Belarusian authorities block access to three news websites

In an inter­view with the Belaru­sian government’s news agency BelTA, First Deputy Infor­ma­tion Min­is­ter Andrej Kunce­vič explained that the web­sites offered links to con­tent des­ig­nat­ed as “extrem­ist” by Belaru­sian courts.

He not­ed that such actions ran counter to Arti­cle 19 of the Anti-Extrem­ism Law and Arti­cle 38 of the Media Law. 

“The infor­ma­tion min­istry, with­in its pow­ers, will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor com­pli­ance with nation­al reg­u­la­tions and intends to con­tin­ue to make deci­sions aimed at pro­tect­ing the coun­try’s infor­ma­tion space,” Mr. Kunce­vič said.

Dozens of news web­sites have been blocked in Belarus fol­low­ing the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

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The web­site of the Novy Čas news­pa­per, novychas.by, became inac­ces­si­ble to users on Thurs­day after being blocked by the country’s author­i­ties. The deci­sion has been made by the infor­ma­tion min­istry, accord­ing to a mes­sage that appears on the screen when one tries to go to the web­site.

“We had expect­ed that. Prob­a­bly, it is our turn now. It is very sym­bol­ic that we have been blocked on the eve of the Night of Exe­cut­ed Poets,” Novy Čas Edi­tor in Chief Aksana Kolb told Bela­PAN, refer­ring to the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the mass killing of Belaru­sian lit­er­ary fig­ures by Stalin’s secret police on the night between Octo­ber 29 and 30, 1937.

“But one can­not kill a word, stop a thought and destroy free­dom. We will sur­vive this,” she added.

Ms. Kolb said that she was not going to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the infor­ma­tion min­istry as its answers were already known.

Deputy Edi­tor in Chief Siarhiej Puĺša said that the newspaper’s tech­ni­cal staff had spent over an hour try­ing to find out why the web­site had become inac­ces­si­ble and even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed that it could have been blocked. Their con­clu­sions were lat­er con­firmed by a host­ing com­pa­ny that said that the web­site must have been blocked by the Pres­i­den­tial Administration’s Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter.

“This is sur­pris­ing for us because we have received nei­ther calls, nor warn­ings, nor noti­fi­ca­tions that we have vio­lat­ed some­thing from the infor­ma­tion min­istry or oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies. But it is a stan­dard sit­u­a­tion. We have been ready for this for a long time,” said Mr. Puĺša.

The website’s mir­ror, novychas.online, is still acces­si­ble to users.

On the morn­ing of Octo­ber 20, law enforce­ment offi­cers raid­ed the office of Novy Čas and the homes of Ms. Kolb and Mr. Puĺša, seiz­ing equip­ment. Ms. Kolb was also ques­tioned at the Min­sk office of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. The two jour­nal­ists gave a writ­ten pledge not to dis­close any details of the case.

The day before that, a search was con­duct­ed at the home of Novy Čas pho­to­jour­nal­ist Dzmit­ryj Dzmit­ry­jeŭ. All his equip­ment was seized. Since the start of protests against the offi­cial results of Belarus’ August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Mr. Dzmit­ry­jeŭ, a for­mer police offi­cer, has served five jail terms.