BAJ wins the first Canada-UK Media Freedom Award. Andrei Bastunets’ speech

My thanks to Botswana & Cana­da for host­ing today’s Glob­al Con­fer­ence for Media Free­dom. A free press is vital to open soci­eties & a fun­da­men­tal free­dom we must pro­tect across the globe.

Today, the coali­tion and I stand togeth­er to do more to #Defend­Me­di­aFree­dom pic.twitter.com/0qDyhEIbWL

— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) Novem­ber 16, 2020

Dear friends,

Thank you so much for this Media Free­dom Award. BAJ is so thrilled and proud to receive it from Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, coun­tries with an old tra­di­tion of democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech. I believe that this Award reflects your high opin­ion of the work of jour­nal­ists in Belarus, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the cur­rent human rights cri­sis in the after­math of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

In just 3 months, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has record­ed over 400 gross vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights.

Reporters who cov­ered mass protests against elec­tion fraud and state vio­lence, have become vic­tims of vio­lence and fraud them­selves. They have been beat­en, their equip­ment dam­aged or seized, and they have been sent to jail by unfair court deci­sions.  

Reporters worked lit­er­al­ly under bul­lets — in a coun­try that is not at war! Three jour­nal­ists were wound­ed. About 60 of our col­leagues went through short jail sen­tences. Right now, while I speak, 22 jour­nal­ists are behind bars, deprived of their free­dom for doing their job.

We have already got used to los­ing access to inde­pen­dent web­sites «for tech­ni­cal rea­sons» dur­ing the most intense moments of polit­i­cal cam­paigns or dur­ing protests. But we could hard­ly imag­ine that in an «IT coun­try» as Belarus likes to call itself, there would be a com­plete Inter­net black­out for entire three days! And that mobile Inter­net would be blocked in Min­sk every week­end dur­ing protests!

The author­i­ties did­n’t miss any chance to block news web­sites, either. Since August 9, many of the Inter­net news sites have become inac­ces­si­ble from Belarus. The coun­try’s most pop­u­lar por­tal TUT.by has just been deprived of its media sta­tus — thus, its reporters have lost their sta­tus and rights as jour­nal­ists.

The gov­ern­ment did not stop at restrict­ing of the Inter­net.

On flim­sy pre­texts or with no pre­texts at all, state-owned monop­oly com­pa­nies refused to print and dis­trib­ute the Nar­o­d­naya Volya, Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da in Belarus, Bel­gaze­ta, Svo­bod­nye Novosti Plus news­pa­pers that report­ed on police vio­lence dur­ing protests. 

Gaze­ta Slonim­skaya is under siege, as its lead­ers were forced to leave the coun­try under threat of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

The author­i­ties are try­ing to restrict the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion not only with­in the coun­try, but also abroad. 

Dozens, if not hun­dreds, of for­eign jour­nal­ists were denied accred­i­ta­tion, and as a result. an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cov­er the elec­tion and its after­math. The gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly stripped the accred­i­ta­tion from all for­eign jour­nal­ists with per­ma­nent accred­i­ta­tion.

Deten­tions.

Fines. 

Jail time.

Revoked accred­i­ta­tion.

Depor­ta­tions.

Oppres­sion of media.

Crim­i­nal cas­es…

— these are the real­i­ties of Belarus today.

In fact, we faced sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances 25 years ago, when in Sep­tem­ber 1995, 38 jour­nal­ists joined their efforts to resist the pres­sure of the gov­ern­ment of the then-new Pres­i­dent Lukashen­ka.

Today we have grown to 1,400 mem­bers.

Yes, we are work­ing under extreme pres­sure right now – but one can only put pres­sure on some­thing that shows resis­tance.

Blocked Inter­net web­sites cre­ate «mir­rors» and turn to telegram chan­nels and social net­works. Vol­un­teers dis­trib­ute news­pa­pers. Jour­nal­ists spend nights out­side police sta­tions and pris­ons where their col­leagues are kept…

I have great respect for all those who work «in the field», despite all risks and threats.

Those who work in the news­rooms. 

Those who refused to mul­ti­ply lies and left the pro­pa­gan­dis­tic state media.

Those who stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with their col­leagues, and help them in word and deed.

Every­one who con­tributes to spread­ing infor­ma­tion about the polit­i­cal and human rights cri­sis in our coun­try both in Belarus and far beyond its bor­ders.

And it spreads far beyond the moldy state-con­trolled media space that the «men in black» are try­ing to cre­ate.

Today, the law does not defend us.

Today, we defend the law.

I am hon­ored and thank you again for sup­port­ing Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism in these dif­fi­cult times.