Belarus: the free press continues despite attacks

The free press in Belarus is under threat like nev­er before in the wake of the dis­put­ed re-elec­tion of Alek­san­dr Lukan­shen­ka in August 2020, with jour­nal­ists being threat­ened, fined, arrest­ed and tor­tured for speak­ing out against the country’s ruler. Indeed, for­mer Index employ­ee and con­trib­u­tor Andrei Alik­san­drau remains in prison, fac­ing a sen­tence of up to 15 years for alleged “high trea­son”.

The free press in Belarus is under threat like nev­er before in the wake of the dis­put­ed re-elec­tion of Alek­san­dr Lukan­shen­ka in August 2020, with jour­nal­ists being threat­ened, fined, arrest­ed and tor­tured for speak­ing out against the country’s ruler. Indeed, for­mer Index employ­ee and con­trib­u­tor Andrei Alik­san­drau remains in prison, fac­ing a sen­tence of up to 15 years for alleged “high trea­son”.

A year after the elec­tions, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties went a step fur­ther in clamp­ing down on media free­dom, ban­ning the country’s jour­nal­ism body, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

Despite the chal­lenges, the BAJ con­tin­ues to receive sup­port and, at the end of April, the organ­i­sa­tion was award­ed the 2022 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Free­dom Prize.

Index spoke with BAJ chair Andrei Bas­tunets in the wake of the award, talk­ing about the wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion for inde­pen­dent media and how BAJ con­tin­ues to sup­port press free­dom.

Is it still pos­si­ble to work as an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist in Belarus fol­low­ing the start of the war in Ukraine?

“The key prob­lems for Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists arose before the war in Ukraine, and even before the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. But after the elec­tions – and jour­nal­ists’ cov­er­age of post-elec­tion protests – the pres­sure on the media, jour­nal­ists and blog­gers has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly (although ear­li­er Belarus had bad rank­ing posi­tions in inter­na­tion­al free speech rat­ings and index­es too). In 2021, many jour­nal­ists and even entire edi­to­r­i­al offices were forced to flee the coun­try in order to avoid crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and to be able to con­tin­ue their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.”

“A lot of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists – more than 100 – who were forced to leave their coun­try chose Ukraine as a place of refuge. But after the start of the Kremlin’s war against this coun­try, they had to leave their homes and belong­ings again and move to oth­er coun­tries. Jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who con­tin­ue to work in Belarus face addi­tion­al per­se­cu­tion for express­ing their anti-war posi­tion. How­ev­er they spread truth­ful infor­ma­tion on what is hap­pen­ing. Last week, Baranavichy-based jour­nal­ist Yury Hantsare­vich was detained and accused of pass­ing on infor­ma­tion about Russ­ian troop trans­fers in Belarus.”

How many jour­nal­ists are still in deten­tion in Belarus? 

“There are 24 jour­nal­ists behind bars at the moment. Eight of them are serv­ing their terms in prison, and the rest are in cus­tody pend­ing tri­al. All are deemed polit­i­cal pris­on­ers by Belaru­sian human rights organ­i­sa­tions.”

“In the first four months of 2022, five sen­tences were hand­ed down against jour­nal­ists in crim­i­nal cas­es – from 1.3 to 2.5 years in prison. The max­i­mum pun­ish­ment for a jour­nal­ist has been a 15-year strict regime sen­tence for blog­ger Ihar Losik, who was a con­sul­tant for the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty.”

“My friend and for­mer Index staff mem­ber Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau has been in jail since Jan­u­ary 2021; and recent­ly the Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee report­ed on the charges against him under four crim­i­nal arti­cles, includ­ing Arti­cle 356 (high trea­son) which out­lines a pun­ish­ment of up to 15 years in prison.”

How is the war (or spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion as Putin would have it) being report­ed in Belarus?

“There is a dif­fer­ence in the approach­es of state-run and inde­pen­dent media out­lets. In the news agen­da of the inde­pen­dent media, the war in Ukraine is being called ‘war’ and it is on their front pages. These media out­lets are pub­lish­ing most­ly online now because they do not have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pub­lish in print after print­ing hous­es and state monop­oly dis­tri­b­u­tion chains were banned from coop­er­a­tion with the inde­pen­dent press. The state tele­vi­sion and oth­er gov­ern­ment-backed media in Belarus are report­ing on the war in Ukraine spread­ing the nar­ra­tives of the Russ­ian pro-Krem­lin media.”

Is the BAJ still oper­at­ing and is it hav­ing to do so from exile?

“In August 2021, the Supreme Court of Belarus ordered the dis­so­lu­tion of the organ­i­sa­tion, at the request of the country’s Min­istry of Jus­tice. Now, BAJ is not an organ­i­sa­tion reg­is­tered by the Min­istry, it is not a for­mal struc­ture. It is about 1,300 peo­ple unit­ed in imple­ment­ing their com­mon idea and their mis­sion – to expand the space of free speech in Belarus. And an official’s res­o­lu­tion has not affect­ed our activ­i­ties. Most of the organisation’s lead­er­ship had to leave the coun­try after a series of police raids and inter­ro­ga­tions by inves­ti­ga­tors, after arrests of our col­leagues and friends, but we con­tin­ue our work from abroad. We treat all media out­lets of Belarus, regard­less of whether they stayed in the coun­try or moved abroad, as a sin­gle Belarus media sec­tor. And we are pro­vid­ing all the nec­es­sary and pos­si­ble sup­port to this media sec­tor.”

How impor­tant is the recog­ni­tion through awards of BAJ, such as the Unesco award recent­ly?

“We regard the UNESCO award as sup­port for the entire inde­pen­dent jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty in Belarus. By the way, with­in lit­er­al­ly two days, BAJ received three awards. In addi­tion to UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Free­dom Prize, there was the award from the Swedish sec­tion of Reporters With­out Bor­ders (RSF) and Dif­fer­ence Day Hon­orary Title for Free­dom of Expres­sion from Brus­sels ULB and VUB uni­ver­si­ties. They are very impor­tant for our organ­i­sa­tion as appre­ci­a­tion of our work, but even more as a high assess­ment of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists’ work in extreme­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions. And, of course, it is impor­tant for us that Belarus has returned to the front pages of the inter­na­tion­al media. Although, we under­stand indeed that cur­rent events in Ukraine are attract­ing gen­er­al atten­tion as the state of affairs in the region and of the entire sys­tem of world secu­ri­ty formed after WWII depend on their devel­op­ment.”