Belarus authorities sentence journalist Aleh Hruzdzilovich to prison; label more media ‘extremist’

Belarus’ Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko attends a joint exer­cis­es of the armed forces of Rus­sia and Belarus out­side the cap­i­tal Min­sk on Feb­ru­ary 17, 2022. Belaru­sian author­i­ties have sen­tenced jour­nal­ist Aleh Hruzdzilovich to prison and des­ig­nat­ed more media as «exter­mist.» (Max­im Guchek/Belta via AFP)

On March 3, the Savet­s­ki Dis­trict Court in Min­sk sen­tenced Hruzdzilovich to a year and a half in prison for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in three protests in 2020, accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), an inde­pen­dent trade and advo­ca­cy group, and a report by Radio Svabo­da.

Hruzdzilovich denied the charges, say­ing he was work­ing as an accred­it­ed cor­re­spon­dent with Radio Svabo­da and wear­ing a press jack­et dur­ing the first protest, accord­ing to those reports. After author­i­ties revoked the accred­i­ta­tion of Radio Svabo­da jour­nal­ists in August 2020, he cov­ered the oth­er two protests for inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Nar­o­d­naya Volya, as the newspaper’s chief edi­tor tes­ti­fied in court.

Author­i­ties in Belarus launched an unprece­dent­ed wave of repres­sion against media out­lets and jour­nal­ists fol­low­ing pop­u­lar protests against the dis­put­ed pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in August 2020, as CPJ has doc­u­ment­ed. The des­ig­na­tions of DW and Region­al­naya Gaze­ta as extrem­ist takes the num­ber of media out­lets labelled as such to 20, which include major out­lets such as Radio Svabo­da, Belarus’s largest news agency Bela­PAN, the country’s most pop­u­lar news web­site Tut.by and its mir­ror site Zerkalo.io, and broad­cast­ers Bel­sat and Euro­ra­dio, accord­ing to a list sent to CPJ by BAJ and CPJ report­ing.

“The label ‘extrem­ist’ in Belarus has long become a syn­onym for any­one, espe­cial­ly media out­lets, who dares to offer an inde­pen­dent pic­ture of the vio­lence Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko has unleashed against his own peo­ple over the past 18 months,” said Gul­noza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor, in New York. “Author­i­ties in Belarus must imme­di­ate­ly remove the work of Deutsche Welle, Regiyanal­naya Gaze­ta, Yury Dud, and all oth­er news out­lets from their reg­is­ter of extrem­ist mate­ri­als and stop using the country’s extrem­ism leg­is­la­tion to silence inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism.”

“We call on Belaru­sian author­i­ties to imme­di­ate­ly release jour­nal­ist Aleh Hruzdzilovich, drop all charges again him, and stop pros­e­cut­ing mem­bers of the press for their cov­er­age of impor­tant news events,” Said added.

On Jan­u­ary 20, a court in the Mal­adzech­na dis­trict near the Belaru­sian cap­i­tal Min­sk declared the web­site and Telegram chan­nel of local inde­pen­dent news out­let Regiyanal­naya Gaze­ta extrem­ist, accord­ing to news reports and a report by BAJ, and on Feb­ru­ary 24, the court declared 15 of the outlet’s arti­cles from 2020 extrem­ist, the BAJ report stat­ed.

Regiyanal­naya Gaze­ta close­ly cov­ered the 2020 protests and sub­se­quent tri­als of pro­test­ers in the Mal­adzech­na dis­trict and sev­en oth­er near­by dis­tricts, accord­ing to an inter­view with the outlet’s chief edi­tor Alyak­san­dr Mant­se­vich by Radio Svabo­da from 2021. CPJ was unable to open Regiyanal­naya Gaze­ta’s web­site.

On Wednes­day, March 9, the Cen­tral Dis­trict Court in Min­sk declared all “infor­ma­tion prod­ucts” by DW extrem­ist, effec­tive­ly ban­ning the broad­cast­er in the coun­try, accord­ing to news reports and a Telegram announce­ment by the Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ting Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion (MDCOCC) of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry of Belarus, on whose appli­ca­tion the case was heard.

Under the rul­ing, all media pro­duced by DW and its Belaru­sian Telegram chan­nel and chat group, includ­ing the “DW” logo, are to be rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist,” these reports stat­ed. DW has been blocked in Belarus since Octo­ber 2021, accord­ing to those news reports.

Any­one con­vict­ed of pro­duc­ing, stor­ing, or spread­ing mate­ri­als des­ig­nat­ed extrem­ist can be fined up to 960 rubles (US$290) or detained for up to 15 days, accord­ing to the admin­is­tra­tive code of Belarus; legal enti­ties will be sub­ject to a fine of up to 16,000 rubles (US$4,844) for the same offens­es.

Despite the des­ig­na­tion, DW intends to con­tin­ue its report­ing on Belarus as nor­mal, accord­ing to an announce­ment on the broadcaster’s Belaru­sian Telegram chan­nel. CPJ emailed DW for com­ment but did not receive a reply.

In a state­ment released Thurs­day, March 10, the broadcaster’s Direc­tor Gen­er­al Peter Lim­bourg denounced the des­ig­na­tions, describ­ing them as “cheap tricks to cre­ate pseu­do-legal grounds to take action against peo­ple who make use of their right to free speech,” adding that the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the DW logo “proves how ner­vous the regime [in Belarus] is.”

As in pre­vi­ous such instances, the MDCOCC announce­ment about DW warned of pros­e­cu­tion even for sub­scrib­ing to Telegram chan­nels and chats of out­lets des­ig­nat­ed as extrem­ist. Aleh Aheyeu, Deputy Direc­tor of BAJ, told CPJ by mes­sag­ing app that he is not aware of any­one who has been pros­e­cut­ed for this offense alone; how­ev­er, any mate­r­i­al down­loaded, even auto­mat­i­cal­ly, from apps such as Telegram could be pros­e­cut­ed as stor­ing extrem­ist mate­r­i­al, accord­ing to a report on the association’s web­site.

Sep­a­rate­ly, the MDCOCC announced Thurs­day, March 10, that the Cen­tral Dis­trict Court had declared three videos pub­lished by pop­u­lar Russ­ian blog­ger Yury Dud, who has almost 10 mil­lion sub­scribers on his YouTube chan­nel vDud, as extrem­ist. The videos, which have over 30 mil­lion views, report on a Belaru­sian stand-up com­ic who fled the coun­try and per­forms anti-Lukashenko mate­r­i­al, ordi­nary Belaru­sians who have also been forced to flee, and the Telegram chan­nel NEXTA, whose founder Raman Prata­se­vich was arrest­ed after Belaru­sian author­i­ties downed a com­mer­cial flight specif­i­cal­ly to detain him.

CPJ called the Min­istry of Interior’s press ser­vice for com­ment, but no one answered.

On June 19, 2021, law enforce­ment offi­cers raid­ed Regiyanal­naya Gaze­ta’s office and Mantsevich’s home, con­fis­cat­ing equip­ment, fol­low­ing which the out­let ceased pub­li­ca­tion in paper for­mat, accord­ing to reports and BAJ.

Author­i­ties pre­vi­ous­ly jailed Hruzdzilovich for 15 days in 2020 for par­tic­i­pat­ing in anoth­er protest that he was cov­er­ing as a jour­nal­ist and detained him for 10 days with­out charge fol­low­ing a raid on Radio Svaboda’s Min­sk office in July 2021, the Radio Svabo­da report stat­ed.