­pen­dent media.

The author­i­ties’ aggres­sive actions vio­late the inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions for domain admin­is­tra­tion. There­fore, BAJ will inform ICANN, the orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing domain names, and seek an appro­pri­ate assess­ment of the inci­dent at a glob­al lev­el.

This is the third case of domain seizure by the state involv­ing inde­pen­dent media. It is safe to say that hav­ing a domain in Belarus is now sim­ply dan­ger­ous for any busi­ness. And no com­pa­ny or busi­ness is immune from destruc­tion due to the seizure of the domain by the state for far-fetched rea­sons. Belaru­sian ISPs are dis­cred­it­ed and dan­ger­ous not only for inde­pen­dent media but also for any com­pa­ny that might become the next tar­get,” said Barys Haret­s­ki, BAJ’s deputy chair­man.

Atten­tion!

As of today, we do not con­trol the baj.by web­site or any email address­es reg­is­tered with the @baj.by domain name.

We do not know how the author­i­ties will use them, so please do not vis­it the old web­site or send or reply to emails from email address­es con­tain­ing @baj.by in their name. They are not authored by BAJ!

We have proac­tive­ly moved our web­site con­tent to the new inter­na­tion­al domain baj.media.

The main email address of the orga­ni­za­tion and the edi­to­r­i­al office of the site is now office@baj.media

The email address for inter­na­tion­al con­tacts is intercomm@baj.media

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