Belarus: Prosecution of journalists for “organising violations of public order” infringes international human rights standards

Since the con­test­ed August 2020 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Belarus, there have been mass protests tak­ing place across the coun­try includ­ing in Min­sk. On 15 Novem­ber 2020, a protest took place fol­low­ing the killing of Roman Bon­daren­ka, who was beat­en by a group of per­sons remov­ing white-red-white rib­bons (protest sym­bol) after he con­front­ed them.

Numer­ous media reports have cov­ered the protests in Belarus. This cov­er­age doc­u­ments and tes­ti­fies to the peace­ful nature and polit­i­cal char­ac­ter of the protests. The 15 Novem­ber protest was held in the so-called “Change Square” – the court­yard where Roman Bon­daren­ka had been beat­en. The Bel­sat TV chan­nel was cov­er­ing the protest via a live tele­vi­sion broad­cast par­tial­ly pro­vid­ed by jour­nal­ists in the stu­dio but also by jour­nal­ists direct­ly report­ing from Change Square. Eka­te­ri­na Bakhval­o­va (cor­re­spon­dent, known as “Eka­te­ri­na Andree­va”) and Daria Chultso­va (oper­a­tor) peri­od­i­cal­ly went live from Change Square and broad­cast­ed online. Fol­low­ing the protests, they were detained and accused of the crime of organ­is­ing and active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in actions that “gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order”, under Arti­cle 342 para 1 of the Belaruss­ian Crim­i­nal Code.

ARTICLE 19 notes that the media holds a “pub­lic watch­dog” role in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety which is of high impor­tance. Inter­na­tion­al human rights bod­ies have con­tin­u­ous­ly empha­sised the essen­tial role of the media in cov­er­ing protests. Such cov­er­age is aimed at facil­i­tat­ing effec­tive ful­fil­ment of the rights to free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of assem­bly and guar­an­tees that States can be held account­able if human rights vio­la­tions occur dur­ing protests. ARTICLE 19 reminds the Belaru­sian author­i­ties that the media must be able to gath­er infor­ma­tion about demon­stra­tions and protests as the shar­ing of this infor­ma­tion is of pub­lic inter­est. Pre­vent­ing jour­nal­ists from car­ry­ing out their pub­lic watch­dog role at protests is, there­fore, a clear vio­la­tion of their right to receive and impart infor­ma­tion.

Restric­tions on free­dom of expres­sion tak­en to pro­tect pub­lic order and/or nation­al secu­ri­ty can con­sti­tute a legit­i­mate ground for the restric­tion of free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of assem­bly. How­ev­er, this lim­i­ta­tion must not be used by author­i­ties to silence oppo­si­tion or dis­sent. In this case, sug­gest­ing that media cov­er­age of a protest could con­sti­tute the “organ­i­sa­tion of vio­la­tion of pub­lic order” is a dan­ger­ous prece­dent that under­mines the basic func­tions of jour­nal­is­tic report­ing.

There­fore, we find that the charges against the two jour­nal­ists are con­trary to the recog­nised inter­na­tion­al human rights stan­dards and their pros­e­cu­tion amounts to a vio­la­tion of their right to free­dom of expres­sion. No evi­dence has been brought for­ward to prove that their actions con­sti­tute the “organ­i­sa­tion of vio­la­tion of pub­lic order”.

ARTICLE 19 demands that Belaru­sian author­i­ties:

• Imme­di­ate­ly and uncon­di­tion­al­ly drop the crim­i­nal case against jour­nal­ists Eka­te­ri­na Bakhval­o­va and Daria Chultso­va and refrain from any sim­i­lar charges against jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing protests in the future;

• Ful­ly recog­nise, respect, ful­fil and pro­tect the right of peace­ful assem­bly and the right to free­dom of expres­sion of the Belaru­sian peo­ple;

• Halt per­se­cu­tion and repres­sions of media work­ers, human rights defend­ers, civ­il soci­ety activists and reg­u­lar pro­test­ers;

• Release polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and engage in a gen­uine and con­struc­tive dia­logue with the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion.

Read the expert opin­ion of ARTICLE 19 in the case of Eka­te­ri­na Bakhval­o­va and Daria Chultso­va