Freelancers of Nordic Countries Make a Statement to Support Colleagues in Belarus

The year­ly con­fer­ence Nordic Free­lance drew free­lance jour­nal­ists from Swe­den, Den­mark, Fin­land, and Nor­way. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was invit­ed as a part­ner orga­ni­za­tion of the Swedish Frilans Syd.

BAJ was rep­re­sent­ed by the lawyer Vol­ha Siakhovich and a free­lancer from Homel Larysa Shchyrako­va. They told about the sit­u­a­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists in Belarus: the legal envi­ron­ment, respec­tive sta­tis­tics and per­son­al expe­ri­ence. Vol­ha Siakhovich quot­ed the World Press Free­dom Index of the Reporters with­out Bor­ders where Belarus took 155^th place out of 180^th in 2018 (where­as Nor­way takes 1^st place and Swe­den takes the 2^nd place there). After her sto­ry, a jour­nal­ist from the audi­ence shared her sur­prise that she “had known about author­i­tar­i­an states all over the world, but had not thought they could be that close”. And, where­as free­lance jour­nal­ists in Swe­den and Nor­way are con­cerned over the issues of jour­nal­ists’ salaries, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, atti­tude in soci­ety, Belarus free­lancers are dis­turbed by the very ques­tion whether they can work at all.

Upon the con­fer­ence, the par­tic­i­pants issued a state­ment to sup­port their col­leagues in Belarus, demand­ing to stop harass­ment of free­lance jour­nal­ists for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties and to ensure nor­mal legal con­di­tions for their work.

STATEMENT

Inten­si­fied pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists in Belarus

The pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists in Belarus is a threat both to free­dom of speech and to the free­lance jour­nal­ists’ per­son­al lives. Impos­ing fines on the jour­nal­ist who con­tribute to for­eign media vio­lates inter­na­tion­al stat­ues of press free­dom and the right to access to infor­ma­tion.

In 2017, 69 fines were issued to free­lance jour­nal­ist and so far dur­ing this year 76 fines were issued. These fig­ures show that the sit­u­a­tion of Belaru­sian free­lance jour­nal­ists’ sit­u­a­tion has dete­ri­o­rat­ed in 2018. The legal pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for their coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion has sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased. The total sum of fines on arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of the Belarus Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es has exceed­ed EUR 25,000 in equiv­a­lent since the year start. There have tak­en place more than 76 tri­als on admin­is­tra­tive cas­es against free­lance jour­nal­ists since the begin­ning of 2018.

We as free­lance jour­nal­ist in the Nordic coun­tries are very con­cerned with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion for the rights of free­lance jour­nal­ists, in Belarus. We, the par­tic­i­pants of the Nordic Free­lance Sem­i­nar 2018, in Malmö, Swe­den calls upon the offi­cial author­i­ties of Belarus:

- not to harass jour­nal­ists for doing their jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty

- to stop imme­di­ate­ly the pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists for their pro­fes­sion­al work;

- to amend Belaru­sian media law to guar­an­tee equal rights to all jour­nal­ists in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions of Belarus.

Frilans Riks, the free­lance dis­trict with­in The Swedish Union of Jour­nal­ist (SJF)

SFJ, Asso­ci­a­tion of Finnish Free­lance Jour­nal­ist in Fin­land

FAO, Free­lance Chap­ter of Radio- and TV-jour­nal­ists Union in Fin­land

NJ Frilans, with­in the Nor­we­gian Union of Jour­nal­ists

Free­lance­Grup­pen with­in The Dan­ish Union of Jour­nal­ists