9 July, 2021, Paris — Min­sk. Yes­ter­day, law enforce­ment offi­cials organ­ised a widescale crack­down on inde­pen­dent media in Belarus. Offices of at least five media out­lets were raid­ed and a num­ber of their employ­ees were detained. Crim­i­nal cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed against the employ­ees of Nasha Niva, one of the old­est and largest inde­pen­dent media in Belarus, its web­site was shut­down. Two more out­lets are threat­ened with extrem­ist labels. FIDH and Vias­na con­demn the ongo­ing attacks which threat­en to destroy the last free media in Belarus and what is left of free­dom of expres­sion and asso­ci­a­tion in the coun­try.

In the morn­ing of 8 July, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Belaru­sian law-enforc­ing bod­ies came with search­es to the office of Nasha Niva. [1] Search­es were also con­duct­ed in the apart­ments of edi­tor-in-chief Yahor Martsi­novich, edi­tors Andrei Skurko and Andrei Dynko, and accoun­tant Vol­ha Rakovich. All four were detained as sus­pects under Art. 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (“Organ­i­sa­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them”). The outlet’s web­site has been shut down.

Oth­er media con­cerned by search­es include some of the largest Brest region­al news out­lets: Brest News­pa­per, Intex-Press, and Media-Polesye. The edi­tor of anoth­er Brest media, First Region, Aleh Supruniuk, was wrong­ful­ly fined for spread­ing mate-rials deemed extrem­ist. Ear­li­er Intex-Press faced sim­i­lar charges for pub­lish­ing an inter­view with Belarus oppo­si­tion leader Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya.

Fur­ther search­es took place yes­ter­day in the apart­ments of Ihar Kazmer­chak, edi­tor of one of Orsha’s largest news por­tals, Orsha.eu, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dzia­n­is Dubkou. Both were detained. Kazmer­chak is sus­pect­ed of vio­lat­ing Art. 218 of the Crim­i­nal Code (“Inten­tion­al destruc­tion or dam­age to prop­er­ty”).

Ear­li­er, on 18 May, the Depart­ment of Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions of Belarus raid­ed the country’s largest inde­pen­dent media TUT.by, arrest­ing 15 of its employ­ees. [2] On 8 July, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion blocked the access to anoth­er web­site opened by the TUT.by team which man­aged to flee the coun­try. Both resources remain inac­ces-sible from Belarus. Addi­tion­al­ly, the Min­istry of Inte­ri­or request­ed to declare extre-mist the TUT.by web­site.

Same charges threat­en Telegram-chan­nel Hrodna.life. In June 2021, its edi­tor Ali-aksei Shota, already received a fine of 14,500 BYN (almost €4,800) for “spread­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als”.

Apart­ments of at least four more jour­nal­ists work­ing for Onlin­er, Bel­sat, and Bobr.by were searched on July 8 and 9. Anoth­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Vital Skryl was tar­get­ed under Art. 369 (“Insult to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of author­i­ty”). As new facts emerge every hour, more jour­nal­ists are like­ly being detained, and more offices raid­ed, as we speak.

The above actions severe­ly curb the abil­i­ty of jour­nal­ists to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, indi­vid­u­al­ly and as part of a media struc­ture, in vio­la­tion of Arti­cles 19 and 22, free­dom of expres­sion and asso­ci­a­tion, respec­tive­ly, of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights (ICCPR). FIDH, togeth­er with its mem­ber organ­i­sa­tion in Belarus, Vias­na HRC, strong­ly con­demn the repres­sions against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, and call for an imme­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of legal harass-ment against media from the Belaru­sian author­i­ties, as well as an urgent and firm reac­tion to the ongo­ing events from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

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