Declaring war on the truth: the crackdown on independent media in Belarus

Pro­tes­tors in Min­sk call for fair elec­tions, for Pres­i­dent Lukashen­ka to be held to account and for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers to be set free.

Through­out Alyak­san­dr Lukashenka’s pres­i­den­cy, Sovi­et-style pro­pa­gan­da has been one of the main tools used to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion. And it is the job of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion – whose sweep­ing pow­ers include the author­i­ty to shut down media out­lets – to ensure that few alter­na­tives to the state pro­pa­gan­da can be heard.

The media sphere in Belarus can be divid­ed into two sec­tors: state-run and inde­pen­dent. Media out­lets in the inde­pen­dent camp are either pri­vate­ly owned or fund­ed from abroad. The divi­sion into two sec­tors has giv­en rise to two unions rep­re­sent­ing media work­ers: the pro-gov­ern­ment Belaru­sian Union of Jour­nal­ists and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), which main­ly looks after the inter­ests of jour­nal­ists work­ing for inde­pen­dent media.

All Belarus-based TV chan­nels are state-con­trolled. The only TV chan­nel that offers an alter­na­tive point of view is the Belaru­sian-lan­guage satel­lite chan­nel Bel­sat, which is based in Poland. Bel­sat is a sub­sidiary of Pol­ish Tele­vi­sion and is fund­ed by Poland’s for­eign affairs min­istry, Pol­ish Tele­vi­sion and inter­na­tion­al donors.

Constant threat of harassment

Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media and cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists have for years oper­at­ed in extreme­ly adverse con­di­tions, with lim­it­ed access to infor­ma­tion and under the con­stant threat of police harass­ment and judi­cial pros­e­cu­tion. This means that not only does BAJ pro­tect the inter­ests of its mem­bers ­– it also acts as a human rights organ­i­sa­tion, defend­ing free­dom of speech in Belarus.

State-run media out­lets are fund­ed from the state bud­get and are gen­er­ous­ly resourced. How­ev­er, this does not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late into a big­ger audi­ence. Online, where pri­vate media can oper­ate rel­a­tive­ly freely, they have achieved a sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater reach than their gov­ern­ment coun­ter­parts. This has been boost­ed by the steady growth of Inter­net access in Belarus (about 80% of the pop­u­la­tion by 2020) and by the process of gen­er­a­tion change. We have now reached a point where the Inter­net gen­er­a­tion has replaced the TV gen­er­a­tion.

In 2017, live web­casts pro­duced by jour­nal­ists and blog­gers cov­er­ing protests against what became known as the “social par­a­sites tax” (imposed on cit­i­zens not in full-time employ­ment) ren­dered gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da inef­fec­tive. This was the point at which the author­i­ties lost the infor­ma­tion war on the Inter­net. The government’s response to this was to adopt amend­ments to the Media Law that made it eas­i­er for the state to curb free­dom of speech online. These amend­ments result­ed in an increased num­ber of pros­e­cu­tions for state­ments made in the online space.

Violent crackdown

The 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign has clear­ly demon­strat­ed the extent to which Belaru­sians have lost faith in Lukashen­ka and are more than ready for change. This year, media free­dom has dete­ri­o­rat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly as the author­i­ties launched a vio­lent crack­down in a bid to dis­cour­age jour­nal­ists from report­ing on elec­tion-relat­ed protests. Since May, the author­i­ties have stepped up their efforts to curb media cov­er­age of the protests, with more jour­nal­ists being arrest­ed than ever before.

For three days after the elec­tion, which took place on 9 August, Inter­net access in Belarus was severe­ly dis­rupt­ed. At times, the black­out was total; at oth­er times, spe­cif­ic Inter­net ser­vices, web­sites, social net­works and mes­sag­ing ser­vices ­– both local and glob­al ­– were blocked. Access to a num­ber of media web­sites was blocked as a result of tar­get­ed gov­ern­ment action. One of the first to be blocked was the BAJ web­site, as was the BAJ hot­line mobile num­ber for jour­nal­ists.

Dur­ing three days of tur­bu­lent post-elec­tion protests, more than 70 Belaru­sian and for­eign jour­nal­ists were arrest­ed and 54 were kept in deten­tion. Jour­nal­ists were also the tar­gets of bru­tal treat­ment on the part of the riot police: 25 jour­nal­ists were beat­en up, three were wound­ed when police fired rub­ber bul­lets and stun grenades at the pro­test­ers, and many had equip­ment dam­aged or seized. Sev­er­al for­eign jour­nal­ists were deport­ed and had entry bans rang­ing from five to ten years imposed on them.

Tipping point

Despite these dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists have con­tin­ued to car­ry out their pro­fes­sion­al duties. BAJ has been con­tin­u­al­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and pro­vid­ing assis­tance to the affect­ed jour­nal­ists.

The jour­nal­ists who expe­ri­enced Belaru­sian police bru­tal­i­ty for them­selves have ensured that accounts of their treat­ment have reached a wide audi­ence. Once the Inter­net became acces­si­ble again and these reports came to the atten­tion of the domes­tic audi­ence, protests against the vio­lence were held across the entire coun­try.

For many jour­nal­ists work­ing for state-run media, the vio­lence against their fel­low cit­i­zens rep­re­sent­ed a tip­ping point. Some well-known TV hosts pub­licly declared their oppo­si­tion to Lukashenka’s poli­cies and quit.

Hun­dreds of employ­ees of the state broad­cast­er went on strike and launched a protest against cen­sor­ship, demand­ing that they be giv­en the chance to tell the truth about what was going on in their coun­try. Some of these employ­ees also left their jobs. Staff at the state-owned dai­ly Zvi­az­da and the state-run region­al radio sta­tion Radio Stal­it­sa did the same.

Hybrid war

To ensure that Belaru­sian TV could con­tin­ue to func­tion and that events would be framed in the cor­rect way, Lukashen­ka swift­ly recruit­ed Russ­ian “mer­ce­nar­ies” ­– con­trib­u­tors to noto­ri­ous pro­pa­gan­da chan­nels such as Rus­sia Today ­– and offered them salaries sev­er­al times high­er than the ones Belaru­sian employ­ees are used to receiv­ing.

Short­ly before the elec­tion, Lukashen­ka claimed that a hybrid war was being waged against Belarus by unspec­i­fied forces. How­ev­er, as BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets has point­ed out, it is per­haps truer to say that the Belaru­sian regime is now engaged in a hybrid war against its own peo­ple.

On 21 August, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ordered Inter­net ser­vice providers to block 73 news web­sites and web­sites of civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions. The list includes influ­en­tial media out­lets such as Bel­sat TV, the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty, and Euro­ra­dio. Though the BAJ web­site does not appear on the list and the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion denies that it has been black­list­ed, it has not been pos­si­ble to access it from with­in Belarus since 9 August.

In addi­tion to online media out­lets, the influ­en­tial news­pa­pers Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da (its Belarus edi­tion), Nar­o­d­naya Volya, Bel­gaze­ta and Svo­bod­nye Novosti have been tar­get­ed. The state print­ing house refused to print them, claim­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems.

On 22 August, BAJ issued a state­ment demand­ing the restora­tion of access to web­sites, the lift­ing of pres­sure on the media and for news­pa­pers to be able to appear again. BAJ called on Belaru­sian and inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions to sup­port this state­ment.

With such gross vio­la­tions of the rights of jour­nal­ists, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties are deny­ing cit­i­zens’ right to infor­ma­tion. By declar­ing war on the inde­pen­dent press, they have declared war on the truth.

Image: Anti-Lukashen­ka protest, Min­sk, 16 August 2020. Pho­to by Homoa­trox / Source: Wiki­me­dia / Licensed under CC-BY-SA‑3.0