“Independent media is experiencing a business model collapse, and society is subjecting itself to self-censorship.” Highlights from the Freedom House report

In the con­text of the ongo­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis and the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment increased its arbi­trary arrests of media work­ers, online activists, and ordi­nary users, impos­ing lengthy prison sen­tences on those detained. Secu­ri­ty forces con­duct­ed raids, employed tor­ture, and released forced-con­fes­sion videos to deter and silence crit­i­cal speech. The impact of war and inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions has com­pelled the gov­ern­ment to sharply increase its pro­pa­gan­da and oth­er efforts to manip­u­late the infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment.

Belarus is a con­sol­i­dat­ed author­i­tar­i­an state ruled by Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, who first took office as pres­i­dent in 1994. Elec­tions are open­ly orches­trat­ed, and civ­il lib­er­ties are tight­ly restrict­ed. Since 2020, when Lukashenka’s fraud­u­lent reelec­tion prompt­ed mass protests, the regime has depend­ed on sup­port from Moscow to main­tain its grip on pow­er and the country’s over­all human rights sit­u­a­tion has declined pre­cip­i­tous­ly. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been arrest­ed, and as many as 250,000 Belaru­sians, includ­ing most of the country’s inde­pen­dent media work­ers, may have emi­grat­ed since the crack­down began. By the end of May 2023, approx­i­mate­ly 3,300 peo­ple had been con­vict­ed in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal crimes, and the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, a Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion, had rec­og­nized 1,496 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in the coun­try, includ­ing at least 33 media work­ers.

Key Developments, June 1, 2022 — May 31, 2023

• The mass block­ing of websites—including those of news out­lets that now oper­ate from abroad (see B1)—and increased use of laws on extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism to restrict online con­tent (see B2) result­ed in greater gov­ern­ment con­trol over and less diver­si­ty in the country’s online infor­ma­tion space (see B7).

• Dur­ing its domes­tic crack­down and the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment inten­si­fied its use pro­pa­gan­da, dis­in­for­ma­tion, and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to manip­u­late the online infor­ma­tion space (see B5 and B7).

• Harsh new laws result­ed in increased penal­ties met­ed out to jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, activists, and ordi­nary users for their online activ­i­ty (see C2 and C3), and fur­ther decreased the capac­i­ty for online orga­niz­ing with­in the coun­try (see B8).

• The gov­ern­ment intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to fur­ther lim­it online jour­nal­ism and activism, includ­ing a law crim­i­nal­iz­ing the “prop­a­ga­tion of ter­ror­ism,” “dis­cred­it­ing the army” and “breach­ing the rules to pro­tect state secrets,” as well as intro­duc­ing the death penal­ty for mil­i­tary and state offi­cials con­vict­ed of high trea­son (see C2).

• The author­i­ties arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed hun­dreds of media work­ers, blog­gers, and ordi­nary inter­net users, impos­ing prison sen­tences exceed­ing 10 years in some cas­es. One impris­oned blog­ger died while in state cus­tody (see C3 and C7).

• Secu­ri­ty forces raid­ed the homes of jour­nal­ists, online activists, and their fam­i­lies; con­tin­ued to employ tor­ture against those detained for crit­i­ciz­ing the gov­ern­ment online; and increased their use of forced “repen­tant videos” to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize dis­si­dents and crit­ics (see C7).

A Obstacles to Access

Users in Belarus ben­e­fit from the country’s well-devel­oped infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) infra­struc­ture. Access to the inter­net has increased in recent years.

Accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics, 89.5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion was online by the end of 2022, an increase of almost three per­cent over the pre­vi­ous year.1

Belarus main­tains high fixed- and mobile-broad­band pen­e­tra­tion rates. Accord­ing to offi­cial sta­tis­tics from the begin­ning of 2023, the num­ber of sub­scribers access­ing the inter­net via these con­nec­tions num­bered 3.1 and 9.3 mil­lion, respec­tive­ly, out of the country’s approx­i­mate­ly 9.4 mil­lion peo­ple.2 The gov­ern­ment also report­ed a fixed-broad­band pen­e­tra­tion rate of 33.8 per­cent and a mobile broad­band inter­net pen­e­tra­tion rate of 101 per­cent.3 Belarus had one of the high­est mobile inter­net pen­e­tra­tion rates of any coun­try in cen­tral and east­ern Europe in 2022.4

As of March 2023, the medi­an mobile-broad­band down­load speed was 12.1 Megabits per sec­ond (Mbps), and the medi­an fixed-broad­band down­load speed was 53.4 Mbps. Both speeds showed improve­ment over the last report­ing peri­od, accord­ing to the speed-test­ing com­pa­ny Ook­la.5

Sec­ond and third-gen­er­a­tion (2G and 3G) mobile net­works cov­er 99.3 per­cent and 98.6 per­cent of the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus, respec­tive­ly.6 4G long-term evo­lu­tion (LTE) ser­vices, offered by mobile providers via the state-run Belaru­sian Cloud Tech­nolo­gies (beCloud),7 the sole own­er of the country’s 4G infra­struc­ture, cov­er 83.2 per­cent of the country’s ter­ri­to­ry.8 Fifth-gen­er­a­tion (5G) net­works were still in the test­ing phase dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od.

Among fixed-broad­band con­nec­tions, giga­bit pas­sive opti­cal net­work (GPON) fiber-optic tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to replace old­er DSL (dig­i­tal sub­scriber line) tech­nol­o­gy. Belarus is among Europe’s lead­ers in terms of pen­e­tra­tion rates for house­hold fiber-optic com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines.9 The num­ber of GPON sub­scribers topped 2.9 mil­lion by the end of 2022.10

Inter­net access in Belarus became more afford­able dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. In 2022, the ITU found that 2 GB of mobile data cost 0.62 per­cent of the gross nation­al income (GNI) per capi­ta, and 5 GB of fixed broad­band data cost 0.73 per­cent of GNI per capi­ta;11 both were improve­ments over 2021. Belarus reg­u­lar­ly ranks among the top coun­tries with the cheap­est inter­net.12

Some dig­i­tal inequal­i­ties per­sist, but they are nar­row­ing. Near­ly 92.5 per­cent of urban res­i­dents are inter­net users, com­pared with 79.7 per­cent of rur­al res­i­dents.13 Min­sk, the cap­i­tal city, remains bet­ter con­nect­ed than the rest of the coun­try.14 The urban-rur­al dig­i­tal divide is reflect­ed more strong­ly among cer­tain seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion. In cities and towns, for exam­ple, 53.4 per­cent of cit­i­zens aged 65 and over used the inter­net in 2021; in vil­lages, how­ev­er, the num­ber was only 28.2 per­cent.15

More Belaru­sian women than men are online.16 In 2022, 89.5 per­cent of Belaru­sian women aged 16–72 used the inter­net, and 88.7 per­cent used it every day.17 The per­cent­age of Belaru­sian women using the inter­net is high­er than both the Euro­pean and Com­mon­wealth of Inde­pen­dent States (CIS) aver­ages.18

The gov­ern­ment did not shut down inter­net ser­vice dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, as it did in 2020 and 2021. In August 2023, after the cov­er­age peri­od, local dis­rup­tions in mobile inter­net cov­er­age were report­ed near the camp of Wag­n­er para­mil­i­tary forces in Tsel fol­low­ing the death of Yevge­ny Prigozhin, the head of the Wag­n­er mil­i­tary forces, in a plane crash.19

The gov­ern­ment owns and over­sees the back­bone con­nec­tion to the inter­na­tion­al inter­net and con­trols much of the infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) sec­tor. 20 There are approx­i­mate­ly 18 inter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) in Belarus,21 but only two state-run enti­ties, the Nation­al Cen­ter for Traf­fic Exchange (NTEC) and Bel­t­ele­com, are per­mit­ted to han­dle con­nec­tions with ISPs out­side the coun­try.22 The NTEC pro­vides peer­ing ser­vices through the BY-IX inter­net exchange point (IXP). Bel­t­ele­com, the country’s largest telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, owns and oper­ates Belarus’s back­bone net­work, upon which all oth­er ISPs depend. Through these enti­ties, the gov­ern­ment can throt­tle or cut con­nec­tions at will.

In 2020 and 2021, the author­i­ties ini­ti­at­ed a nation­wide inter­net shut­down dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in August 202023 and then ordered local­ized and inter­mit­tent inter­net out­ages over the sub­se­quent months, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing fre­quent Sun­day protests.24 In March 2022, the Open Soci­ety Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive filed a com­plaint with the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD) against A1, an Aus­tri­an telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm that has a sub­sidiary in Belarus, for its role in facil­i­tat­ing the Belaru­sian government’s inter­net shut­downs in 2020.25 Fol­low­ing the Russ­ian regime’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, A1 con­tin­ued work­ing in Belarus and increased its invest­ment in the coun­try.26

Inter­net con­nec­tions were report­ed­ly jammed at protests and ral­lies that took place in June 2020, ahead of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.27 The inter­net had pre­vi­ous­ly been jammed in May and Novem­ber 2019.

In 2021, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Law to allow it to shut down or lim­it the oper­a­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works and facil­i­ties in response to alleged threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty involv­ing the inter­net.28 The revised leg­is­la­tion pro­vides the author­i­ties with offi­cial grounds to imple­ment inter­net shut­downs.

Arti­cle 13 of the Media Law per­mits the gov­ern­ment to block web­sites “in the event of a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.”29

By law, all enti­ties oper­at­ing with .by and .бел domain names must use Belaru­sian host­ing ser­vices (see C6).

The gov­ern­ment strives to con­nect cit­i­zens for the pur­pose of eco­nom­ic growth, while strict­ly lim­it­ing the auton­o­my of ser­vice providers.30

By the end of 2022, 178 com­pa­nies were pro­vid­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices in Belarus, a decrease from 2021.31 How­ev­er, the state-owned Bel­t­ele­com remains dom­i­nant. Belarus had 3.1 mil­lion fixed-broad­band sub­scribers in 2022; of that num­ber, 2.5 mil­lion (more than 80 per­cent) were through Bel­t­ele­com.32

At the start of 2023, Belarus had three mobile ser­vice providers. The largest is MTS Belarus, a joint ven­ture of Bel­t­ele­com and Russia’s Mobile TeleSys­tems that had 5.7 mil­lion sub­scribers as of the fourth quar­ter of 2022.33 A1, which is part of the Telekom Aus­tria Group, had more than 4.9 mil­lion mobile sub­scribers by the end of 2022.34 In Decem­ber 2022, Turk­cell acquired the remain­ing 20 per­cent stake in the Belaru­sian Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work (BeST), brand­ed as “Life,” which it did not already own, from the government’s State Asset Com­mit­tee.35 As of April 2023, Life had 1.5 mil­lion sub­scribers.36

In Jan­u­ary 2022, the gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed a license allow­ing Bel­t­ele­com itself to pro­vide mobile ser­vices; the com­pa­ny began offer­ing pack­ages in Decem­ber of that year.37 By April 2023, it had more than 1,000 sub­scribers.38

The government’s post-2020 crack­down and its assis­tance with Moscow’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine led to a sig­nif­i­cant out­flow of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies and spe­cial­ists from Belarus. The depar­tures are dri­ven by gov­ern­ment repres­sion tar­get­ing the sec­tor, includ­ing ISPs, inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions against Belarus and its lead­er­ship, and the fear that IT work­ers could be draft­ed into the mil­i­tary. For exam­ple, after the 2020 events, sev­er­al employ­ees from A1 and Bel­t­ele­com were arrest­ed and impris­oned.39 One expert esti­mat­ed that, by June 2022, one-fifth to one-third of Belarus’s tech indus­try work­force had emi­grat­ed.40

There is no inde­pen­dent reg­u­la­tor for ICTs in Belarus. The gov­ern­ment estab­lished Bel­t­ele­com in 1995 and con­tin­ues to over­see the com­pa­ny via the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion. In addi­tion, the pres­i­den­tial administration’s Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter (OAC),41 which ini­tial­ly was a sub­di­vi­sion of the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee (KGB), has the author­i­ty to over­see ISPs, set stan­dards for infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty, con­duct online sur­veil­lance, and man­age Belarus’s top-lev­el domains. A 2019 pres­i­den­tial decree pro­vid­ed the OAC with addi­tion­al pow­ers relat­ed to inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion on mat­ters of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty and called for it to serve as a nation­al cen­ter for respond­ing to com­put­er-relat­ed inci­dents.42 Oth­er gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies with author­i­ty over ICTs include the State Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Inspec­torate, State Con­trol Com­mit­tee, State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee (KGB), and Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office.

While Belarus is home to a few ICT-relat­ed busi­ness groups, such as the Infopark Asso­ci­a­tion and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Dig­i­tal Busi­ness, they were found­ed by, are sup­port­ed by, and coop­er­ate close­ly with the gov­ern­ment. The Belin­fo­com Asso­ci­a­tion, a non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion (NGO), has the mis­sion of rep­re­sent­ing and pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of the pri­vate­ly-owned ICT com­pa­nies it counts as mem­bers. In the past, it lob­bied against Beltelecom’s monop­o­lis­tic posi­tion, but it now appears to act more as an advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion that works on behalf of its mem­bers with the gov­ern­ment to advance the devel­op­ment of the ICT sec­tor.43

B Limits on Content

The gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued block­ing online news sites and infor­ma­tion resources, includ­ing vir­tu­al­ly all inde­pen­dent media and civ­il soci­ety web­sites. The Belaru­sian Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry, estab­lished to mon­i­tor the block­ing of web­sites in the Belaru­sian seg­ment of the inter­net, found that more than 9,000 sites were blocked as of ear­ly June 2023.44 Experts sug­gest that about one-fifth of the sites are blocked for polit­i­cal rea­sons.45

The gov­ern­ment began restrict­ing access to news web­sites in 2014,46 and dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ed efforts to block crit­i­cal news, human rights, civ­il soci­ety, and polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion sites since the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and ensu­ing protests.47 The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists report­ed that the gov­ern­ment restrict­ed access to more than 100 online news resources in 2020 and 2021.48 The full-scale mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, which Belaru­sian author­i­ties assist­ed with by allow­ing the use of Belaru­sian ter­ri­to­ry as a launch­ing ground for attacks, fur­ther spurred the block­ing cam­paign.

Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment tar­get­ed and blocked many of the country’s remain­ing inde­pen­dent region­al, local and niche web­sites. The web­sites of at least three inde­pen­dent news media—‎Babruisk Kuri­er, Belprauda.com, and s13.ru—as well as those of the eco­nom­ic news­pa­per Belarusy i Rynok, the infor­ma­tion and analy­sis group Ref­or­ma­tion, the envi­ron­men­tal news Green Por­tal, the urban lifestyle City­Dog, and the cul­tur­al site ARCHE, were all blocked, for exam­ple.49 By autumn 2022, the web­sites of 44 Belaru­sian media offices were blocked.50 As of Decem­ber 2022, the government’s list of restrict­ed web­sites includ­ed 491 inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion sources and news aggre­ga­tors, and their mir­ror sites.51 Changes to the country’s media leg­is­la­tion in 2021 had autho­rized the restric­tion of “mir­ror” web­sites, lead­ing to the block­ing of dif­fer­ent sites linked to inde­pen­dent online media that pub­lish from out­side Belarus.52 By spring 2023 vir­tu­al­ly all major inde­pen­dent media and NGO web­sites remained blocked, with the excep­tion of the Onlin­er web por­tal.

The gov­ern­ment is also restrict­ing web­sites periph­er­al­ly con­nect­ed to inde­pen­dent online infor­ma­tion sources. In Octo­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the author­i­ties blocked Marketing.by, the web­site of the country’s old­est firm focused on dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing.53 In Decem­ber 2022, the gov­ern­ment blocked the TGStat web­site, which tracks the sta­tis­tics and rank­ings of Telegram chan­nels.54 In May 2023, it blocked Dev.by, which cov­ers Belarus’s tech sec­tor; the site had an aver­age month­ly audi­ence of one mil­lion unique view­ers.55

The crack­down that began in 2020 has led to an exo­dus of inde­pen­dent media from Belarus (see B7). As they depart­ed, the sites left the nation­al .by domain and rereg­is­tered their web­sites abroad, prompt­ing Belaru­sian author­i­ties to block the new for­eign-based sites. For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Belaru­sian web­site (b‑g.by) of Brest­skaya Gaze­ta, a pop­u­lar online region­al news­pa­per, in March 2023. After part of the edi­to­r­i­al team work­ing out­side of Belarus resumed pub­lish­ing on BG.Media.site, the gov­ern­ment blocked it as well.56

In 2021, Lukashen­ka launched a “clean-up” of “ban­dit” and “for­eign agent” NGOs in Belarus, includ­ing media, think tank, and human rights orga­ni­za­tions. In 2021 and 2022, the gov­ern­ment shut down more than 750 NGOs; anoth­er 400 decid­ed to cease func­tion­ing due to offi­cial pres­sure.57 By the end of 2021, no pub­licly work­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tion was left in Belarus. The ter­mi­na­tion of at least 1,315 inde­pen­dent groups from Sep­tem­ber 2020 to the end of May 202358 also includ­ed the loss of their news, infor­ma­tion, research, ana­lyt­i­cal and cul­tur­al web­sites and online pub­li­ca­tions in Belarus.59 While some NGOs con­tin­ue their activ­i­ties from abroad, their new web­sites are rou­tine­ly blocked. In Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Belaru­sian site of Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance (J4T.by); when the NGO reg­is­tered a new site out­side of the .by domain, it (J4T.info) was also blocked.60 By Feb­ru­ary 2022, more than 1,300 inter­net resources crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment had been blocked, includ­ing 76 focus­ing on human rights and assis­tance to the repressed, accord­ing to the rights orga­ni­za­tion Human Con­stan­ta.61

In Decem­ber 2022, the gov­ern­ment began block­ing Patre­on, a pop­u­lar crowd-fund­ing plat­form used by Belaru­sians to sup­port cre­ative con­tent pro­duced by blog­gers, writ­ers, and pod­cast­ers.62

The author­i­ties have also focused on restrict­ing Belaru­sian-lan­guage web­sites, since they con­sid­er Belaru­sian to be the lan­guage of the oppo­si­tion. For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment blocked the Audiobooks.by web­site, which includes links to 500 Belaru­sian-lan­guage books, in April 2023.63

In May 2021, the gov­ern­ment blocked the domain por­tal of TUT.by, the country’s most pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial online news source.64 At the time of its block­ing, TUT.by had 3.3 mil­lion dai­ly users.65 In July 2021, part of the TUT.by team launched a suc­ces­sor to the site, Zerkalo.io, that is based out­side of Belarus. The gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly blocked Zerkalo.io.66

The gov­ern­ment also blocks the web­sites of for­eign news orga­ni­za­tions that cov­er Belarus, includ­ing the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty (RFE/RL), Deutsche Welle (DW), and the Voice of Amer­i­ca (VOA) net­work Cur­rent Time.67

Fol­low­ing the Kremlin’s 2022 full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment began restrict­ing access to Ukrain­ian web­sites report­ing on the war. At least nine Ukrain­ian media out­lets had been blocked as of Feb­ru­ary 2023,68 after Belaru­sian con­sump­tion of Ukrain­ian news con­tent increased in the wake of the Russ­ian inva­sion. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties have sim­i­lar­ly blocked Russ­ian web­sites whose cov­er­age of the inva­sion devi­ates from the Kremlin’s line.69 Sep­a­rate­ly, in April 2022, the web­site of Human Rights Watch (HRW) was blocked after the group pub­lished a report doc­u­ment­ing appar­ent war crimes by Russ­ian forces in Ukraine.70

As of Jan­u­ary 2023, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment had blocked 27 inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian news web­sites since its sec­ond inva­sion of Ukraine.71

The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also increased its block­ing of mes­sag­ing chan­nels dur­ing this report­ing peri­od. Accord­ing to offi­cial sources, the author­i­ties restrict­ed access either ful­ly or par­tial­ly to more than 3,000 such resources, pri­mar­i­ly Telegram chan­nels, from Jan­u­ary to Novem­ber 2022; dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sev­en years, approx­i­mate­ly 5,000 resources had suf­fered the same fate.72 Most of the indi­vid­ual groups and accounts have been blocked due to alleged “extrem­ist” con­tent (see B2). Social media and mes­sag­ing plat­forms them­selves remain avail­able, though Lukashen­ka has dis­cussed fol­low­ing the Kremlin’s lead in block­ing them.73

Research indi­cates that both gov­ern­ment bod­ies and state-owned and pri­vate ISPs car­ry out inter­net block­ing in Belarus.74 The NTEC has the capac­i­ty to block 40 per­cent of all incom­ing and out­go­ing inter­net traf­fic and to restrict access to up to 150 mil­lion URLs.75 A1, the largest pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm in Belarus, has active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the block­ing of oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal media web­sites.76 State offices, orga­ni­za­tions, and companies—which employ more than half of the country’s workforce—reportedly use inter­net fil­ters.77

In addi­tion to its use of deep pack­et inspec­tion (DPI) tech­nol­o­gy, the gov­ern­ment employs basic tech­niques such as IP (inter­net pro­to­col) fil­ter­ing and dis­abling domain name sys­tem (DNS) records to block web­sites. It also uses oth­er com­mer­cial fil­ter­ing tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing some pro­duced in the Unit­ed States, for this pur­pose.78

Since the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the gov­ern­ment has sought to upgrade its block­ing capa­bil­i­ties. In March 2022, Bel­t­ele­com announced a $4.25 mil­lion ten­der to mod­ern­ize exist­ing hard­ware and soft­ware “that col­lects and stores infor­ma­tion about the user’s vis­it to inter­net resources and blocks inter­net resources.“79 The gov­ern­ment is look­ing to the Krem­lin for the tech­nol­o­gy to block social media plat­forms.80

Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment expand­ed its “antiex­trem­ism” leg­is­la­tion and invoked it more fre­quent­ly to cen­sor online con­tent and lim­it free­dom of expres­sion (see C2, B6, and B7). When the author­i­ties label orga­ni­za­tions, infor­mal groups, indi­vid­u­als, activ­i­ties, or con­tent as “extrem­ist,” the des­ig­na­tion bars all online media and users in the coun­try from refer­ring to them. Users of web­sites, social media plat­forms, and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions who access, share, or repost “extrem­ist” mate­ri­als can and are pros­e­cut­ed in both admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal courts (see C3). Oth­er media out­lets and users are required to delete such materials—and remove them retroactively—from their pub­li­ca­tions (see B3).81 A 2023 UN report con­clud­ed that the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment equates inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism as a whole with extrem­ism.82

The gov­ern­ment main­tains a Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als83 that iden­ti­fies banned con­tent. Pri­or to the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, a major­i­ty of items on the list prop­a­gat­ed racism or reli­gious extrem­ism. By 2022, more than 90 per­cent were relat­ed to oppo­si­tion pol­i­tics, inde­pen­dent media, civ­il soci­ety, and oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es.84 By the end of May 2023, the list includ­ed more than 3,000 mate­ri­als, includ­ing the web­sites and social media and mes­sen­ger chan­nels of almost all inde­pen­dent media out­lets.85 While rough­ly one-third of the mate­ri­als banned as “extrem­ist” appear to be Telegram resources,86 they also include Tik­Tok, Face­book, VKon­tak­te (VK), OK, YouTube, Insta­gram and Twit­ter accounts.87

The gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to force indi­vid­ual out­lets still in Belarus to delete con­tent. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the author­i­ties blocked the socioe­co­nom­ic out­let Blizko.by fol­low­ing its men­tion of an inde­pen­dent blog­ger includ­ed on the offi­cial list of “ter­ror­ists” (see B6). The fol­low­ing month, it became acces­si­ble, but only after delet­ing its polit­i­cal news and archives sec­tions.88

Since the Russ­ian military’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has sought to lim­it the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, includ­ing the move­ments of Russ­ian troops in Belarus, espe­cial­ly in inde­pen­dent media and Telegram chan­nels.89

In March 2022, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment signed a decree that pro­hibits news aggre­ga­tors from coop­er­at­ing with sites blocked in Belarus. As a result, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media out­lets and their con­tent are exclud­ed from the list of part­ners of Yandex.News (now Zen.Novosti).90 Fol­low­ing its inva­sion of Ukraine, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment forced Yandex.Zen (now Zen), an auto­mat­ed per­son­al-rec­om­men­da­tion ser­vice that pre­vi­ous­ly drove traf­fic to Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media sites, to drop all for­eign con­tent, includ­ing from Belaru­sian media. The ser­vice has been shut down in Belarus.91 Todah, Zen.Novosti and Zen are owned by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled VK.

To fur­ther lim­it access to inde­pen­dent news and infor­ma­tion sites via social media, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment request­ed that VK (which is pop­u­lar in Belarus) restrict some pages and groups of the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian out­lets Char­ter 97 and Flagsh­tok, both of which are based out­side the coun­try.92 VK com­plied in August 2022.93 In 2023, VK also blocked the pages of RFE/RL’s Belarus Ser­vice and a num­ber of oth­er inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­lets, human rights groups, and civic ini­tia­tives with­in Belarus.94

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has also forced the dele­tion of con­tent relat­ed to its inva­sion of Ukraine on the Belaru­sian inter­net. Roskom­nad­zor suc­cess­ful­ly had arti­cles removed from Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent and state media out­lets, as well as NGOs and state agen­cies.95 In mid-August 2022, Russia’s gen­er­al prosecutor’s office ordered VK to block the pages of the exile Belaru­sian pub­li­ca­tion Zerka­lo, which had 257,000 fol­low­ers, over its cov­er­age of the war.96

Some social media plat­forms act­ed to lim­it inva­sion-relat­ed con­tent from the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment that they deemed to be dis­in­for­ma­tion, in light of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties’ assis­tance with the ille­gal attack. In March 2022, Twit­ter began label­ing and lim­it­ing the spread of posts from Belaru­sian state media, includ­ing the news agency BelTA and the broad­cast­er BT, and their senior staff.97 Insta­gram reg­u­lar­ly blocks and deletes accounts that pro­mote the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment, large­ly because they vio­late the platform’s terms of ser­vice.98

Like­wise, in June 2022, Telegram began block­ing the pop­u­lar Yel­low Plums site, which seeks to intim­i­date oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal voic­es through “con­fes­sion­al videos” (see C7) and dox­ing, at the request of a Belaru­sian human rights group.99 In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Telegram blocked five pop­u­lar pro­gov­ern­ment chan­nels, with a total of more than 86,000 sub­scribers, on Apple devices for vio­lat­ing Apple’s rules con­cern­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion.100 In Jan­u­ary 2023, Telegram blocked a swath of chan­nels used by the secu­ri­ty forces to pub­li­cize “con­fes­sion­al videos.”101

In the first half of 2022, Meta did not remove any con­tent at the request of the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment.102 Twit­ter did not pro­duce a trans­paren­cy report on con­tent-removal requests that cov­ered the report­ing peri­od.103 Google received two requests in 2022, but took no action.104 The social media plat­forms VK and OK are also pop­u­lar in Belarus, but they do not release trans­paren­cy reports.

The government’s inter­net restric­tions, which con­tin­ued to expand dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, are opaque, often invoked arbi­trar­i­ly, and lack an inde­pen­dent appeals process.

The 2008 Media Law secures the state’s con­trol over the country’s infor­ma­tion space. Suc­ces­sive amend­ments have repeat­ed­ly tight­ened that con­trol. New amend­ments approved in May 2023 con­tin­ued this trend (see B6).

Amend­ments that took effect in 2021105 made it more dif­fi­cult for indi­vid­u­als to reg­is­ter out­lets and enabled the gov­ern­ment to sus­pend media out­lets. They also allowed the gov­ern­ment to restrict online media for pub­lish­ing mate­r­i­al con­sid­ered pro­pa­gan­da, harm­ful to nation­al secu­ri­ty, or extrem­ist, and ban the pub­li­ca­tion of pub­lic opin­ion polls on sociopo­lit­i­cal issues con­duct­ed with­out offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion.106

Amend­ments that came into effect in 2018 empow­ered the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to warn, sus­pend, block, and close reg­is­tered and unreg­is­tered online out­lets with­out warn­ing or judi­cial over­sight.107 The amend­ments also let the min­istry block social media plat­forms and hold web­site own­ers liable for host­ing con­tent that is deemed false, defam­a­to­ry, or harm­ful to the nation­al inter­est.108

In 2021, Lukashen­ka issued a decree expand­ing the author­i­ty of the Com­mis­sion on Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty, allow­ing it to restrict access to domes­tic and for­eign web­sites and close media out­lets if it finds that their con­tent is harm­ful to nation­al inter­ests. The list of the poten­tial threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty is exten­sive and can be inter­pret­ed broad­ly. Offens­es include man­i­fes­ta­tions of sociopo­lit­i­cal, reli­gious, or eth­nic extrem­ism; pro­mo­tion of pol­i­tics con­trary to nation­al inter­ests; calls for riots; the destruc­tive impact of infor­ma­tion on an indi­vid­ual, soci­ety, or state insti­tu­tion; attempts to destroy nation­al spir­i­tu­al and moral tra­di­tions; the biased revi­sion of his­to­ry; and attempts to under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in state insti­tu­tions.109

In March 2022, Lukashen­ka signed a decree that allowed the gov­ern­ment to block news aggre­ga­tors that dis­sem­i­nat­ed mate­ri­als from sites restrict­ed by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion.110

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, new leg­is­la­tion required ISPs to more strin­gent­ly adhere to the government’s block­ing poli­cies.111 Pre­vi­ous­ly, ISPs were required to check the list of web­sites to be banned once a day; now they are required to do so every three hours dur­ing the day and block access four hours after the site appears on the list.112 There is no appeal process to a court; how­ev­er, out­lets can cor­re­spond with the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and, after delet­ing cer­tain mate­ri­als, have the deci­sion reversed. The list of banned web­sites, to which any gov­ern­ment body may con­tribute, is com­piled by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and main­tained by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.113 Only gov­ern­ment agen­cies and ISPs have access to the list.114

The country’s increas­ing­ly repres­sive laws; fre­quent block­ing of web resources; expand­ing def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes “extrem­ism”; and pros­e­cu­tions against jour­nal­ists, civ­il soci­ety activists, oppo­si­tion fig­ures, cul­tur­al work­ers, and ordi­nary inter­net users have togeth­er con­tributed to sig­nif­i­cant online self-cen­sor­ship.

Since the 2020 protests, the esca­la­tion in gov­ern­ment repres­sion, includ­ing unprece­dent­ed crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion and phys­i­cal vio­lence (see C3 and C7), has height­ened self-cen­sor­ship among edi­tors, reporters, and web­site own­ers. Any media orga­ni­za­tion oper­at­ing in Belarus must either prac­tice self-cen­sor­ship or expect to be shut­tered.115 The last major inde­pen­dent out­let still func­tion­ing inside the coun­try, Onliner.by, has adopt­ed a “com­mon sense” approach and reduced its news and polit­i­cal cov­er­age.116 Belaru­sian media pro­fes­sion­als who refuse to self-cen­sor either have left the coun­try or are in prison.

Self-cen­sor­ship extends beyond jour­nal­ism. Attempt­ing to “pre­serve and sur­vive,” inde­pen­dent cul­tur­al work­ers “com­bine self-cen­sor­ship and anonymi­ty inside the coun­try with trans­fer­ring prod­ucts of Belaru­sian cul­ture abroad,” accord­ing to a March 2023 report from PEN Belarus.117

In a Feb­ru­ary 2023, a UN report found that “sys­temic human rights vio­la­tions and impuni­ty for those crimes have engulfed Belarus in a cli­mate of arbi­trari­ness and fear.”118 The atmos­phere of fear has led to few­er Belaru­sians seek­ing out inde­pen­dent media—in oth­er words, the pub­lic is self-cen­sor­ing its con­sump­tion.119 In August 2022, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial claimed that, after 372 inter­net resources had been rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als,” 500,000 peo­ple had unsub­scribed from “destruc­tive” Telegram chan­nels.120 Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media, even those not yet labelled “extrem­ist,” are find­ing it hard­er to car­ry out inter­views with experts and cit­i­zens due to grow­ing self-cen­sor­ship.121

The government’s prac­tice of pub­lic sham­ing via videos of forced con­fes­sions of arrest­ed individuals—including jour­nal­ists, media work­ers, and inter­net users who had post­ed com­ments crit­i­cal of the government—is a pow­er­ful dri­ver of self-cen­sor­ship. After being record­ed, the videos are dis­sem­i­nat­ed on state media and social media plat­forms (see C7). The num­ber of such forced con­fes­sions has increased since the inva­sion of Ukraine.122 In March 2022, state-run media broad­cast 38 con­fes­sion­al videos in one day alone, all from rail­road employ­ees who had con­fessed to sub­scrib­ing to a banned Telegram chan­nel.123

Some jour­nal­ists who remain in Belarus have opt­ed to stop report­ing due to the dan­ger­ous envi­ron­ment. For exam­ple, free­lancer Lar­isa Shchyrako­va, who had been fined more than 40 times her work with­out accred­i­ta­tion for the Poland-based Bel­sat, ceased prac­tic­ing jour­nal­ism in Feb­ru­ary 2022 because of the increased risks.124 Despite this pub­licly announced deci­sion, she was arrest­ed in Decem­ber 2022 on undis­closed charges.125 Even jour­nal­ists work­ing out­side of Belarus may cen­sor them­selves out of fear of being abduct­ed and returned to Belarus by force.126 Jour­nal­ists in exile may also engage in self-cen­sor­ship to pro­tect their col­leagues or fam­i­ly mem­bers in Belarus.127

From Sep­tem­ber 2020 to the end of May 2023, at least 470 NGOs chose to liq­ui­date their orga­ni­za­tions and dis­con­tin­ue their online presence—a form of pre­ven­ta­tive self-censorship—mainly due to pres­sure from the author­i­ties and the country’s hos­tile legal and polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment.128

Chal­lenged by a polar­ized soci­ety, inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions, and the con­se­quences of sup­port­ing the full-scale Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, the Lukashen­ka regime has tight­ened its con­trol over the country’s infor­ma­tion land­scape. Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment and state media boost­ed their use of pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion to counter and dis­cred­it domes­tic and for­eign crit­ics.129 A 2023 report by Media IQ stat­ed that con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries had shift­ed from a “tool” of gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da to the “basis of the world con­struct­ed by the state media.”130 The author­i­ties have also expand­ed an “infor­ma­tion war” designed to back the Kremlin’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

Belaru­sian state pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion con­tin­ue to pro­mote claims of a for­eign-backed “col­or rev­o­lu­tion” around the 2020 elec­tion. It also demo­nizes the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion and crit­i­cal voic­es oper­at­ing out­side of Belarus, includ­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets and jour­nal­ists,131 by labelling them extrem­ists or ter­ror­ists.132 The cam­paign against alleged exter­nal ene­mies became harsh­er after the Feb­ru­ary 2022 Ukraine inva­sion.

Pri­or to the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, there were notable dif­fer­ences in focus between Belaru­sian and Russ­ian state pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion, espe­cial­ly dur­ing peri­ods when Lukashen­ka sought clos­er ties with the Unit­ed States and Euro­pean Union. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing Russia’s polit­i­cal, media, and secu­ri­ty sup­port to Lukashen­ka to counter the 2020–21 protests, and the Kremlin’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, these dif­fer­ences have large­ly been erased. Since 2022, Belaru­sian “state media have effec­tive­ly aban­doned a nation­al infor­ma­tion pol­i­cy, rebroad­cast­ing Russ­ian nar­ra­tives on many issues,” accord­ing to Media IQ.133 Belaru­sian state media are also increas­ing­ly par­rot­ing Russia’s “tra­di­tion­al val­ues” and anti-LGBT nar­ra­tives,134 and empha­siz­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tives meant to stress Belarus-Rus­sia uni­ty and inte­gra­tion.135

Belaru­sian state out­lets not only echo Russia’s denial of war crimes but also con­tribute to the Kremlin’s dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns about them. For exam­ple, state out­lets shared Lukashenka’s claims that the Bucha mas­sacre was staged by the British, and Belaru­sians pro­pa­gan­dists blamed Russ­ian war crimes on the Ukraini­ans them­selves.136 A “spe­cial troll fac­to­ry” over­seen by the Belaru­sian Spe­cial Oper­a­tion Forces is report­ed­ly work­ing to rein­force the offi­cial Krem­lin nar­ra­tive, accord­ing to a March 2022 RFE/RL report.137

The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also echoes the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrain­ian nar­ra­tives; state media declares that Ukraini­ans are “nation­al­ists,” “fas­cists,” “Nazis,” “Rus­so­pho­bic,” and are fight­ing a civ­il war rather than an ille­gal Russ­ian inva­sion. State out­lets per­son­al­ly attack Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky as “evil,” “a drug addict,” and “a clown.” Ukraine is por­trayed as a “pup­pet of the West” and an aggres­sor against Belarus.138

Belaru­sian state media has also devot­ed resources to pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion tar­get­ing the country’s west­ern and north­ern neigh­bors. State out­lets reg­u­lar­ly denounce the alleged revan­chist plans of Poland and the Baltic states, which are, like Ukraine, also “Rus­so­pho­bic,” “Nazis” and “pup­pets” of the Unit­ed States, Euro­pean Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion (NATO).139 Anoth­er pre­vail­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion nar­ra­tive is that inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions hurt the Unit­ed States and EU more than they do Belarus.140

Mean­while, actors affil­i­at­ed with Rus­sia have increased their own dis­sem­i­na­tion of Krem­lin-spon­sored dis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da inside Belarus. Sev­er­al Russ­ian media out­lets, web­sites, and social media groups pro­mote the ide­ol­o­gy of the “Russ­ian World,” which denies the exis­tence of Belaru­sian his­to­ry and cul­ture. They also pro­mote oth­er vit­ri­olic cam­paigns in the coun­try. One seeks to dis­cred­it the Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion, espe­cial­ly those who came to the fore around the 2020 elec­tion, by por­tray­ing oppo­si­tion leader Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya and her allies as pup­pets con­trolled by the West.141

Krem­lin-run and ‑linked media out­lets, social net­works, mes­sen­ger chan­nels, influ­encers, and gov­ern­ment-orga­nized non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions (GON­GOs) are wide­ly active inside Belarus.142 The num­ber and activ­i­ties of Russ­ian-backed news and infor­ma­tion web­sites in the coun­try have increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years, includ­ing at the region­al lev­el.143 While the sites’ audi­ences are not always large, their con­tent is ampli­fied via social net­works and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions.

Belaru­sian state media’s echo­ing of Russ­ian nar­ra­tives is hav­ing an impact on the domes­tic front.144 As pro­gov­ern­ment media seek to tie the 2020 protests with the 2022 war, and claim that the West’s alleged med­dling in Belarus was a pre­cur­sor to it start­ing a war in Ukraine,145 pub­lic sur­veys indi­cate that among ordi­nary Belaru­sians sym­pa­thy for Ukraine has decreased and sup­port for Russia’s aggres­sion has risen.146 Sur­veys also indi­cate that sup­port for Rus­si­a’s actions cor­re­lates with con­sump­tion of infor­ma­tion from Belaru­sian and Russ­ian state media.147

In March 2023, the state press agency BelTA announced that it will inten­si­fy coop­er­a­tion with China’s state news agency Xin­hua, with a focus on the inter­net and social media, as well as best prac­tices and skills train­ing for jour­nal­ists and edi­tors.148

Inter­nal and exter­nal crises have led to the col­lapse of the busi­ness mod­el that pre­vi­ous­ly sus­tained inde­pen­dent media in Belarus. In addi­tion to sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion has forced almost all online out­lets crit­i­cal of the regime to close or leave the coun­try.

Apo­lit­i­cal inde­pen­dent out­lets remain­ing in Belarus face a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic envi­ron­ment. The pan­dem­ic, the 2020–21 polit­i­cal cri­sis, and inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions have all harmed Belarus’s already-strug­gling econ­o­my, which has not grown in absolute terms since 2013. Fur­ther sanc­tions in response to Lukashenka’s facil­i­ta­tion of Moscow’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in 2022 caused the econ­o­my to decline sharply,149 pos­ing fur­ther chal­lenged to the eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial media in the coun­try. At the same time, the gov­ern­ment is pri­or­i­tiz­ing the expan­sion of its polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic con­trol at the expense of eco­nom­ic growth.150

The eco­nom­ic down­turn led to a 25 per­cent decline in total adver­tis­ing in 2022. Online adver­tis­ing declined less—only 10 per­cent. Most of this rev­enue went to large glob­al or Russ­ian plat­forms, rather than Belaru­sian firms.151 In May 2022, a gov­ern­ment decree intro­duced a 10-to-20 per­cent tax on adver­tis­ing with the goal of help­ing state and oth­er “patri­ot­ic” media sur­vive eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.152 Adver­tis­ers on state web­sites and media are not required to pay the tax. An April 2023 decree fur­ther refined the law and list­ed some of the recip­i­ents.153 The tax was met with uncer­tain­ty and some neg­a­tive reac­tions from busi­ness­es, con­tribut­ing to the decline in dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing.154

The media mar­ket remains dis­tort­ed by oth­er gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for state-owned media, and most state out­lets would not sur­vive with­out this assis­tance.155 In 2022, the gov­ern­ment planned to spend 151 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles ($59 mil­lion) on state media,156 though this fig­ure was slight­ly increased dur­ing the year. The author­i­ties allo­cat­ed slight­ly more fund­ing in 2023—162 mil­lion rubles (almost $60 mil­lion). Of the total planned, almost 20 mil­lion rubles (almost $8 mil­lion) will be for state online media, includ­ing pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram and YouTube chan­nels.157

In July 2023, after this report’s cov­er­age peri­od, Lukashen­ka signed new amend­ments to the country’s Media Law. The leg­is­la­tion expand­ed the cri­te­ria that state can use to restrict access to online pub­li­ca­tions, news aggre­ga­tors, and oth­er inter­net resources under the guise of pro­tect­ing “state and pub­lic inter­ests” and “nation­al secu­ri­ty.”158 In addi­tion, the law pro­hibits the pub­lish­ing of the results of pub­lic opin­ion polls that relate to the country’s sociopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, as well as those relat­ing to elec­tions and ref­er­en­dums, if they were con­duct­ed with­out offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion.159 Final­ly, the amend­ments make it pos­si­ble to ban the work of for­eign out­lets in the coun­try due to the “anti-Belaru­sian” attacks of “for­eign mass media, inter­net resources and jour­nal­ists,” as defined by the gov­ern­ment.160 Banned out­lets will be deprived of accred­i­ta­tion, see their bureaus closed, and have their con­tent pro­hib­it­ed across Belarus.161

Pro­vi­sions of the Media Law enact­ed in 2021 lim­it the abil­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als or legal enti­ties to start and oper­ate media out­lets; cre­ate expan­sive grounds on which the state can refuse to reg­is­ter out­lets, or revoke jour­nal­ist accred­i­ta­tion; and allow an outlet’s sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing two writ­ten warn­ings in 12 months, or imme­di­ate­ly if it is deemed a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat.153 The gov­ern­ment has a long record of using arbi­trary laws and reg­u­la­tions regard­ing the accred­i­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists to sti­fle media free­dom, which it con­tin­ued to do dur­ing the cov­er­age period.154 In 2020, the gov­ern­ment can­celled the accred­i­ta­tions of all for­eign jour­nal­ists work­ing in Belarus, and adopt­ed rules that forced them to reap­ply under a new, more com­pli­cat­ed process.162 Those who have since been accred­it­ed are from “friend­ly coun­tries” and tend to fol­low the government’s line.

The extrem­ism law (see B2 and B3) also places reg­u­la­to­ry restric­tions on the media. In 2021, the author­i­ties began clas­si­fy­ing entire media out­lets as “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions” and “extrem­ist for­ma­tions.”163 The list of orga­ni­za­tions and for­ma­tions deemed to be “extrem­ist” num­bered 122 by the end of April 2023,164 and as of mid-April, includ­ed 16 inde­pen­dent media out­lets.165 The vast major­i­ty of the orga­ni­za­tions and cit­i­zen groups on the list are linked to banned web­sites, online infor­ma­tion sources, and Telegram chats and chan­nels.

The gov­ern­ment also main­tains a watch list of alleged­ly extrem­ist indi­vid­u­als,166 includ­ing jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es, and bans them from pub­lish­ing.167 By the end of May 2023, it totaled 2,868 indi­vid­u­als.168 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment also began label­ing the per­son­al social media accounts of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists as “extrem­ist.” The goal is to dis­cred­it both the out­let and its jour­nal­ists, there­by reduc­ing their reach and influ­ence.169

The gov­ern­ment main­tains a sep­a­rate list of indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions alleged­ly involved in “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.” By the end of May 2023, the list of indi­vid­u­als num­bered more than 1,050 names, includ­ing 308 Belaru­sians.170 More than 100 media out­lets, online sources of infor­ma­tion, and NGOs—including NEXTA, the country’s most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel, and the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Journalists—are on the list,171 as are at least a dozen jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and oth­er media work­ers. The government’s deci­sions regard­ing the dif­fer­ent “extrem­ism lists” are made behind closed doors and can­not be appealed.172

Exiled media out­lets face dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic con­straints. Pub­lish­ing costs have typ­i­cal­ly dou­bled or tripled due to the high­er salaries, tax­es, and oth­er costs in neigh­bor­ing EU coun­tries, but com­mer­cial rev­enues have col­lapsed. Adver­tis­ing rev­enue is scant: Cen­tral Euro­pean adver­tis­ers are not inter­est­ed in work­ing with media that tar­get com­par­a­tive­ly small audi­ences of Belaru­sians abroad or in Belarus. While some media out­lets receive dona­tions, they are not enough to cov­er even basic oper­at­ing costs. It has become more dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous for Belaru­sians in the coun­try to donate to “extrem­ist” media abroad, while Belaru­sian exiles are gen­er­al­ly too poor to donate exten­sive­ly. Out­lets now work­ing out­side the coun­try have gone from being par­tial­ly- or self-sus­tain­ing busi­ness­es to exile orga­ni­za­tions depen­dent on for­eign gov­ern­ment or pri­vate donors.

Favor­able con­nec­tions to the gov­ern­ment are nec­es­sary for non­state online media out­lets to suc­ceed polit­i­cal­ly and finan­cial­ly. Restric­tive amend­ments to the Law on Pub­lic Asso­ci­a­tions and the crim­i­nal code that were passed secret­ly in 2011 bar organizations—including online media outlets—from receiv­ing for­eign fund­ing with­out state approval.

The government’s con­tin­ued crack­down after the events of 2020 has rad­i­cal­ly restrict­ed Belarus’s infor­ma­tion land­scape. Few­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and ana­lysts are pub­lish­ing, and, since Russia’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine, the media space has been flood­ed with pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion (see B5). Restric­tions on con­tent from inde­pen­dent media in Ukraine, Europe, and else­where have also reduced diver­si­ty. How­ev­er, inde­pen­dent Belaru­sians out­lets and think tanks con­tin­ue to work from exile and some inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists still oper­ate anony­mous­ly in the coun­try, though they face the risk of arrest and harsh per­se­cu­tion (see C3 and C7). These jour­nal­ists and think tanks oper­ate large­ly through social media and mes­sag­ing plat­forms. Despite the degra­da­tion of the online infor­ma­tion land­scape, there is evi­dence that many Belaru­sians con­tin­ue to active­ly seek out inde­pen­dent news on plat­forms where it is still avail­able.

The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has not only moved to dis­cred­it and mar­gin­al­ize inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion but also to intim­i­date con­sumers of this infor­ma­tion (see B5).173 Few­er Belaru­sians are search­ing out news from inde­pen­dent sources and more are rely­ing on state media.174 Trust in state media increased from August 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 2023,175 accord­ing to polls, while Belaru­sians read and trust­ed inde­pen­dent media less between 2022 and 2023.176

The gov­ern­ment crack­down has forced the vast major­i­ty of inde­pen­dent news out­lets, think tanks, and NGOs rep­re­sent­ing diverse inter­ests and com­mu­ni­ties to leave the BYnet, regroup in exile, and pub­lish online from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. The author­i­ties have blocked vir­tu­al­ly all of these for­eign-based Belaru­sian web­sites (see B1) and crim­i­nal­ized their social media chan­nels (see B2 and B6). The last large inde­pen­dent media out­let in the coun­try, Onliner.by, reduced its focus on news in gen­er­al and on pol­i­tics in par­tic­u­lar in order to sur­vive (see B4). The government’s block­ing of news sites from the EU, Ukraine, and Rus­sia has also adverse­ly impact­ed online diver­si­ty (see B1).

Pri­or to 2021, the rank­ings of pop­u­lar media and news web­sites in Belarus were dom­i­nat­ed by inde­pen­dent out­lets. This envi­ron­ment has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the clam­p­down. Many out­lets have been banned, and only about half of the 1,300 mem­bers of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) remained in Belarus by June 2022.177 Many have ceased prac­tic­ing their pro­fes­sion due to safe­ty con­cerns,178 though oth­ers con­tin­ue to work for their pre­vi­ous out­lets that have reestab­lished them­selves out­side of the coun­try, or have launched new projects.179 The few still oper­at­ing in the coun­try work anony­mous­ly in a heav­i­ly restrict­ed envi­ron­ment. At the same time, the crack­down has encour­aged the devel­op­ment of cit­i­zen and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry jour­nal­ism.180

New and osten­si­bly pri­vate media out­lets indi­rect­ly linked to the state have also dam­aged the diver­si­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of online con­tent. These out­lets offer a mix of enter­tain­ment items and news that both favors the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment and the Kremlin’s line on the Ukraine inva­sion. The Smartpress.by por­tal, which gen­er­ates 3.7 mil­lion vis­its a month, pio­neered this strat­e­gy. Anoth­er such por­tal, Tochka.by was launched in 2022; it gen­er­at­ed 2.4 mil­lion vis­its in Feb­ru­ary 2023. Its edi­tor is the for­mer press sec­re­tary of the Russ­ian-owned out­let Sput­nik Belarus.

Belaru­sians’ use of vir­tu­al pri­vate net­works (VPNs) and the government’s efforts to arti­fi­cial­ly inflate fol­low­ers and views181 com­pli­cate efforts to deter­mine the real pop­u­lar­i­ty of state-run or inde­pen­dent chan­nels. How­ev­er, there is evi­dence that inde­pen­dent news and infor­ma­tion out­lets by many mea­sures remain more pop­u­lar than their state-con­trolled coun­ter­parts.

For exam­ple, fol­low­ing the government’s block­ing of almost all inde­pen­dent news and ana­lyt­i­cal web­sites, users migrat­ed to the social media and mes­sag­ing app chan­nels of these orga­ni­za­tions. Use of such plat­forms is wide­spread: the inde­pen­dent inter­net mea­sure­ment source Datare­por­tal iden­ti­fied 4.27 mil­lion social media users in Belarus in Jan­u­ary 2023, rep­re­sent­ing almost 45 per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion.182 The most pop­u­lar social net­works in Belarus for con­sum­ing news and infor­ma­tion are YouTube, Insta­gram, Tik­Tok, Face­book, and VK. Telegram is the most pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing app for news and pol­i­tics. Inde­pen­dent out­lets and crit­i­cal blog­gers dom­i­nate the rank­ings of the top Telegram183 and Insta­gram184 chan­nels, though on Tik­Tok, the dif­fer­ence in the num­ber of users from the prodemoc­ra­cy and pro­gov­ern­ment camps is notice­ably small­er.185 On Face­book, state-run media have a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of sub­scribers but low read­er engage­ment.

Dur­ing the report­ing peri­od, many of the most pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nels in Belarus were linked to inde­pen­dent news out­lets and oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal sites. In Decem­ber 2022, for exam­ple, the top 20 most pop­u­lar YouTube sites in Belarus by views includ­ed those of sev­en state-run media, five inde­pen­dent media out­lets, four inde­pen­dent blog­gers, and one oppo­si­tion politi­cian.186 How­ev­er, since the gov­ern­ment has declared many inde­pen­dent YouTube chan­nels “extrem­ist,” the chan­nels of state-run sites have seem­ing­ly made some inroads. Experts also sug­gest, though, that some of the appar­ent suc­cess of state-run YouTube chan­nels is due to manip­u­la­tion of algo­rithms and pur­chased views.187

A com­par­i­son of the lead­ing inde­pen­dent media pub­li­ca­tion and the government’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion also illus­trates the dom­i­nance of inde­pen­dent media when con­sid­er­ing all online plat­forms. Zerka­lo, the exile suc­ces­sor to TUT.by, Belarus’s most pop­u­lar inde­pen­dent media out­let before it was blocked and closed down (see B1), aver­ages more than 5 mil­lion web­site views per month, despite being blocked in Belarus. The outlet’s Telegram chan­nel num­bers 273,000 sub­scribers, its Insta­gram chan­nel 643,000 fol­low­ers, its Face­book page 253,000 fol­low­ers, and its YouTube chan­nel 203,000 sub­scribers and over 265 mil­lion views, despite it being labelled a “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion.”188 In con­trast, the state’s flag­ship pub­li­ca­tion Belarus Today, with all of its advan­tages, has a web­site that aver­ages more than 5 mil­lion views per month, but counts only 6,100 sub­scribers on Telegram, 4,400 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram, and 34,000 fol­low­ers on Face­book. It has 430,000 sub­scribers but only 283,000 views on YouTube.189

While Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media are post­ing strong num­bers on social media and mes­sag­ing apps, the nature of these plat­forms adverse­ly impacts the qual­i­ty of their report­ing and reduces diver­si­ty: the con­tent tends to short­er, less detailed, and more repet­i­tive due to the report­ing for­mats. The country’s repres­sive envi­ron­ment also sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects cov­er­age.190

Russ­ian news and infor­ma­tion out­lets remain influ­en­tial in Belarus. Four of the most pop­u­lar web­sites in Belarus—Yandex.ru, VK.com, OK.ru and Mail.ru—are Russ­ian-owned.191 The online broad­casts of Russ­ian tele­vi­sion chan­nels are pop­u­lar among Belaru­sian users.192 With its 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine, the Krem­lin has lim­it­ed the diver­si­ty of news and infor­ma­tion offered by Russ­ian sources by impos­ing a tight­ly-con­trolled, sin­gle nar­ra­tive regard­ing any war-relat­ed top­ic.

The two most pop­u­lar search engines and a state-linked con­tent aggre­ga­tor also lim­it diver­si­ty in the Belaru­sian online infor­ma­tion land­scape. Both Google and Yan­dex heav­i­ly pro­mote the con­tent of Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ment web­sites,193 accord­ing to Media IQ, as does the pop­u­lar state-linked Bel­novosti aggre­ga­tor, which pos­es as an inde­pen­dent news por­tal.194

Belaru­sians uti­lize proxy servers and oth­er meth­ods to cir­cum­vent state cen­sor­ship and sur­veil­lance.195 With the onset of the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the use of Tor and Psiphon surged, and as of ear­ly June 2023 remained among the top 21 com­mu­ni­ca­tions apps in Belarus.196

After the 2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis, the Belaru­sian nation­al domain zones stopped grow­ing for the first time. The num­ber of active sites fell in 2021; at the same time, Belaru­sians reg­is­tered 13 per­cent more names in inter­na­tion­al domain zones.197 This trend con­tin­ued in 2022, when the num­ber of domains in the .BY and .БЕЛ domains fell by 6,000 and the num­ber of reg­is­tra­tions in inter­na­tion­al zones grew by 25 per­cent.198

Pri­or to the events of 2020, inter­net-based platforms—especially social net­works, mes­sag­ing apps, crowd­fund­ing ser­vices, and online petitions—had been the main tools for advanc­ing civic and polit­i­cal activism in author­i­tar­i­an Belarus. Cit­i­zens had access to and active­ly used a wide range of dig­i­tal resources to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties and orga­nize issue-based cam­paigns. How­ev­er, post-2020 gov­ern­ment block­ing, legal restric­tions, and repres­sion have sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed Belaru­sians’ abil­i­ty to orga­nize polit­i­cal, civic, and cul­tur­al online cam­paigns inside the coun­try. For exam­ple, a 2022 law now requires all online peti­tions to the gov­ern­ment to be sub­mit­ted via a state por­tal that can gath­er and track the peti­tion­ers, sig­na­to­ries and issues.199 Vir­tu­al­ly all inde­pen­dent civ­il soci­ety ini­tia­tives, includ­ing more than 1,300 NGOs, have been closed down (see B6 and B7). Most online activism now takes place out­side of Belarus or involves groups in exile work­ing under the radar with cit­i­zens still in the coun­try.

Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, Belaru­sian activists and civ­il soci­ety groups con­tin­ued to use the inter­net from abroad to self-orga­nize, car­ry out sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns, mon­i­tor and report on human rights vio­la­tions, fundraise for and pro­vide sup­port to polit­i­cal refugees and pris­on­ers, and mobi­lize com­mu­ni­ties for polit­i­cal change. How­ev­er, they oper­at­ed on a small­er scale than in the pre­vi­ous cov­er­age peri­od due to fear and repres­sion. Many of the groups and indi­vid­u­als car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal, civic, or cul­tur­al work online from abroad have been labelled as “extrem­ist” and their work crim­i­nal­ized (see B4 and B6).

The group of ICT pro­fes­sion­als who devel­oped the crowd­sourced elec­tion-mon­i­tor­ing plat­form Golos (Voice) that had exposed large-scale fraud dur­ing the 2020 elec­tion launched sev­er­al impor­tant online prod­ucts for demo­c­ra­t­ic activists in 2021. These includ­ed the Dig­i­tal Sol­i­dar­i­ty app, which iden­ti­fies peo­ple in need of help, and BY_MAPKA, an inter­ac­tive map that helps peo­ple to locate and pro­mote busi­ness­es run by Belaru­sians abroad.200 In Decem­ber 2022, the group launched a beta ver­sion of a new app, New Belarus,201 that aims to help exiles to remain in con­tact with peo­ple in Belarus, build com­mu­ni­ties in their cur­rent coun­tries of res­i­dence, and bol­ster the demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment.202 By ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2023, the app had been down­loaded over 20,000 times.203

The Kremlin’s 2022 inva­sion pre­cip­i­tat­ed sev­er­al online civic ini­tia­tives focused on the war. The most pop­u­lar and pub­li­cized is Belaru­sian Hajun (Spir­it), which uses open-source mate­ri­als to track and report on Russ­ian and Belaru­sian mil­i­tary move­ments and relat­ed issues in Belarus. Found­ed by a pop­u­lar polit­i­cal blog­ger, the “Belaru­sian Belling­cat” has col­lect­ed, fact-checked, and pub­lished over 3,400 pic­tures and 800 videos relat­ed to the war.204 More than 30,000 peo­ple have pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to the ini­tia­tive; at least six Belaru­sians have been arrest­ed and con­vict­ed for doing so (see C3).205 With more than 525,000 sub­scribers (despite the gov­ern­ment labelling it “extrem­ist”), Hajun over­sees the sec­ond-most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel in Belarus.206

The BYSOL Foun­da­tion is a crowd­fund­ing plat­form that was cre­at­ed in 2020 to assist indi­vid­u­als who had lost their jobs for polit­i­cal rea­sons and those who had been forced to leave the coun­try. Today the Foun­da­tion sup­ports ini­tia­tives that help repressed and vic­tim­ized Belaru­sians both inside and out­side Belarus.207 In 2022, BYSOL raised over €1.1 mil­lion to assist polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and their fam­i­lies, facil­i­tate emer­gency relo­ca­tions from the coun­try, and con­duct oth­er civic ini­tia­tives.208 Over three years, the foun­da­tion has assist­ed thou­sands of Belaru­sians209 and more than 90,000 peo­ple have donat­ed to it.210 Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, BYSOL has also been also assist­ing Ukraini­ans in need.

C Violations of User Rights

While the rights to free­dom of expres­sion, access to infor­ma­tion, and press free­dom are nom­i­nal­ly guar­an­teed by the Belaru­sian con­sti­tu­tion, the gov­ern­ment does not respect them in prac­tice. The coun­try has no inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry to defend these free­doms. To the con­trary, the judi­cial branch plays a key role in the government’s strat­e­gy for restrict­ing inde­pen­dent media and crit­i­cal voic­es in Belarus.211 The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was closed down by the Min­istry of Jus­tice and the Supreme Court in 2021, for exam­ple.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, under heav­i­ly repres­sive con­di­tions, the gov­ern­ment held a con­sti­tu­tion­al ref­er­en­dum that fur­ther con­sol­i­dat­ed Lukashenka’s auto­crat­ic pow­er.212

In Octo­ber 2022, Lukashen­ka signed into law Belarus’s denun­ci­a­tion of the First Option­al Pro­to­col to the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights, block­ing the UN Human Rights Committee’s man­date to receive and review human rights com­plaints from indi­vid­u­als in Belarus. The man­date rep­re­sent­ed one of the last remain­ing inter­na­tion­al mech­a­nisms by which indi­vid­u­als could chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment. The order came into effect in Feb­ru­ary 2023.213

Online jour­nal­ists are not pro­tect­ed by Belaru­sian law (see C2 and B6). A report by the UN Human Rights Coun­cil found that the gov­ern­ment employed unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of force; tor­ture and oth­er cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment or pun­ish­ment; arbi­trary arrest and deten­tion; vio­la­tions of due process and a fair tri­al; and infringe­ments of the free­doms of expres­sion, peace­ful assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion against crit­i­cal voic­es in Belarus in 2020–2022 (see C3 and C7). These vio­la­tions were of a “wide­spread and sys­tem­at­ic nature.”214

Since the prodemoc­ra­cy protests and gov­ern­ment crack­down that began in August 2020, the author­i­ties have made no attempt to inves­ti­gate the arbi­trary deten­tion of reporters or ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal cas­es in response to jour­nal­ists’ com­plaints about police vio­lence. Impuni­ty for crimes against crit­i­cal online voic­es has become the norm in post-2020 Belarus.215 The UN spe­cial rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus found that sys­temic impuni­ty and lack of account­abil­i­ty for tor­ture and ill-treat­ment are part of a “delib­er­ate gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of deter­ring or silenc­ing dis­sent.”216

A flur­ry of new laws intro­duced in the wake of the post-2020 polit­i­cal cri­sis crim­i­nal­izes legit­i­mate forms of free expres­sion, includ­ing online, and have been invoked fre­quent­ly. Recent laws also allow death sen­tences for indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism and trea­son. While no such penal­ty has yet been imposed, author­i­ties have pre­vi­ous­ly applied broad def­i­n­i­tions for such crimes, and the intro­duc­tion of such harsh sen­tences appears designed to intim­i­date dis­si­dents and poten­tial crit­ics.

At the start of 2021, Lukashen­ka declared that the author­i­tar­i­an country’s laws were too “lib­er­al” and that they had facil­i­tat­ed the 2020 protests.217 The gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly approved more than a dozen new laws, amend­ments, decrees, and res­o­lu­tions218 that it uses to restrict crit­i­cal online voic­es and crim­i­nal­ize free­dom of expres­sion. Sev­er­al new amend­ments or revised amend­ments were passed or came into force dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. Of note are a rash of pro­vi­sions designed to counter what the gov­ern­ment defines broad­ly as “extrem­ism.”219 In May 2023, the rap­por­teur of the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe (OSCE) fact-find­ing mis­sion on Belarus con­duct­ed via the Moscow Mech­a­nism found that “the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment now has a full arse­nal of leg­is­la­tion designed to hin­der any form of oppo­si­tion.”220 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the author­i­ties applied laws against alleged extrem­ism, ter­ror­ism, and trea­son, often retroac­tive­ly, to the activ­i­ties of online media out­lets, jour­nal­ists, human rights and oth­er NGOs, and inter­net users.

In May 2023, the gov­ern­ment banned cit­i­zens fac­ing “polit­i­cal charges,” lead­ing offi­cials, and law enforce­ment offi­cers from trav­el­ing abroad. The part of the law ban­ning cit­i­zens’ trav­el will come into effect in Decem­ber. The law also bans per­sons whose trav­el abroad “con­tra­dicts the coun­try’s nation­al secu­ri­ty” from leav­ing Belarus.221

In Jan­u­ary 2023, the gov­ern­ment adopt­ed new amend­ments to the Law on Cit­i­zen­ship that came into force in July 2023. The amend­ed law allows the gov­ern­ment to strip Belaru­sians of their cit­i­zen­ship fol­low­ing a court ver­dict con­firm­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in “extrem­ist activ­i­ties” or caus­ing “grave harm to the inter­ests of Belarus,” even while resid­ing abroad.222 The new law threat­ens thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing jour­nal­ists and activists, who have already been labelled as “extrem­ists” or con­vict­ed for “extrem­ism” since August 2020. The leg­is­la­tion also oblig­es cit­i­zens to noti­fy the author­i­ties about their for­eign cit­i­zen­ship, res­i­dence per­mit, or oth­er doc­u­ments giv­ing them the right to receive ben­e­fits and advan­tages in a for­eign state.

In July 2022, Belaru­sian author­i­ties amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to allow “spe­cial pro­ce­dures,” amount­ing to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and tri­als held with­out the defen­dant present. The code allows for tri­als in absen­tia for those charged with one or more offense under 43 arti­cles of the crim­i­nal code, includ­ing “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus, “high trea­son,” and acts of terrorism—all arti­cles under which online jour­nal­ists and social media and inter­net users have already been charged. As of the end of the cov­er­age peri­od, “spe­cial pro­ce­dures” had already been launched against at least five online jour­nal­ists and Telegram admin­is­tra­tors (see C3).223

The author­i­ties began bring­ing ter­ror­ism charges against oppo­si­tion fig­ures after the events of 2020, and in May 2022, amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to include the death penal­ty among the pun­ish­ments pre­scribed for attempt­ed ter­ror­ism con­vic­tions.224 As of May 2023, the Belaru­sian KGB’s offi­cial list of those charged for involve­ment “in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties” num­bered more than 1,051 Belaru­sian and for­eign indi­vid­u­als,225 includ­ing at least 10 media work­ers and activists who were jailed for alleged inter­net-relat­ed crimes.226 Pos­si­ble “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty” is also used as a pre­text to raid media out­lets.227 The gov­ern­ment has labeled a num­ber of crit­i­cal Telegram chan­nels as “ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions” (see B6).228

In April 2022, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the crim­i­nal code to pro­vide for the death penal­ty or life impris­on­ment for cas­es of trea­son against the state com­mit­ted by a gov­ern­ment offi­cial or mil­i­tary offi­cer. Lukashen­ka signed the leg­is­la­tion in March 2023. Experts believe the amend­ments are designed to deter the dox­ing of offi­cials and leak­ing of infor­ma­tion.229 The amend­ments also cre­at­ed new offens­es includ­ing “prop­a­gat­ing ter­ror­ism” and “dis­cred­it­ing the armed forces.“230 Since 2021, the gov­ern­ment has applied Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code, which con­cerns trea­son, to jour­nal­ists and inter­net-relat­ed activ­i­ties. Three jour­nal­ists have been con­vict­ed of trea­son.231

An amend­ment to the crim­i­nal code that came into effect in Jan­u­ary 2022 recrim­i­nal­ized indi­vid­ual activ­i­ties in unreg­is­tered NGOs under Arti­cle 193–1. The amend­ment pro­vides that par­tic­i­pa­tion in unreg­is­tered or liq­ui­dat­ed NGOs—including those whose work relates to media or online activities—can be pun­ished with up to two years in prison.232

In 2021, Lukashen­ka signed into law a pack­age of “amend­ments to laws on the pro­tec­tion of sov­er­eign­ty and the con­sti­tu­tion­al order,” which includ­ed revi­sions to the law on states of emer­gency. They added new restric­tions on free­dom of expres­sion and infor­ma­tion by allow­ing the sus­pen­sion of pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts (includ­ing for­eign media), estab­lish­ing tougher pro­ce­dures for accred­it­ing jour­nal­ists, and restrict­ing access to inter­net resources and online pub­li­ca­tions.233 Experts not­ed that the amend­ments effec­tive­ly legal­ized mea­sures that the gov­ern­ment had already been wide­ly prac­tic­ing since 2020.234

In 2021, revi­sions to the 2007 Law on Coun­ter­ing Extrem­ism came into force.235 These broad­ened the government’s author­i­ty to per­se­cute those express­ing dis­sent­ing views by expand­ing the list of “extrem­ist activ­i­ties and mate­ri­als” and intro­duc­ing crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for relat­ed offens­es. The updat­ed leg­is­la­tion tar­gets indi­vid­u­als, polit­i­cal par­ties, or domes­tic or inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing media groups, that “plan, orga­nize, pre­pare, and com­mit encroach­ments on the inde­pen­dence, ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, the foun­da­tions of con­sti­tu­tion­al order, and pub­lic secu­ri­ty” of Belarus.236 The amend­ments pun­ish the dis­sem­i­na­tion “of know­ing­ly false infor­ma­tion about the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, mil­i­tary, or inter­na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus;” the insult of “a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the author­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the per­for­mance of offi­cial duties”; and the incite­ment of “var­i­ous types of hatred” with up to six years in prison.237 Since the 2020 protests, the author­i­ties have used antiex­trem­ist leg­is­la­tion to remove online con­tent, per­se­cute jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and ordi­nary users, and close media out­lets (see B2 and C3).

Crim­i­nal code amend­ments that came into force in 2021 increased penal­ties for the “dis­tri­b­u­tion of false infor­ma­tion” which dis­cred­its the state on the inter­net and for par­tic­i­pa­tion in and col­lab­o­ra­tion with “extrem­ist” groups.238 The leg­is­la­tion also increased pun­ish­ments for libel and calls for actions deemed harm­ful to nation­al inter­ests, and they specif­i­cal­ly crim­i­nal­ized the defama­tion of law enforce­ment and oth­er offi­cials.239 Accord­ing to human rights activists, some of the most com­mon­ly used arti­cles in the crim­i­nal code relate to defama­tion: those for insult­ing the pres­i­dent, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and judges, as well as those for des­e­crat­ing state sym­bols (Arti­cles 368, 369, 370, and 391).240 One arti­cle crim­i­nal­izes the pub­li­ca­tion of the per­son­al infor­ma­tion of police and their fam­i­ly mem­bers. The revi­sions sub­stan­tial­ly increased crim­i­nal penal­ties for oth­er exist­ing crimes, which were already seen by OSCE experts as dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly severe. Prac­ti­cal­ly all of the amend­ments allow prison sen­tences for speech-relat­ed offens­es.241

The 2008 Media Law was amend­ed in 2021 to add repres­sive mea­sures that fur­ther sti­fle expres­sion online (see B3 and B6).242 Along with it, the gov­ern­ment amend­ed the Law on Mass Events to ban the live stream­ing or real-time cov­er­age of unsanc­tioned protests, includ­ing by media out­lets, so as not to pop­u­lar­ize them or pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da.243 Jour­nal­ists were barred from act­ing as orga­niz­ers or par­tic­i­pants in mass events “while per­form­ing their duties,” and activists were pro­hib­it­ed from rais­ing, receiv­ing, or using funds to pay fines or oth­er expens­es incurred by reporters and oth­ers who are pros­e­cut­ed for vio­lat­ing the law.244

In 2021, the gov­ern­ment enact­ed a revised admin­is­tra­tive code.245 The code fea­tured the new offense of “insult” against a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a state orga­ni­za­tion per­form­ing his or her offi­cial duty in the mass media or in infor­ma­tion dis­trib­uted online.246

Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued its per­se­cu­tion of media work­ers, oppo­si­tion fig­ures, blog­gers, social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nel admin­is­tra­tors, cul­tur­al fig­ures, and ordi­nary inter­net users for their online activ­i­ties.247 Scores of media pro­fes­sion­als were arrest­ed or sen­tenced for their inde­pen­dent report­ing. Hun­dreds of the country’s 1,496 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers (as count­ed by the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter),248 were impris­oned for their online activ­i­ties. One died while behind bars. The author­i­ties con­tin­ue to sti­fle free­dom of expres­sion under the guise of com­bat­ing alleged defama­tion, extrem­ism, and ter­ror­ism. A 2023 UN report spot­light­ed “the instru­men­tal­iza­tion and abuse of the jus­tice sys­tem against oppo­si­tion fig­ures, blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, human rights defend­ers” and oth­ers.249

Since the August 2020 elec­tion, some 38,000 Belaru­sians have been arrest­ed on polit­i­cal grounds250 and more than 5,500 crim­i­nal cas­es have been opened in con­nec­tion with the post­elec­tion protests;251 by the end of May 2023, almost 3,300 peo­ple had been con­vict­ed in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es.252 From Jan­u­ary to March 2023, there were at least 201 new crim­i­nal cas­es, 58 sen­tences and 123 new admin­is­tra­tive cas­es relat­ed to “extrem­ism.”253 Some 1,000 Belaru­sians are still want­ed on charges of “extrem­ism” or “ter­ror­ism.”254 Emblem­at­ic of the unre­lent­ing crack­down was the March 2023 con­vic­tion and 10-year prison sen­tence for “smug­gling by an orga­nized group” and “financ­ing of group actions gross­ly vio­lat­ing the pub­lic order” hand­ed down against Nobel Peace Prize Lau­re­ate Ales Biali­ats­ki, head of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter and a lead­ing voice on free­dom of expres­sion.255

Most of these alleged “crimes” that the gov­ern­ment has pros­e­cut­ed since 2020 have been for inter­net-relat­ed activ­i­ties.256 Many of the admin­is­tra­tive cas­es involved “dis­sem­i­nat­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als” online. A major­i­ty of the crim­i­nal con­vic­tions involved defama­tion cases—insulting a gov­ern­ment offi­cial, Lukashen­ka or state sym­bols257 —also like­ly to have tak­en place online.

The gov­ern­ment claimed that more than 11,000 “extrem­ist crimes” had been record­ed from August 2020 to Novem­ber 2022.258 Of the approx­i­mate­ly 8,500 “extrem­ist crimes” iden­ti­fied by the author­i­ties between August 2020 and April 2022, 41 per­cent involved free­dom of expres­sion issues such as slan­der and defama­tion of offi­cials and the online dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about pri­vate life and per­son­al data.259 Of the more than 5,000 “extrem­ist crimes” record­ed in 2022, the gov­ern­ment alleged that 76 per­cent were com­mit­ted on the inter­net.260 Even sub­scrib­ing to pro­hib­it­ed mate­ri­als is an admin­is­tra­tive offence, sub­ject to a fine, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, up to 15 days in prison, and the con­fis­ca­tion of the device with the extrem­ist mate­r­i­al.261

The fla­grant repres­sion of inde­pen­dent media work­ers that began with the 2020 elec­tion con­tin­ued unabat­ed in 2022 and the first half of 2023. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists report­ed 17 crim­i­nal and 20 admin­is­tra­tive sen­tences met­ed out and 11 new crim­i­nal cas­es ini­ti­at­ed against media work­ers in 2022. That same year, the gov­ern­ment detained jour­nal­ists 43 times and con­duct­ed 55 media-relat­ed search­es. Many of the jour­nal­ists tried and sen­tenced in 2022 and 2023 had orig­i­nal­ly been arrest­ed and jailed on remand since 2021.

From Jan­u­ary through May 2023, the gov­ern­ment arrest­ed 27 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers, sen­tenced 9 in crim­i­nal cas­es, launched 3 more crim­i­nal cas­es, and con­duct­ed 21 search­es of their premis­es;262 by the end of that peri­od, 33 jour­nal­ists remained behind bars.263 From 2022, experts not­ed that media-relat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es increased.264 Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, more than a dozen online media work­ers and activists received sen­tences of ten years or more; one was con­vict­ed of anoth­er charge while already serv­ing time in prison, bring­ing her total sen­tence to more than 10 years.

A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ordi­nary users also received lengthy prison terms for their online activ­i­ties. The KGB has includ­ed many of those con­vict­ed on its list of those car­ry­ing out “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.”

In June 2023, after the cov­er­age peri­od, a court sen­tenced Yana Pinchuk to 12 years in prison for incit­ing social hatred, cre­at­ing an extrem­ist and ter­ror­ist group, call­ing for the dis­rup­tion of the con­sti­tu­tion­al order, and harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty for admin­is­ter­ing the Telegram chan­nel Vitebsk97%.265 She had been arrest­ed by Russ­ian author­i­ties in St. Peters­burg in Novem­ber 2021 and lat­er extra­dit­ed to Belarus.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, blog­ger Myko­la Klimovich was sen­tenced to a year behind bars after post­ing a “fun­ny” emoti­con in response to a car­i­ca­ture of Lukashen­ka on the OK social net­work. In May, Klimovich died while in prison.266 The gov­ern­ment attrib­uted the death of Klimovich, who suf­fered from heart dis­ease, to his “gen­er­al state of health.”267

In May 2023, cul­tur­al activist Pavel Belavus was sen­tenced to 13 years in prison on four crim­i­nal charges, includ­ing trea­son. Accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment, Belavus was pro­mot­ing Belaru­sian nation­al­ism on social net­works and web­sites, “the pur­pose of which was to change the state pow­er in Belarus.”268

In March 2023, a court sen­tenced media pro­fes­sion­als Mary­na Zolata­va and Liud­mi­la Chek­ina to 12 years each in prison for “incit­ing hatred” and “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus. Zolata­va was edi­tor in chief and Chek­ina direc­tor gen­er­al of TUT.by, Belarus’s largest inde­pen­dent news web­site, which was closed down by the gov­ern­ment and declared a “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion” in 2021–22 (see B1 and B6). Both had been detained since 2021. Zolata­va had been pre­vi­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed in 2019.269

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the gov­ern­ment put on tri­al Stsi­a­pan Put­si­la, Jan Rudzik, and Raman Prata­se­vich, the founders and edi­tors of the Nex­ta online project, which over­sees the country’s most pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel and a pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel. The defen­dants were charged under sev­er­al crim­i­nal arti­cles and were accused of com­mit­ting at least 1,586 crimes. Only Prata­se­vich is in the coun­try and in cus­tody.270 In May 2023, Prata­se­vich was sen­tenced to eight years in prison; Put­si­la and Rudzik received terms of 20 and 19 years in absen­tia, respec­tive­ly.271 Lat­er that month, Prata­se­vich was par­doned by the gov­ern­ment.272

In March 2023, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va, founder and edi­tor of the think tank Nashe Mneniye (Our Opin­ion), edi­tor of the online Belaru­sian Year­book, and head of the Belarus in Focus online think tank, was con­vict­ed of “con­spir­ing to seize state pow­er, call­ing for actions aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty, and incite­ment to hatred,” and sen­tenced to 10 years.273 Human rights defend­ers sug­gest that the ver­dict is designed to intim­i­date the think tank com­mu­ni­ty.274

Detained in 2021, jour­nal­ist Andrzej Poc­zobut was charged with “incit­ing hatred” and “call­ing for sanc­tions” against Belarus. He is a promi­nent mem­ber of the Pol­ish minor­i­ty in Belarus. In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Poc­zobut was sen­tenced to eight years in prison.275

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, for­mer secu­ri­ty offi­cial Alexan­der Sumar was to nine years in prison for admin­is­ter­ing the “Long Live Luninets!” Telegram chan­nel.276

In Jan­u­ary 2023, Vik­tor Sava­she­vich was sen­tenced to 11 years in prison for cre­at­ing and over­see­ing the Telegram chan­nel “23.34”, which post­ed infor­ma­tion about Belaru­sian judges.277 In Novem­ber 2022, Stan­silav Kuzmit­sky was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison for admin­is­ter­ing 30 Telegram chan­nels and chats, and Vadim Vasilev received a sen­tence of 12 years behind bars for admin­is­ter­ing two Telegram chan­nels.278

Siarhei Sat­suk, edi­tor of the Ezhed­nevnik news web­site, was arrest­ed under mul­ti­ple charges relat­ed to his inves­tiga­tive report­ing on alleged cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Health dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In Octo­ber 2022, he was sen­tenced to eight years in prison for “incit­ing hatred”, “abuse of pow­er” and “tak­ing a bribe.”279

Arrest­ed in 2021, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist for the news­pa­per Novy Chas and edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ver­sion of the Ukrain­ian web­site Informnapalm.org, was charged with high trea­son under Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Ivashyn was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 13 years and one month in jail.280

Jour­nal­ist Kse­nia Lut­ski­na, who for­mer­ly worked for state tele­vi­sion and joined the oppo­si­tion after the 2020 elec­tion, endeav­ored with oth­er for­mer state jour­nal­ists to cre­ate an “alter­na­tive tele­vi­sion” chan­nel on YouTube. Arrest­ed in late 2020, she was con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and sen­tenced to eight years in prison in Sep­tem­ber 2022.281

In July 2022, jour­nal­ist Ekata­ri­na Andree­va was sen­tenced to eight years and three months in prison for on charges of trea­son.282 She had pre­vi­ous­ly been serv­ing a term of two years in jail since 2021 for “orga­niz­ing pub­lic events aimed at dis­rupt­ing civ­il order;” she had report­ed live from a protest in mem­o­ry of a cit­i­zen who died after being beat­en, alleged­ly by gov­ern­ment agents. In April 2022, five months before her sched­uled release, the author­i­ties intro­duced the new charge of trea­son.283

Sev­er­al crim­i­nal cas­es regard­ing online activ­i­ties dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od includ­ed mul­ti­ple or mass defen­dants. In Jan­u­ary 2023, the Min­sk City Court sen­tenced five Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and activists—Dzmitry Navosha, Yan­i­na Sazanovich, Danil Bah­danovich, Vol­ha Vysot­skaya and Valeryya Zanyamonskaya—to 12 years in prison in absen­tia for each on charges of incit­ing social hatred and ille­gal­ly reveal­ing per­son­al data. The team had over­seen the Black Book of Belarus Telegram chan­nel, which revealed the iden­ti­ties and per­son­al data of law enforce­ment offi­cers involved in the crack­down on protests fol­low­ing 2020 elec­tion.284

In 2021, police arrest­ed Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, a high-pro­file online media work­er and jour­nal­ist, and his part­ner (lat­er his wife), Iry­na Zlobi­na. The author­i­ties charged them under Arti­cles 342 and 243 of the crim­i­nal code. They were accused of ille­gal­ly pay­ing the fines of 250 arrest­ed demon­stra­tors through an inde­pen­dent crowd­fund­ing plat­form.285 The gov­ern­ment lat­er added an addi­tion­al charge of trea­son under Arti­cle 356 of the crim­i­nal code against Ali­ak­san­drau, alleg­ing that he took part in “betray­ing state secrets” to a “for­eign state, inter­na­tion­al or for­eign orga­ni­za­tion, or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”286 In Octo­ber 2022, Ali­ak­san­drau was sen­tenced to 14 and Zlobi­na to nine years in prison. They were part of a group of four media pro­fes­sion­als asso­ci­at­ed with the Bela­PAN inde­pen­dent news agency, who were sen­tenced to a total of 33 years in prison.287

In 2021, KGB troops stormed the apart­ment of tech spe­cial­ist Andrei Zeltser. Dur­ing the raid, a KGB offi­cer and Zeltser died in a shootout. In the after­math, police arrest­ed some 200 peo­ple for their online com­ments regard­ing the inci­dent. From the start of 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 2023, at least 114 were con­vict­ed and 98 sen­tenced to prison time. At least 35 defen­dants were includ­ed on the KGB’s list of ter­ror­ists.288

In August 2021, Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion politi­cians in exile announced a strat­e­gy to oust Lukashen­ka, known as the Pier­amo­ha (Vic­to­ry) Plan. Some 200,000 Belaru­sians reg­is­tered for the ini­tia­tive online. In response, secu­ri­ty forces cre­at­ed fake accounts and a chat­bot to infil­trate the plan.289 Human rights defend­ers report­ed more than 80 crim­i­nal cas­es being opened against those reg­is­ter­ing.290 Cas­es were pur­sued “almost dai­ly” to the end of the report­ing peri­od ;291 more than 60 were opened on one day on March 12, 2023.292

The Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter report­ed that at least 30 Belaru­sians were con­vict­ed for shar­ing pho­tos or videos of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment in Belarus with inde­pen­dent media out­lets and social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nels in 2022. Those con­vict­ed of report­ing the move­ments of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary face between 2 and 15 years in prison. Scores of Belaru­sians were also arrest­ed, impris­oned, or fined for express­ing anti­war opin­ions, or pro-Ukraine or anti-Rus­sia sen­ti­ment in the con­text of the war, as well as try­ing to sign up to fight for Ukraine, online.293 From Jan­u­ary to March 2023, for exam­ple, there were at least 26 arrests and three con­vic­tions for con­demn­ing Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine via social net­works.294

Dozens of admin­is­tra­tors of social media chan­nels and mes­sen­ger groups deemed “extrem­ist” have been repressed by the gov­ern­ment. For instance, In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Aleh Kanavalau, the cre­ator of the YouTube chan­nel “Third Region of Belarus,” was sen­tenced to five years in jail for vio­lat­ing five arti­cles of the crim­i­nal code relat­ing to “extrem­ism.”295

Hun­dreds of Belaru­sians were per­se­cut­ed for their online activ­i­ties, includ­ing dox­ing and crit­i­ciz­ing pub­lic offi­cials, and sub­scrib­ing to, com­ment­ing on, or repost­ing mate­ri­als from web­sites and social media and mes­sen­ger chan­nels deemed to be “extrem­ist” by the gov­ern­ment. For exam­ple, from July to Decem­ber 2022, there were at least 70 cas­es opened and 50 crim­i­nal sen­tences imposed on cit­i­zens who alleged­ly doxed offi­cials. Dur­ing the same peri­od, there were at least 40 cas­es open and 30 sen­tences for crit­i­cal com­ments against offi­cials. One Belaru­sian indi­vid­ual was arrest­ed and 58 crim­i­nal cas­es opened against him for writ­ing 43,000 alleged­ly “extrem­ist” com­ments.

From July to Decem­ber 2022, there were 245 admin­is­tra­tive arrests for the online dis­tri­b­u­tion of “extrem­ist mate­ri­als” and sub­scrib­ing to “extrem­ist” Telegram chan­nels, as well as for leav­ing com­ments in such chan­nels. In many cas­es, pros­e­cu­tion often took place before the online sites or mate­ri­als were actu­al­ly declared “extrem­ist.”296

For more than a decade, the gov­ern­ment has tar­get­ed lawyers who defend polit­i­cal, media, and civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Since 2020, the author­i­ties have revoked the licens­es of or expelled from the bar more than 100 lawyers—including between 30 to 40 dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. as of ear­ly June 2023, sev­en lawyers were in prison.297 The state actions against some of them, includ­ing Alexan­der Danile­vich, Artem Semyanov, and Ines­sa Olen­skaya were like­ly relat­ed to their defense of jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, human rights advo­cates, and polit­i­cal fig­ures.298 A num­ber of lawyers were per­se­cut­ed for dis­trib­ut­ing “extrem­ist mate­ri­als;” in June 2022, for exam­ple, five lawyers were arrest­ed over a legal-advice mes­sen­ger chat.299 Lawyer Vitaly Braginets was sen­tenced to 8 years in prison for “cre­at­ing an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” the Telegram chat “Belaru­sian Lawyers,” in which lawyers dis­cussed and coor­di­nat­ed their activ­i­ties.300

A num­ber of legal pro­vi­sions, appar­ent­ly enact­ed in part to dis­cour­age online crit­i­cism of the author­i­ties,301 lim­it users’ abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate anony­mous­ly.

Under 2018 amend­ments to the Media Law, any­one post­ing mate­ri­als and com­ments online must iden­ti­fy them­selves to the own­ers of the Belaru­sian web­sites on which they are post­ing. Res­o­lu­tion 850,302 issued that year, spec­i­fies that com­men­ta­tors should reg­is­ter with the web­sites using their mobile devices.303 Only one account can be cre­at­ed on a giv­en site for each mobile phone num­ber. Web­site own­ers must store the per­son­al data they col­lect on reg­is­tered users—including name, gen­der, date and place of birth, mobile phone num­ber, email address, and IP address—for one year.304 Users of pub­lic Wi-Fi hotspots must sub­mit their mobile phone num­bers.305

Through a sys­tem known as Pass­port, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs links mobile ser­vice sub­scribers to their real-world iden­ti­ties.306

Belarus has blocked the use of VPNs and Tor since 2015, though they remain acces­si­ble in prac­tice.307 In 2020, the gov­ern­ment blocked addi­tion­al cir­cum­ven­tion tools, includ­ing the proxy ser­vice Psiphon.308 Under Res­o­lu­tion 218 (1997) of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, the import and export of encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy is pro­hib­it­ed with­out a license from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs or the Com­mis­sion on Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty.309

Dur­ing a peri­od of polit­i­cal crack­down, eco­nom­ic cri­sis and war in Ukraine, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment increased its sur­veil­lance of the country’s online space.

In Belarus, there is no inde­pen­dent judi­cial or oth­er over­sight of the gov­ern­men­t’s elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance prac­tices. The result­ing lack of trans­paren­cy makes it dif­fi­cult to assess the state’s full sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties and activ­i­ties. How­ev­er, since at least 2010, the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment is known to have employed sur­veil­lance to mon­i­tor its cit­i­zens and con­trol crit­i­cal expres­sion online. Leg­is­la­tion grants the author­i­ties the “unlim­it­ed right” to under­take sur­veil­lance of per­sons sus­pect­ed of plan­ning to com­mit a crime or offense, with no judi­cial autho­riza­tion or over­sight.310 Activists and jour­nal­ists have expressed fears that their offices are bugged, their phone calls are mon­i­tored, their loca­tions are tracked, and their online com­mu­ni­ca­tions are at risk of being hacked.311 Lukashen­ka has pub­licly boast­ed about the government’s wire­tap­ping prac­tices.312

The gov­ern­ment mon­i­tors email and inter­net chat rooms; it like­ly tracks oppo­si­tion activists’ emails and oth­er web-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Author­i­ties con­duct raids and con­fis­cate com­put­er equip­ment and mobile phones to col­lect per­son­al infor­ma­tion on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. State-run tele­vi­sion and online media have aired “leaked” tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions, video mes­sages, audio record­ings, and per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence that appear to have been obtained via sur­veil­lance.313

As Telegram’s pop­u­lar­i­ty surged in 2020, the gov­ern­ment ramped up efforts to mon­i­tor and infil­trate chats, includ­ing closed groups, on such mes­sag­ing apps. Secu­ri­ty forces use Kotatogram, a third-par­ty appli­ca­tion that inter­acts with Telegram, to mon­i­tor and export chats, includ­ing the com­ments and IDs of par­tic­i­pants.314 The gov­ern­ment also main­tains and uti­lizes data­bas­es of accounts, names, IDs, user­names, tele­phone num­bers, pho­tos, and avatars to mon­i­tor users. The author­i­ties employ fake bots, links, sites and files to iden­ti­fy users.315 Secu­ri­ty forces have installed bots on the cell phones of detainees that col­lect Telegram-relat­ed infor­ma­tion from the devices, which like­ly trans­fer the infor­ma­tion to a cen­tral­ized data­base.316

In March 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs not­ed the cre­ation of a new inter­net intel­li­gence divi­sion, osten­si­bly for com­bat­ting eco­nom­ic crimes.317

The gov­ern­ment has sought to devel­op and enhance its video sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties. Decree No. 187, which Lukashen­ka issued in the wake of mass demon­stra­tions in 2017,318 estab­lished a cen­tral­ized real-time video-mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem.319 In ear­ly 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs report­ed that all shop­ping cen­ters and pub­lic places in Min­sk are now cov­ered by CCTV cam­eras.320 The sur­veil­lance sys­tem appears to be oper­a­tional; in August 2022, the author­i­ties claimed that inves­ti­ga­tors in Min­sk had man­aged to cre­ate “a crim­i­nal­is­tic video library,” which was used to iden­ti­fy 1,400 indi­vid­u­als who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the protests in 2020 and 2021.321

The gov­ern­ment has acquired sur­veil­lance hard­ware and soft­ware from Chi­nese, Russ­ian, US, and Israeli com­pa­nies. The Chi­nese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm Huawei has been sup­ply­ing video sur­veil­lance sys­tems to the gov­ern­ment since 2011.322 Bel­t­ele­com is work­ing with Huawei on its devel­op­ment of 5G tech­nol­o­gy, which includes facial recog­ni­tion for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a “smart mobile check­point.”323 Meiya Pico, the Chi­nese dig­i­tal foren­sics and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, has trained Belaru­sian offi­cials.324

Since 2010, the gov­ern­ment has been using the Russ­ian-devel­oped Sys­tem of Oper­a­tive Inves­tiga­tive Mea­sures (SORM),325 which pro­vides the author­i­ties with direct, auto­mat­ed access to com­mu­ni­ca­tions data from land­line tele­phone net­works, mobile ser­vice providers, and ISPs.326 The Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment also uses Seman­tic Archive, a soft­ware pack­age devel­oped in Rus­sia that mon­i­tors open-source data such as blogs, news out­lets, and social media.327

Grayshift, a US com­pa­ny, and Cellebrite, an Israel-based dig­i­tal intel­li­gence com­pa­ny, have sup­plied the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with tools for hack­ing into locked mobile devices.328 Experts believe that Cellebrite’s tech­nol­o­gy was used by secu­ri­ty forces to hack smart­phones dur­ing the post­elec­tion crack­down that start­ed in 2020.329 In response, Cellebrite announced in 2021 that it would no longer sell its prod­ucts in Belarus.330

Belarus has also devel­oped a domes­tic capac­i­ty to pro­duce sur­veil­lance tools. The Belaru­sian com­pa­ny Syne­sis is a lead­ing pro­duc­er of intel­li­gent video-sur­veil­lance sys­tems. It over­sees a nation­wide net­work of video cam­eras that was pro­ject­ed to num­ber 13,000 by 2021.331 Fol­low­ing the Belaru­sian government’s sup­port for the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, the US gov­ern­ment sanc­tioned Syne­sis due to its links with the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs and the use of its tech­nol­o­gy to sup­press protests.332 The EU sanc­tioned Syne­sis because “Syne­sis has pro­vid­ed the Belaru­sian author­i­ties with a sur­veil­lance plat­form capa­ble of ana­lyz­ing video using facial-recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy.”333

All telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oper­a­tors are required to install sur­veil­lance equip­ment, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to mon­i­tor traf­fic in real time and to obtain relat­ed meta­da­ta and data—such as users’ brows­ing his­to­ry, includ­ing domain names and IP address­es visited—without judi­cial over­sight.

Since 2016, all ISPs have been required to retain infor­ma­tion about their cus­tomers’ brows­ing his­to­ries for one year.334 Com­pa­nies are also required to pre­serve iden­ti­fy­ing data regard­ing their cus­tomers’ devices and inter­net activ­i­ties for at least five years and to turn over this infor­ma­tion at the government’s request.335 Accord­ing to Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, how­ev­er, iden­ti­fy­ing data may some­times be pre­served for up to 10 years.336

In Octo­ber 2022, Lukashen­ka signed Decree 368, which requires all online ser­vices to store user data and pro­vide author­i­ties with direct access to it.337 While the author­i­ties have long had access to telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions data, the new decree will now allow them to com­pare this data with that from online ser­vices. Inter­net resources that refuse to allow access by secu­ri­ty forces may be blocked in Belarus.338

Pur­suant to Res­o­lu­tion 850 (see C4), web­site own­ers are required to store the per­son­al data of all reg­is­tered com­menters.

A 2021 per­son­al data pro­tec­tion law,339 on paper, offers many of the same rights accord­ed to EU cit­i­zens by the bloc’s Gen­er­al Data Pro­tec­tion Reg­u­la­tion (GDPR).340 How­ev­er, inde­pen­dent experts have not­ed that the leg­is­la­tion, which uses ter­mi­nol­o­gy sim­i­lar to Russ­ian leg­is­la­tion, could be employed by the state to lim­it the activ­i­ties of online actors such as blog­gers, free­lance jour­nal­ists, and inves­tiga­tive NGOs, as well as oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment.341 The law gives the state-run Oper­a­tions and Analy­sis Cen­ter (OAC), which over­sees and mon­i­tors the Belaru­sian inter­net space, the pow­er to obtain data on peo­ple using online ser­vices from telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice providers.342

The Nation­al Cen­ter for Per­son­al Data Pro­tec­tion, estab­lished by decree in 2021, is osten­si­bly an inde­pen­dent pub­lic body343 but in prac­tice has helped enforce the government’s crack­down on inde­pen­dent media. In Jan­u­ary 2022, the cen­ter asked Twit­ter to remove or delete infor­ma­tion from the accounts of four inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media out­lets based out­side the coun­try, for exam­ple.344 The issue of data pro­tec­tion has become more promi­nent since the 2020 events because of the repeat­ed dox­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials by cit­i­zens (see C3) and antigov­ern­ment hack­ers (see C8). Belarus is not a par­ty to the Coun­cil of Europe Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of Indi­vid­u­als with regard to Auto­mat­ic Pro­cess­ing of Per­son­al Data.

Hotels, restau­rants, and oth­er enti­ties are oblig­ed to reg­is­ter guests before pro­vid­ing them with wire­less access, whether free or paid.345

Web­sites on the nation­al .by and .бел domains must be phys­i­cal­ly host­ed in Belarus.346

Gov­ern­ment intim­i­da­tion of and attacks against online jour­nal­ists and com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ued dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od. Since the 2020 elec­tion and protests, state agents have employed threats, arbi­trary deten­tion, tor­ture, ill-treat­ment and phys­i­cal vio­lence in an attempt to sup­press crit­i­cal voic­es.347 The Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion report­ed that there have been approx­i­mate­ly 2,800 attacks against jour­nal­ists, includ­ing legal harass­ment and oth­er attacks, in Belarus since 2020, includ­ing 300 in 2022.348 Belarus led all coun­tries in Europe in terms of abus­es against jour­nal­ists in 2022 and since 2020, accord­ing to press free­dom groups.349

The ongo­ing cli­mate of fear and repres­sion has led to 100,000 to 300,000 Belaru­sians leav­ing the coun­try. Among those who have depart­ed are some 400 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers.350 Since the 2020 events, the gov­ern­ment has placed dif­fer­ent forms of trav­el restric­tions on those it con­sid­ers its oppo­nents.351 It has also encour­aged crit­i­cal voic­es to leave Belarus, and Lukashen­ka has open­ly stat­ed that their depar­ture was good for the coun­try.352 Some dis­si­dents, like the jour­nal­ist Aleh Hruzdzilovich were informed that, if they did not leave, they would be impris­oned for a longer peri­od.353 In 2021 and 2022, media rights activists record­ed 21 cas­es of the forced emi­gra­tion of jour­nal­ists.354

Since 2020, Lukashen­ka has both threat­ened not to read­mit Belaru­sians who have left as well as encour­aged them to return. The government’s “Road Home” pro­gram is for “repen­tant” polit­i­cal emi­gres who wish to return to Belarus. How­ev­er, human rights groups say that the pro­gram is designed to lure crit­ics back only to imprison them.355 In July 2023, amend­ments to the Law on Cit­i­zen­ship came into effect, allow­ing the gov­ern­ment to strip Belaru­sians of their cit­i­zen­ship for their par­tic­i­pa­tion in “extrem­ist” activ­i­ties or caus­ing “grave harm to the inter­ests of Belarus (see C2).”356

Some émi­grés have expressed fears that their fam­i­ly mem­bers who remained in Belarus were being harassed or intim­i­dat­ed by the author­i­ties.357 Human rights experts have doc­u­ment­ed that the author­i­ties retal­i­ate against fam­i­ly mem­bers through arbi­trary search­es, deten­tions, inter­ro­ga­tions, and arrests. For exam­ple, Daria Losik, the wife of impris­oned Telegram blog­ger Ihar Losik and moth­er of their four-year old daugh­ter, was arrest­ed and impris­oned for two years over an inter­view she gave about her husband’s case. Dur­ing her tri­al, Daria not­ed that her whole fam­i­ly was being pun­ished.358

In 2022, the gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed 55 searches—which are often essen­tial­ly pre­texts to ran­sack offices or residences—targeting jour­nal­ists and at times their rel­a­tives or asso­ciates.359 At least 21 such search­es took place in 2023.360 In June 2022, police destroyed the Min­sk apart­ment of the moth­er of Anton Motolko, a blog­ger and ana­lyst who has been abroad for two years.361 The police air videos with “before and after” scenes of the trashed apartments—in vio­la­tion of Belaru­sian law—to intim­i­date oppo­nents.362 The gov­ern­ment has also seized the prop­er­ty of those who emi­grat­ed.363

Dur­ing the report­ing peri­od, the gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ed a new strat­e­gy of intim­i­da­tion via fol­low-up vis­its, checks, and search­es of those who had pre­vi­ous­ly served sen­tences for com­mit­ting “offens­es of an extrem­ist and protest nature.“364

Dis­si­dents and crit­ics who were impris­oned con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence tor­ture and intim­i­da­tion. In a report cov­er­ing the peri­od from 2020 to the end of 2021, the UN Human Rights Coun­cil found that “sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence, includ­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence, was reg­u­lar­ly used against both women and men in deten­tion to intim­i­date and pun­ish those per­ceived as pro-oppo­si­tion.”365 A fol­low-on report cov­er­ing the peri­od through 2022 spot­light­ed ongo­ing “unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate use of force,” “tor­ture and oth­er cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment or pun­ish­ment” and “sex­u­al and gen­der-based vio­lence.”366

Dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, online media work­ers were sub­ject to inhu­man con­di­tions. For exam­ple, impris­oned blog­ger Ihar Losik367 has repeat­ed­ly been placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment. His cor­re­spon­dence has been restrict­ed and his lawyer has not been allowed to see him. His pre­vi­ous lawyer was arrest­ed. On March 15, 2023, it was report­ed that Losik, who was on a hunger strike, had slit his wrists and neck to protest his mis­treat­ment. He sur­vived the inci­dent.368

The rel­a­tives and lawyers of jailed jour­nal­ists are pres­sured by the gov­ern­ment to sign nondis­clo­sure agree­ments bar­ring them from talk­ing about the cas­es or the con­di­tions under which the jour­nal­ists are being held.369

Secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ued to pro­duce and pub­li­cize so-called “repen­tant” or “con­fes­sion­al” videos that are designed to humil­i­ate those arrest­ed, force them to con­fess to alleged crimes, intim­i­date oth­er crit­i­cal voic­es, and rein­force the coer­cive pow­er of the state.370 The videos appear not only on gov­ern­ment-linked social media and mes­sag­ing chan­nels and but also pro­mot­ed on state media.371 Since 2021, this prac­tice has accel­er­at­ed and become more inhu­mane. The sub­jects of the videos have been “dressed up” with props, accom­pa­nied by degrad­ing spe­cial effects and music, and their appear­ance demeaned. The detainees were forced to dis­close per­son­al information—some of it incrim­i­nat­ing, such as drug use—and sex­u­al prac­tices.372 Sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als have been forced to appear in such videos over their oppo­si­tion to war in Ukraine.

The war has also led to a hard­en­ing of the rhetoric and tone of state media.373 The author­i­ties have employed online forms of intim­i­da­tion against crit­ics and dis­si­dents that are aggres­sive and demean­ing. The state-linked Zhel­tye Slivy (Yel­low Plums) and oth­er social media chan­nels (see B2) use hate speech to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize any per­ceived oppo­si­tion.374 The gov­ern­ment also main­tains online data­bas­es and lists, some of them pub­lic, of and pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion about per­sons accused of “extrem­ism” in order to stig­ma­tize and intim­i­date them375

Online hate speech against LGBT+ peo­ple has increased. Mon­i­tor­ing of web­sites and Telegram chan­nels by the local orga­ni­za­tion Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance (J4T) from Jan­u­ary to Octo­ber 2022 found sig­nif­i­cant growth in pub­li­ca­tions using incor­rect lan­guage and hate speech in com­par­i­son to 2021. Approx­i­mate­ly every fourth pub­li­ca­tion on LGBT+ top­ics in the Belaru­sian media in 2021 con­tained man­i­fes­ta­tions of hate speech, 376 it was every sec­ond pub­li­ca­tion in 2022. 377 In Octo­ber 2022, the J4T web­site was blocked by the gov­ern­ment.378 In Feb­ru­ary 2022, the gov­ern­ment closed down MAKEOUT, an NGO focused on gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and gay rights in Belarus; the project includ­ed an online mag­a­zine.379

Some of the “repen­tant” videos have tar­get­ed sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion to humil­i­ate and mar­gin­al­ize detainees. Arrest­ed for sup­port­ing Ukraine on his social net­works, Igor Koro­lik was forced by secu­ri­ty forces to “con­fess” on video to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The video was post­ed in Igor’s Tik­Tok account.380 Oth­er “repen­tant” videos of LGBTQ+ detainees have includ­ed inti­mate pho­tos and dis­closed the names of roman­tic part­ners.381

Pri­or to the 2020 elec­tion, tech­ni­cal attacks were not per­va­sive in Belarus. In the wake of the polit­i­cal cri­sis, how­ev­er, the quan­ti­ty of cyber­at­tacks car­ried out by both the gov­ern­ment and inde­pen­dent groups increased. Exist­ing attacks against gov­ern­ment enti­ties by dis­si­dent mem­bers of the country’s ICT com­mu­ni­ty increased after the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment helped facil­i­tate Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Mean­while, dur­ing the cov­er­age peri­od, gov­ern­ment cyber­at­tacks against inde­pen­dent groups declined sharply.382

Mem­bers of Belarus’s ICT com­mu­ni­ty played a promi­nent role in the 2020–21 protests, and the gov­ern­ment tar­get­ed them dur­ing the ensu­ing crack­down. In response, an anony­mous group of ICT spe­cial­ists known as the Cyber Par­ti­sans began retal­i­at­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2020, mount­ing hack­ing attacks against the state.383 This group of self-described “hack­tivists” uses web­site deface­ment, dox­ing, leak­ing, and irony to weak­en and dis­cred­it the Lukashen­ka gov­ern­ment.384 The Cyber Par­ti­sans385 released secret police archives, lists of alleged police infor­mants, per­son­al infor­ma­tion about top gov­ern­ment offi­cials and spies, video footage gath­ered from police drones and deten­tion cen­ters, and record­ings of phone calls from a gov­ern­ment wire­tap­ping sys­tem.386 In 2021, the group launched “Oper­a­tion Heat,” a broad cyber­at­tack on the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment, which includ­ed the pub­li­ciz­ing of phone calls that were secret­ly record­ed by the gov­ern­ment and the dox­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials.387 The Cyber Par­ti­sans work with BYPOL, an oppo­si­tion group made up of cur­rent and for­mer secu­ri­ty per­son­nel that pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion relat­ed to vio­la­tions of human rights by secu­ri­ty forces and leaks data about law enforce­ment offi­cers via Telegram and YouTube chan­nels.388

In 2021, the author­i­ties rec­og­nized the Cyber Par­ti­sans as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion.” By Octo­ber 2022, the group claimed to have hacked 21 gov­ern­ment data­bas­es, includ­ing the Belarus pass­port sys­tem and traf­fic police data­base, all the phone num­bers in the coun­try, flight tick­ets, reg­is­tered cars and hous­ing, per­son­nel files of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, the ministry’s video data­base, and more.389 In Feb­ru­ary 2023, the Cyber Par­ti­sans was report­ed to have hacked into a data­base of all crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive legal cas­es in Belarus.390 The group is using this infor­ma­tion to assist the work of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists from inde­pen­dent media orga­ni­za­tions,391 includ­ing those report­ing on cor­rup­tion.392 One expert called the work of the Cyber Par­ti­sans “as com­pre­hen­sive of a hack of a state as one can imag­ine.”393

The scope of the group’s work increased around the time the Russ­ian mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine was launched. Begin­ning in Jan­u­ary 2022, the Cyber Par­ti­sans repeat­ed­ly hacked the sys­tems of Belaru­sian Rail­ways, sig­nif­i­cant­ly slow­ing the move­ment of Russ­ian troops and mil­i­tary sup­plies across Belaru­sian ter­ri­to­ry ahead of and dur­ing the inva­sion.394 The Cyber Par­ti­sans have also tar­get­ed the Russ­ian state. In Novem­ber 2022 and Feb­ru­ary 2023, the group hacked into parts of Rus­si­a’s state media watch­dog, Roskom­nad­zor. The group report­ed that it was able to pen­e­trate a sub­sidiary’s inner net­work, down­load more than two ter­abytes of doc­u­ments and emails, and share data show­ing how the Russ­ian author­i­ties cen­sor infor­ma­tion on the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian inter­net about the war in Ukraine.395

Ghost­writer, an inter­na­tion­al hack­ing and psy­ops group that is like­ly linked to the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments, has pro­mot­ed anti-US nar­ra­tives and oppo­si­tion to NATO among Belarus’s imme­di­ate neigh­bors since 2016. Ukrain­ian offi­cials blamed Ghost­writer for attack­ing more than 70 Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment web­sites in Feb­ru­ary 2022.396 One report linked the group to a cam­paign designed to com­pro­mise Euro­pean offi­cials work­ing with Ukrain­ian refugees.397 In Feb­ru­ary 2022, Meta blocked domains used by Ghost­writer to hack the social media accounts of Ukraine’s troops (see B5).398 The fol­low­ing month, Google’s Threat Analy­sis Group report­ed that Ghost­writer was con­duct­ing phish­ing cam­paigns against Pol­ish and Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials.399 The Pol­ish gov­ern­ment also spot­light­ed a Ghost­writer cam­paign to spread dis­in­for­ma­tion in April 2023 in Poland with fab­ri­cat­ed mes­sages via SMS, Telegram chan­nels, and email.400 A 2023 report found that Ghost­writer has “impact­ed thou­sands of email users, has hacked dozens of social media accounts and media web­sites, pub­lished hun­dreds of false blog posts and oth­er fal­si­fied con­tent, and imper­son­at­ed mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ment offi­cials, NATO rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and jour­nal­ists in Europe.”401

In the wake of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, inter­na­tion­al hack­ers, includ­ing the group Anony­mous, launched a sus­tained attack against web­sites, includ­ing gov­ern­ment and state media pages, in Belarus and Rus­sia.402 Anony­mous claimed to have hacked more than 2,500 web­sites linked to the Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments.403 The attacks con­tin­ued dur­ing this report’s cov­er­age peri­od.404

A 2021 report found that the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment employed DNS spoof­ing to cen­sor the inter­net.405 Civ­il soci­ety researchers doc­u­ment­ed how the author­i­ties inject­ed “fake entries into DNS servers, caus­ing users to be direct­ed to fake and mali­cious web­sites.” When indi­vid­u­als attempt­ed to access prodemoc­ra­cy web­sites, the DNS response would be sub­sti­tut­ed, and the con­nec­tion inter­rupt­ed. Accord­ing to the joint report from the civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions Access Now, Arti­cle 19, Human Con­stan­ta, and Inter­na­tion­al Media Sup­port (IMS), the state-owned NTEC was respon­si­ble for the dis­rup­tions.406

Belarus is not a par­ty to the Budapest Con­ven­tion on Cyber­crime. Dig­itCert, one of the largest web­site-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pa­nies;407 Avast,408 a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny; and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies decid­ed to cease work­ing in Belarus after the Russ­ian military’s inva­sion of Ukraine, and this with­draw­al of secu­ri­ty prod­ucts and ser­vices may result in more hack­ing, cyber­crime, and gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance in the coun­try.

Footnotes

• 1“Pro­por­tion of indi­vid­u­als using the Inter­net,” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, http://gender.belstat.gov.by/communication/200?type=columnChart&reg=(T)…) and “Share of inter­net users aged 6–72,” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, http://dataportal.belstat.gov.by/Indicators/Preview?key=226247.
• 2“Более 3,1 млн абонентов пользуется стационарным широкополосным доступом в интернет в Беларуси [More than 3.1 mil­lion sub­scribers use fixed broad­band Inter­net access in Belarus],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023, http://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=20732.
• 3Ibid
• 4“Mobile inter­net user pen­e­tra­tion rate in select­ed Cen­tral and East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries in 2022,” Sta­tista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1133949/mobile-internet-reach-in-ce….
• 5“Belarus Medi­an Coun­try Speeds March 2023,” Speedtest Glob­al Index, Ook­la, https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/belarus#mobile.
• 6“Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion devel­op­ment indi­ca­tors for 2022,” Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023, https://www.mpt.gov.by/en/news/01–02-2023–8259.
• 7A 2021 inves­ti­ga­tion found that the monop­oly is con­nect­ed to Lukashenka’s son Vik­tor and the Russ­ian oli­garich Kon­stan­tin Niko­laev. See “How come that arms busi­ness stood at the ori­gins of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion provider ‘beCloud’?,” Bel­sat, Novem­ber 9, 2021, https://belsat.eu/en/programs/10–11-2021-how-come-that-arms-business-st….
• 8“Инфографика дня: Деятельность в области телекоммуникаций Беларуси [Info­graph­ic of the day: Activ­i­ties in the field of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in Belarus],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, May 1, 2023, https://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=21213.
• 9“FTTH Fore­cast for Europe,” FTTH Coun­cil EUROPE, Slide 15, https://www.sipotra.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Forecast-for-Europe‑2…. Belarus was exclud­ed from the Council’s 2023 rank­ing due to its role in Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine.
• 10“Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion devel­op­ment indi­ca­tors for 2022,” Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023, https://www.mpt.gov.by/en/news/01–02-2023–8259.
• 11ITU, “ICT Price Bas­kets (IPBD), https://www.itu.int/en/ITU‑D/Statistics/Dashboards/Pages/IPB.aspx and https://www.itu.int/en/ITU‑D/Statistics/Dashboards/Pages/Digital-Develo….
• 12“Glob­al broad­band pric­ing league table 2023,” Cable.co.uk, https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/pricing/worldwide-comparison/#speed, accessed March 18, 2023.
• 13“Share of inter­net users aged 6–72,” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, http://dataportal.belstat.gov.by/Indicators/Preview?key=226247. How­ev­er, Belarus is a heav­i­ly urban­ized coun­try. At the start of 2023, 80.5 per­cent of Belarus’s pop­u­la­tion lived in urban cen­ters, while only 19.5 per­cent lived in rur­al areas.
• 1495.2 per­cent of the capital’s res­i­dents use the inter­net – this is about four per­cent more than the lead­ing region, Grod­no (91.3 per­cent) and about 12 per­cent more than the low­est-ranked region, Min­sk (83.8 per­cent). See “Share of inter­net users aged 6–72,” Bel­stat, http://dataportal.belstat.gov.by/Indicators/Preview?key=226247.
• 15“Статистический обзор ко Дню пожилых людей [Sta­tis­ti­cal Overview for the Day of the Elder­ly],” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022, https://www.belstat.gov.by/upload-belstat/upload-belstat-pdf/oficial_st….
• 16“Pro­por­tion of indi­vid­u­als using the Inter­net,” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, accessed August 2023, http://gender.belstat.gov.by/communication/200?type=columnChart&reg=(M/…).
• 17“Инфографика дня: Использование беларускими женщинами сети Интернет в 2022 году [Info­graph­ic of the day: Inter­net use by Belaru­sian women in 2022], Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, March 7, 2023, http://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=20941.
• 18“Опыт Республики Беларусь по измерению гендерных аспектов в использовании информационно-коммуникационных технологий представлен в г.Женеве [The expe­ri­ence of the Repub­lic of Belarus in mea­sur­ing gen­der aspects in the use of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies was pre­sent­ed in Gene­va],” Nation­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Com­mit­tee, 2023, https://www.belstat.gov.by/o‑belstate_2/novosti-i-meropriyatiya/meropri…. Читать полностью: https://www.belstat.gov.by/o‑belstate_2/novosti-i-meropriyatiya/meropri…
• 19Twit­ter, “@HajunBY: It’s report­ed that there are cur­rent­ly strong mobile inter­net out­ages in the area of the camp of PMC Wag­n­er in Tsel vil­lage, Asipovichy dis­trict,” August 23. 2023, https://twitter.com/Hajun_BY/status/1694431124389282171.
• 20“Belarus and the Web,” Foren­sicxs, Novem­ber 27, 2022, https://www.forensicxs.com/belarus-and-the-web/.
• 21“Возможно ли полностью заблокировать интернет внутри одной страны? [Is it pos­si­ble to com­plete­ly block the Inter­net with­in one coun­try?], Human Con­stan­ta, June 3, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/vozmozhno-li-polnostyu-zablokirovat-internet…. A list of lead­ing ISPs can be found at Pavel Dzenisen­ka, “Лучшие интернет-провайдеры Беларуси 2022 [Best Inter­net Providers of Belarus],” August 22, 2022, https://hpc.by/best-internet-providers.
• 22ПОСТАНОВЛЕНИЕ ОПЕРАТИВНО-АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ЦЕНТРА ПРИ ПРЕЗИДЕНТЕ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ И МИНИСТЕРСТВА СВЯЗИ И ИНФОРМАТИЗАЦИИ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ 10 февраля 2014 г. № ½ Об утверждении перечня операторов электросвязи, имеющих право на пропуск межсетевого трафика [Deci­sion of the Oper­a­tional Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­ter under the Pres­i­dent of Belarus and Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions And Informa­ti­za­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus Feb­ru­ary 10, 2014 No. ½ On approval of the list of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion oper­a­tors hav­ing the right to pass the inter­net­work traf­fic],” https://oac.gov.by/public/content/files/files/law/resolutions-oac/2014%….
• 23“Inter­net dis­rup­tion hits Belarus on elec­tion day,” Net­Blocks, August 9, 2020, https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-disruption-hits-belarus-on-elect….
• 24“Посчитали сколько часов белорусы провели без мобильного интернета в 2020 году [Cal­cu­lat­ing how many hours Belaru­sians spent with­out mobile Inter­net in 2020],” NewGrodno.by, Decem­ber 29, 2020, https://newgrodno.by/society/internet‑3/.
• 25“NGO demands dis­clo­sure of A1 Telekom Aus­tria Group’s entan­gle­ments in Belarus,” EDRi, July 14, 2021, https://edri.org/our-work/ngo-demands-disclosure-of-a1-telekom-austria-… and “A1 Telekom to be held account­able for vio­la­tions in Belarus,” Access Now, March 21, 2022, https://www.accessnow.org/a1-telekom-belarus/.
• 26“Pri­vate sec­tor expan­sion in Belarus despite heavy polit­i­cal pres­sure,” bne IntelliNews, Decem­ber 19, 2022, https://bne.eu/private-sector-expansion-in-belarus-despite-heavy-politi….
• 27“Топ-менеджер А1 ответил на критику о «лагающем» домашнем интернете [A1 top man­ag­er respond­ed to crit­i­cism about lag­ging home Inter­net],” TUT.by, May 30, 2020, https://42.tut.by/686599; “In Belarus, A1 oper­a­tor sub­scribers demand com­pen­sa­tion for block­ing inter­net dur­ing unrest,” Busi­ness & Human Rights Resource Cen­tre, July 7, 2020, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/in-belarus-a1-opera….
• 28“Amend­ments to the Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus ‘Obelek­trosvyaz’,” Leg­is­la­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus, May 24, 2021, https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12100109&p1=1&p5=0.
• 29“О чрезвычайном положении [On the State of Emer­gency],” Leg­is­la­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus, 2002, https://web.archive.org/web/20180505175042/http://pravo.newsby.org/bela…; “При угрозе нацбезопасности МВД может блокировать доступ к интернет-ресурсам – Казакевич [With a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs can block access to Inter­net resources – Kaza­ke­vich],” BelTA, July 13, 2020, https://www.belta.by/society/view/pri-ugroze-natsbezopasnosti-mvd-mozhe….
• 30“О Государственной программе инновационного развития Республики Беларусь на 2016–2020 годы [State pro­gram of inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment for 2016–2020]”, Nation­al Legal Por­tal, http://www.pravo.by/upload/docs/op/P31700031_1486414800.pdf; For a crit­i­cal analy­sis, see: Mikhail Doro­she­vich and Mari­na Sokolo­va, “’Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion’: To What Extent is the Coun­try Ready to Embrace it?,” Belaru­sian Year­book 2017, Nashe Mne­nie, 2017, pp. 141–43, http://nmnby.eu/yearbook/2017/en/index.html.
• 31“Over 3.2m Belaru­sians now enjoy broad­band Inter­net access,” BelTA, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2022, https://eng.belta.by/economics/view/over-32m-belarusians-now-enjoy-broa… and “Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion devel­op­ment indi­ca­tors for 2022,” Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2023, https://www.mpt.gov.by/en/news/01–02-2023–8259.
• 32“About us,” Bel­t­ele­com, https://beltelecom.by/en/about.
• 33“Num­ber of MTS active mobile sub­scribers in 4th quar­ter 2022, by coun­try,” Sta­tista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/715443/number-of-mts-mobile-subscri….
• 34“Telekom Aus­tria: Finan­cial Report,” Mar­ketScreen­er, March 30, 2023, https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/TELEKOM-AUSTRIA-AG-6492023/n….
• 35“Turk­cell ups life:) stake to 100%,” Comm­sUp­date, Decem­ber 15, 2022, https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2022/12/15/turkcell-ups-life-stake….
• 36“life:) TIBO press release,” April 2023, https://tibo.by/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/life_tibo_press-release.pdf.
• 37“About us,” Belet­ele­com, https://beltelecom.by/en/about.
• 38“Цифровая экосистема и новые сферы деятельности: в ‘Белтелекоме’ рассказали о развитии предприятия [Dig­i­tal ecosys­tem and new areas of activ­i­ty: ‘Bel­t­ele­com‘ spoke about the devel­op­ment of the enter­prise], BelTA, April 20, 2023, https://www.belta.by/economics/view/tsifrovaja-ekosistema-i-novye-sfery….
• 39“Ex-employ­ees of the nation­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny sen­tenced to 11 years. They were beat­en dur­ing arrest,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2022, https://spring96.org/en/news/106727, “Dzmit­ryi Kakhanous­ki,” List of Polit­i­cal Prios­ners, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/dzmitryi-kakhanouski and “Spokesman of Min­sk-based Aus­tri­an sub­com­pa­ny A1 gets 15 days in jail,” Bel­sat, Decem­ber 13, 2021, https://belsat.eu/en/news/13–12-2021-spokesman-of-minsk-based-austrian-….
• 40Clement Giradot, “The tech work­ers exiled from Europe’s last dic­ta­tor­ship,” Rest of the World, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023, https://restofworld.org/2023/belarus-tech-exile-lukashenko/.
• 41The OAC is “a state body that reg­u­lates the activ­i­ties of the secu­ri­ty of infor­ma­tion con­tain­ing state secrets of the Repub­lic of Belarus and oth­er infor­ma­tion pro­tect­ed by leg­is­la­tion.” The OAC works with the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions to lim­it access to web­sites: “Кіраўнік ААЦ Паўлючэнка: Заблакаваць цалкам сайт немагчыма, можна толькі абмежаваць доступ [Head of OAC Paulyuchen­ka: Block­ing web­sites is impos­si­ble, you can only restrict access to them],” Nasha Niva, April 23, 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20190424160118/https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=208496.
• 42“Беларускія сайты зрабілі адказнымі за тое, што на іх пішуць карыстальнікі [Belaru­sian sites made respon­si­ble for what users write on them],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2019, https://baj.by/be/analytics/belaruskiya-sayty-zrabili-adkaznymi-za-toe-….
• 43“Общее собрание уполномоченных представителей членов Ассоциации ‘Белинфоком’ [Gen­er­al Meet­ing of Autho­rized Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Mem­bers of the Asso­ci­a­tion ‘Belin­fo­com’], Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022, https://belinfocom.by/novosti/obshhee-sobranie-upolnomochennyh-predstav….
• 44neto­b­ser­va­to­ry, “Home,” accessed June 8, 2023. https://netobservatory.by/.
• 45“Разбираемся с ‘экстремистскими’ списками: какие сайты и по каким основаниям блокируют в Беларуси [Deal­ing with ‘extrem­ist’ lists: which sites are blocked in Belarus and on what grounds],” Human Con­stan­ta, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/razbiraemsya-s-ekstremistskimi-spiskami-kaki….
• 46For a short his­to­ry of news sites being blocked in Belarus, see “Самые известные блокировки сайтов Беларуси [The most famous block­ing of web­sites in Belarus],” Belaru­sian Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry, Decem­ber 8, 2020, https://netobservatory.by/samye-izvestnye-blokirovki-sajtov-belarusi/.
• 47For a detailed list, see Maria Xynou and Arturo Filas­to, “Belarus protests: From inter­net out­ages to per­va­sive web­site cen­sor­ship,” OONI, Sep­tem­ber 15, 2020, https://ooni.org/post/2020-belarus-internet-outages-website-censorship/….
• 48“E‑NEWSLETTER “MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS”. Mon­i­tor­ing Report 2021,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2022, https://baj.by/en/analytics/e‑newsletter-mass-media-belarus-monitoring-….
• 49“Mass Media in Belarus: Annu­al Review 2022,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, No. 1 (73), 2023, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2023/smi-01712023-en… and “Review of the fight against “extrem­ism” in Belarus in July-Sep­tem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/review-of-the-fight-against-extremism-in-….
• 50“У Беларусі заблакаваны сайт Праваабарончай ініцыятывы «Журналісты за талерантнасць» — J4T.by / J4T.info [The web­site of the Human Rights Ini­tia­tive “Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance” — J4T.by / J4T.info — has been blocked in Belarus],” Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance, Octo­ber 4, 2022, https://j4t.info/2022/10/04/u‑belarusi-zablakavanyi-sayt-j4t-info-nayst….
• 51“Разбираемся с ‘экстремистскими’ списками: какие сайты и по каким основаниям блокируют в Беларуси [Deal­ing with ‘extrem­ist’ lists: which sites are blocked in Belarus and on what grounds], Human Con­stan­ta, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/razbiraemsya-s-ekstremistskimi-spiskami-kaki….
• 52“MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS. E‑NEWSLETTER № 3 (65) 2021. Restric­tion of free­dom of media on the web,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Decem­ber 2, 2021, https://baj.by/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-e-newsletter-no‑3–65-202….
• 53“В Беларуси ограничили доступ к сайту marketing.by [In Belarus, access to the marketing.by web­site has been restrict­ed],” Euro­ra­dio, Octo­ber 4, 2022, https://euroradio.fm/ru/v‑belarusi-ogranichili-dostup-k-saytu-marketing….
• 54“Улады заблакавалі сайт, які лічыў статыстыку тэлеграм-каналаў [The author­i­ties blocked a web­site that count­ed the sta­tis­tics of Telegram chan­nels],” Novy Chas, Decem­ber 17, 2022, https://novychas.online/hramadstva/vos-dyk-prajava-ulady-zablakavali-sa….
• 55“’Айцішны’ інтэрнэт-рэсурс Dev.by заблакаваны ў Беларусі [The IT Inter­net Resource Dev.by blocked in Belarus],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, May 30, 2023, https://baj.by/be/content/aycishny-internet-resurs-devby-zablakavany-u-….
• 56Infor­ma­tion from the publication’s staff.
• 57“Free­dom of Asso­ci­a­tion and Legal Envi­ron­ment for Civ­il Soci­ety Orga­ni­za­tions. Review for 2022. Belarus,” Lawtrend, https://www.lawtrend.org/english/freedom-of-association-and-legal-envir….
• 58“Mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion of free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions in the Repub­lic of Belarus May 2023,” Lawtrend, https://www.lawtrend.org/english/monitoring-the-situation-of-freedom-of….
• 59Tatyana Romano­va, “Разгром третьего сектора в Беларуси: приглашение России [The Defeat of the Third Sec­tor in Belarus: Rus­si­a’s Invi­ta­tion],” iSANS, Jan­u­ary 26, 2022, https://isans.org/articles/razgrom-tretego-sektora-v-belarusi-priglashe….
• 60“Octo­ber 2022,” “Time­line of free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion vio­la­tions and civ­il soci­ety pros­e­cu­tion in Belarus,” Lawtrend, https://www.lawtrend.org/english/timeline-of-freedom-of-association-vio….
• 61“Разбираемся с ‘экстремистскими’ списками: какие сайты и по каким основаниям блокируют в Беларуси [Deal­ing with ‘extrem­ist’ lists: which sites are blocked in Belarus and on what grounds],” Human Con­stan­ta, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/razbiraemsya-s-ekstremistskimi-spiskami-kaki….
• 62“В Беларуси заблокировали Patre­on [Patre­on blocked in Belarus],” City­Dog, Decem­ber 14, 2022, https://citydog.io/post/zaden-patreon-blok/.
• 63“Да папулярнага сайта з аўдыёкнігамі абмежавалі доступ [Access to a pop­u­lar audio­book site has been restrict­ed],” Budz­ma, April 20, 2023, https://budzma.org/news/aydyyeknigi-abmezhavali-dostup.html.
• 64Anas­tasi­ia Zlobi­na, “Belaru­sian Author­i­ties Move to Silence Lead­ing Media Out­let,” Human Rights Watch, May 19, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/19/belarusian-authorities-move-silence….
• 65Arty­om Shraib­man, “Belaru­sian Media Onslaught Leaves Lukashenko With No Way Out,” The Moscow Times, May 21, 2021, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/05/21/belarusian-media-onslaught-le…
• 66“Belaru­sian court bans Tut.by and affil­i­at­ed news web­site Zerkalo.io as ‘extrem­ist’,” Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, August 16, 2021, https://cpj.org/2021/08/belarusian-court-bans-tut-by-and-affiliated-new….
• 67Tanya Lokot, “Belarus author­i­ties block access to more inde­pen­dent media added to extrem­ist list,” Glob­al Voic­es, Novem­ber 5, 2021, https://globalvoices.org/2021/11/05/belarus-authorities-block-access-to….
• 68“Разбираемся с ‘экстремистскими’ списками: какие сайты и по каким основаниям блокируют в Беларуси [Deal­ing with ‘extrem­ist’ lists: which sites are blocked in Belarus and on what grounds], Human Con­stan­ta, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/razbiraemsya-s-ekstremistskimi-spiskami-kaki….
• 69“’Extrem­ism’ in wartime – review of the fight against “extrem­ism” in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2022,” Human con­stan­ta, April 25, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/extremism-in-wartime-review-of-the-fight-….
• 70Anas­tasi­ia Kruope, “Belarus Blocks Human Rights Watch Web­site,” Human Rights Watch, April 6, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/06/belarus-blocks-human-rights-watch‑w….
• 71Simon Migliano and Samuel Wood­hams, “Web­sites Blocked in Rus­sia Since Ukraine Inva­sion,” TOP10VPN, Jan­u­ary 27, 2023, https://www.top10vpn.com/research/websites-blocked-in-russia/. For a par­tial list, see “Mass Media in Belarus: Annu­al Review 2022,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, No. 1 (73), 2023, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2023/smi-01712023-en….
• 72“Mass Media in Belarus: Annu­al Review 2022,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, No. 1 (73), 2023, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2023/smi-01712023-en….
• 73“Лукашэнка загаварыў пра блякаваньне ў Беларусі Youtube і сацыяльных сетак [Lukashen­ka spoke about block­ing YouTube and social net­works in Belarus],” Radio Lib­er­ty, March 25, 2022, https://www.svaboda.org/a/31769950.html.
• 74“Inter­net block­ing in Belarus,” Quri­um, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2020, https://www.qurium.org/alerts/internet-blocking-in-belarus/.
• 75“Что такое цифровой авторитаризм и как он ограничивает свободу в сети [What is dig­i­tal author­i­tar­i­an­ism and how it lim­its free­dom online],” Human Con­stan­ta, March 28 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/chto-takoe-cifrovoj-avtoritarizm-i-kak-on-og….
• 76“NGO demands dis­clo­sure of A1 Telekom Aus­tria Group’s entan­gle­ments in Belarus,” EDRi, July 14, 2021, https://edri.org/our-work/ngo-demands-disclosure-of-a1-telekom-austria-….
• 77U.S. Depart­ment of State, “2017 Coun­try Reports on Human Rights Prac­tices: Belarus,” https://www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-prac….
• 78Ram Sun­dra Ramen et al, “Mea­sur­ing the Deploy­ment of Net­work Cen­sor­ship Fil­ters at Glob­al Scale,” Net­work and Dis­trib­uted Sys­tems Secu­ri­ty (NDSS) Sym­po­sium 2020, Feb­ru­ary, 2020, https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/23099.pdf.
• 79“’Белтелеком’ объявил тендер на закупку оборудования для контроля и блокировки интернета [‘Bel­t­ele­com’ announced a ten­der for the pur­chase of equip­ment for mon­i­tor­ing and block­ing the Inter­net],” CityDog.by, March 15, 2022, https://citydog.by/post/zaden-beltelekom-block-interneta/.
• 80“Lukashenko gives his take on idea to block YouTube, for­eign social net­works,” BelTA, March 25, 2022, https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-gives-his-take-on-idea‑t….
• 81“Belarus Labels Pop­u­lar Telegram Chan­nel ‘Extrem­ist’,” RFE/RL, Octo­ber 20, 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-labels-popular-telegram-channel-extremi….
• 82“Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in its after­math,” Human Rights Coun­cil, UN, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5268-belarus-run…, p. 9.
• 83The updat­ed list can be found at “Mea­sures to counter extrem­ism and reha­bil­i­tate Nazism,” Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, Octo­ber 14, 2021, https://mvd.gov.by/ru/news/8642. This list is not acces­si­ble out­side of Belarus.
• 84“Как ‘экстремизм’ нарушает права человека в Беларуси: основные тезисы от правозащитных организаций [How ‘extrem­ism vio­lates human rights in Belarus: the main the­ses from human rights orga­ni­za­tions],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, April 1, 2022, https://baj.by/be/analytics/kak-ekstremizm-narushaet-prava-cheloveka-v-…. From July 2008 to Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, there were at least 718 court ver­dicts declar­ing 1,794 mate­ri­als to be “extrem­ist.”
• 85“Разбираемся с ‘экстремистскими’ списками: что входит в ‘экстремистские’ материалы [Deal­ing with ‘extrem­ist’ lists: what is includ­ed in the ‘extrem­ist’ mate­ri­als],” Human Con­stan­ta, March 1, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/razbiraemsya-s-ekstremistskimi-spiskami-chto….
• 86By the end of 2022, at least 870 Telegram resources had been declared extrem­ist. See “Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in its after­math,” Human Rights Coun­cil, UN, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2023, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G23/008/97/PDF/G2300897.p…, p. 13.
• 87“Death penal­ty threats: review of the fight against extrem­ism in Belarus in April-June 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, July 22, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/death-penalty-threats/.
• 88“Мининформ разблокировал сайт Blizko.by [The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion unblocked the web­site Blizko.by],” Ref­or­ma­tion, Octo­ber 22, 2022, https://reform.by/334756-mininform-razblokiroval-sajt-blizko-by.
• 89“Death penal­ty threats: review of the fight against extrem­ism in Belarus in April-June 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, July 22, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/death-penalty-threats/.
• 90“Yandex.News dis­abled Reform.by at the request of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion [in Russ­ian],” Reform.by. March 23, 2022. https://reform.by/304651-jandeks-novosti-otkljuchili-reform-by-po-trebo… and Pyotr Parfy­onenko, “Как «Яндекс» угнетает продвижение повестки беларусских негосСМИ [How Yan­dex dis­crim­i­nates against the con­tent of Belaru­sian non-state media],” Media IQ, Octo­ber 3, 2022, https://mediaiq.info/kak-yandeks-ugnetaet-prodvizhenie-povestki-belarus….
• 91“Каму дасталася спадчына Tut.by? [Who inher­it­ed Tut.by?],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, May 30, 2022, http://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=19160.
• 92“Mass Media in Belarus: Annu­al Review 2022,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, No. 1 (73), 2023, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2023/smi-01712023-en….
• 93“Char­ter-97 VKon­tak­te Group Blocked Through Lukashenka’s Min­istry Of Infor­ma­tion Com­plaints,” Char­ter 97, August 15, 2022, https://charter97.org/en/news/2022/8/15/511354/ and “The admin­is­tra­tion of ‘Vkon­tak­te’ announced the block­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty ‘Gomel flag­pole’ in its social net­work, Gomel Flag­pole, August 15, 2022, https://vk.com/wall-192743426_15407?lang=en.
• 94“Belaru­sian Social-Media Pages Get A Sus­pi­cious­ly Russ­ian Makeover,” RFE/RL, May 2, 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-social-media-russian-makeover/32389170….
• 95Mikhail Poloznyakov “’Мегазадача Белоруссия’. Как Роскомнадзор цензурирует беларуский интернет [’Mega Task Belarus’: How Roskom­nad­zor cen­sors the Belaru­sian Inter­net],” Medi­a­zona Belarus, Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, https://mediazona.by/article/2023/02/08/rknby.
• 96“Mass Media in Belarus: Annu­al Review 2022,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, No. 1 (73), 2023, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2023/smi-01712023-en….
• 97Paresh Davi, “Twit­ter to cut spread of BelTa, oth­er Belarus state media posts,” Reuters, March 10, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-cut-spread-belta-other-belar….
• 98Mari­na Gold, “How Insta­gram is push­ing ‘yabat­ki’ off its plat­form,” iSANS, Decem­ber 15, 2021, https://isans.org/columns-en/how-instagram-is-pushing-yabatki-off-its‑p….
• 99“Telegram частично заблокировал один из белорусских провластных каналов, чем вызвал возмущение пропаганды. В чем причина [Telegram par­tial­ly blocked one of the Belaru­sian pro-gov­ern­ment chan­nels, which caused indig­na­tion of the pro­pa­gan­da. What is the rea­son],” Zerka­lo, June 5, 2022, https://news.zerkalo.io/cellar/15556.html?c.
• 100“Telegram заблокировал на Apple ряд каналов белорусских пропагандистов. В бан попали Азаренок, Лебедева, Придыбайло и другие [Telegram has blocked a num­ber of chan­nels of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­dists on Apple. Azarenok, Lebe­de­va, Pry­dy­bai­lo and oth­ers were banned],” Zerka­lo, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2022, https://news.zerkalo.io/life/22602.html?c.
• 101“Telegram в очередной раз забанил всю сеть каналов ГУБОПиКа [Telegram has once again banned the entire net­work of GUBOPiK chan­nels],” Nasha Niva, Jan­u­ary 2, 2023, https://nashaniva.com/ru/308884.
• 102Face­book Trans­paren­cy Report, “Belarus,” “Con­tent Restric­tions,” accessed Augut 2023, https://transparency.fb.com/data/content-restrictions/country/BY/.
• 103Twit­ter Trans­paren­cy Report, “Removal Requests,” accessed August 2023, https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/countries/by.html.
• 104Google Trans­paren­cy Report, accessed August 2023, https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/government-re….
• 105Media Law Amend­ment Act, Nation­al Legal Inter­net Por­tal, May 24, 2021, https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12100110&p1=1
• 106“Belaru­sian Media Under Attack,” Human Rights House Foun­da­tion, June 3, 2021, https://humanrightshouse.org/resources/belarusian-media-under-attack/.
• 107“Поправки в Закон о СМИ: регистрация интернет-изданий, идентификация комментаторов, блокировка соцсетей [Amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media: reg­is­tra­tion of Inter­net pub­li­ca­tions, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­men­ta­tors, block­ing of social net­works],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, April 6, 2018, https://baj.by/be/content/popravki-v-zakon-o-smi-registraciya-internet-….
• 108“Leg­isla­tive amend­ments fur­ther restrict media in Belarus, says OSCE media free­dom rep­re­sen­ta­tive,” OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media, June 18, 2018, https://www.osce.org/representative-on-freedom-of-media/384786.
• 109“Камісіі па бяспецы ў інфармацыйнай сферы пры Савеце Бяспекі далі больш правоў [The Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty Com­mis­sion is giv­en more rights],” Euro­ra­dio, June 30, 2021, https://euroradio.fm/kamisii-pa-byaspecy-u-infarmacyynay-sfery-pry-save….
• 110“Мининформ сможет блокировать доступ к новостным агрегаторам за распространение материалов заблокированных сайтов [The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion will be able to block access to news aggre­ga­tors for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mate­ri­als of blocked sites],” Zerka­lo, March 22, 2022, https://news.zerkalo.io/life/11599.html?tg.
• 111Pra­vo, “ПОСТАНОВЛЕНИЕ ОПЕРАТИВНО-АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ЦЕНТРА ПРИ ПРЕЗИДЕНТЕ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ, МИНИСТЕРСТВА СВЯЗИ И ИНФОРМАТИЗАЦИИ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ И МИНИСТЕРСТВА ИНФОРМАЦИИ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ 19 сентября 2022 г. № 5/14/15 [ESTABLISHMENT OF THE OPERATIONAL AND ANALYTICAL CENTER UNDER THE PRESIDENT REPUBLIC OF BELARUS, MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATIZATION REPUBLIC OF BELARUS AND THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION REPUBLIC OF BELARUS],” Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022, https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=T22205145&p1=1&p5=0.
• 112“Mass media in Belarus in 2022. Annu­al review,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Jan­u­ary 20, 2023, https://baj.by/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-2022-annual-review.
• 113See http://mininform.gov.by/news/freedom/ogranichenie-dostupa-k-internet-re… (Link not acces­si­ble from out­side Belarus).
• 114See https://old.belgie.by/ru/lists_access.
• 115Ary­tom Shri­ab­man, “Belaru­sian Media Onslaught Leaves Lukashenko With No Way Out,” The Moscow Times, May 21, 2021, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/05/21/belarusian-media-onslaught-le….
• 116“Onlin­er открывает раздел ‘Лайфстайл’ и перезапускает ‘Людей’ [Onlin­er opens ‘Lifestyle’ sec­tion and restarts ‘Peo­ple’],” Onlin­er, Novem­ber 17, 2021, https://people.onliner.by/2021/11/17/onliner-otkryvaet-razdel-lajfstajl.
• 117“Right for Cul­ture. Belarus 2022,” PEN Belarus, March 3, 2023, https://penbelarus.org/en/2023/03/03/rus-pravo-na-kulturu-belarus-2022….
• 118“Belarus ‘engulfed in fear’ as sys­tem­at­ic vio­la­tions and impuni­ty per­sist: UN expert,” UN, June 29, 2022, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/belarus-engulfed-fear‑s….
• 119“Улады 2 гады імкнуцца цалкам знішчыць незалежныя медыі, але тыя працуюць [The author­i­ties have been try­ing to com­plete­ly destroy inde­pen­dent media for 2 years, but it still works],” Bel­sat, Jan­u­ary 1, 2023, https://belsat.eu/news/16–01-2023-ulady-2-gady-imknutstsa-tsalkam-znish….
• 120“Review of the fight against “extrem­ism” in Belarus in July-Sep­tem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/review-of-the-fight-against-extremism-in-….
• 121From an inter­view with the edi­tor of an inde­pen­dent online out­let on March 21, 2023.
• 122Alaiza Pashke­vich, “Belarus’ Epi­dem­ic of Pub­lic Sham­ing,” IWPR, Decem­ber 6, 2022, https://iwpr.net/global-voices/belarus-epidemic-public-shaming.
• 123Ibid
• 124“Ларыса Шчыракова: ‘Мая журналісцкая кар’ера скончылася’ [Lar­isa Shchyrako­va: ‘My jour­nal­is­tic career is over’],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Feb­ru­ary 17, 2022, https://baj.by/be/content/larysa-shchyrakova-maya-zhurnalisckaya-karera….
• 125“For­mer Bel­sat TV con­trib­u­tor Larysa Shchyrako­va detained in Belarus on undis­closed charges,” Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, Decem­ber 9, 2022, https://cpj.org/2022/12/former-belsat-tv-contributor-larysa-shchyrakova….
• 126“After two years of per­se­cu­tion in Belarus, endan­gered jour­nal­ists adapt to sur­vive,” Reporters With­out Bor­der, August 8, 2022, https://rsf.org/en/after-two-years-persecution-belarus-endangered-journ….
• 127“The Jour­nal­ists of Belarus in Exile,” Reporters With­out Bor­ders Swe­den, accessed August 2023, https://www.reportrarutangranser.se/belarus-journalister-i-exil/the-jou….
• 128“Mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion of free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions in the Repub­lic of Belarus May 2023,” Lawtrend, https://www.lawtrend.org/english/monitoring-the-situation-of-freedom-of….
• 129V‑Dem’s Democ­ra­cy Report 2023 not­ed a sig­nif­i­cant and sub­stan­tial­ly mean­ing­ful rise in dis­in­for­ma­tion in Belarus from 2012 to 2022. See “Democ­ra­cy Report 2023: Defi­ance in the Face of Auto­c­ra­ti­za­tion,” V‑Dem Insti­tute, p. 26, https://v‑dem.net/documents/29/V‑dem_democracyreport2023_lowres.pdf.
• 130“Media IQ mon­i­tor­ing report: Belaru­sian media’s com­pli­ance with report­ing stan­dards in 2022, Media IQ, March 22, 2023, https://mediaiq.info/media-iq-monitoring-report-belarusian-media-s-comp….
• 131“Belarus charges dis­si­dent with organ­is­ing ‘ter­ror­ist’ group,” Al Jazeera, May 20, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/20/belarus-charges-dissident-with….
• 132“Ter­ror­ists are trained in Poland, Lithua­nia, Ukraine for attacks in Belarus — Lukashenko,” TASS, Octo­ber 10, 2022, https://tass.com/world/1520447.
• 133Ibid
• 134“Кочанова: у нас есть семейные ценности, которые мы передаем из поколения в поколение [Kochano­va: We have fam­i­ly val­ues that we pass on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion],” BelTA, Decem­ber 29, 2022, https://www.belta.by/society/view/zakon-o-zaprete-propagandy-lgbt-mozhe….
• 135Andrei Kalikh, “Пропаганда войны в Беларуси. Часть 2. ‘Путин возвращает Украину в историческое лоно славянского единства. Беларусь – надежный защитник России’ [War pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus. Part 2. ‘Putin returns Ukraine to the his­tor­i­cal bosom of Slav­ic uni­ty. Belarus is a reli­able defend­er of Rus­sia’],” iSANS, Novem­ber 12, 2022, https://isans.org/articles/propaganda-vojny-v-belarusi-chast-2-putin-vo….
• 136Andrei Kalikh, “War Pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus. Part 3. Anti-Ukraine,“ iSANS, Decem­ber 20, 2022, https://isans.org/articles-en/war-propaganda-in-belarus-part-3-anti-ukr….
• 137“ByPol: у Сілах спэцыяльных апэрацый Беларусі працуе ‘фабрыка троляў’ для падтрымкі расейскай вэрсіі вайны ва Ўкраіне [ByPol: ‘Spe­cial troll fac­to­ry’ works in Belaru­sian Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces to sup­port Russ­ian ver­sion of war in Ukraine],” Radio Lib­er­ty, March 22, 2022, https://www.svaboda.org/a/31764765.html.
• 138Andrei Kalikh, “War Pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus. Part 3. Anti-Ukraine,” iSANS, Decem­ber 20, 2022, https://isans.org/articles-en/war-propaganda-in-belarus-part-3-anti-ukr….
• 139Andrei Kalikh, “War Pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus. Part 4. ‘This might as well end with the War­saw People’s Repub­lic appear­ing on the world map.’ Hate­mon­ger­ing towards Poland and the Baltic coun­tries,” iSANS, Decem­ber 25, 2022, https://isans.org/articles-en/war-propaganda-in-belarus-part-4-this-mig….
• 140“Media IQ mon­i­tor­ing report: Belaru­sian media’s com­pli­ance with report­ing stan­dards in 2022,” Media IQ, March 22, 2023, https://mediaiq.info/media-iq-monitoring-report-belarusian-media-s-comp….
• 141Alek­sey Novit­skiy, “Belaru­sian media activists search­ing for means of coun­ter­ing pro­pa­gan­da,” iSANS, Jan­u­ary 25, 2021, https://isans.org/articles-en/belarusian-media-activists-searching-for-….
• 142Andrei Kalikh, “War Pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus. Part 1. Pro-Krem­lin sce­nar­ios in Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da and their local ‘retrans­mit­ters’,“ iSANS, Decem­ber 25, 2022, https://isans.org/articles-en/war-propaganda-in-belarus-part-1-pro-krem….
• 143Andrei Yeliseyeu, “Fun­da­men­tal Shifts in Anti-Belaru­sian Dis­in­for­ma­tion and Pro­pa­gan­da: Analy­sis of Quan­ti­ta­tive and Qual­i­ta­tive Changes,” EAST Cen­ter, April 17, 2019, http://east-center.org/fundamental-shifts-in-anti-belarus-disinformatio…. For an inter­ac­tive map, see “Tox­ic social com­mu­ni­ties in Belarus” at https://isans.org/toxic.
• 144“Media IQ mon­i­tor­ing report: Belaru­sian media’s com­pli­ance with report­ing stan­dards in 2022,” Media IQ, March 22, 2023, https://mediaiq.info/media-iq-monitoring-report-belarusian-media-s-comp….
• 145Ibid
• 146Igor Lenke­vich, “Почему все больше беларусов верит кремлевской пропаганде [Why more and more Belaru­sians believe the Krem­lin’s pro­pa­gan­da],” Ref­or­ma­tion, Octo­ber 3, 2022, https://reform.by/331946-pochemu-vse-bolshe-belarusov-verit-kremlevskoj….
• 147https://en.belaruspolls.org/page25707154.html.
• 148“BelTA, Xin­hua sign agree­ment to inten­si­fy coop­er­a­tion,” BelTa, March 2, 2023, https://eng.belta.by/society/view/belta-xinhua-sign-agreement-to-intens….
• 149“Belaru­sian GDP falls 4.7% in 2022,” Inter­fax, Jan­u­ary 18, 2023, https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/87028/. The 2022 reces­sion was the country’s worst since the 1990s. See “Eco­nom­ic Mon­i­tor Belarus,” Ger­man Eco­nom­ic Team, May 2023, https://www.german-economic-team.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/GET_BLR…; “Eco­nom­ic Mon­i­tor Belarus,” Ger­man Eco­nom­ic Team, May 2023, https://www.german-economic-team.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/GET_BLR….
• 150“Belarus’ gov­ern­ment to expand polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic con­trol at the expense of eco­nom­ic growth,” bne Intellinews, Decem­ber 1, 2022, https://www.intellinews.com/belarus-government-to-expand-political-econ….
• 151Dmitri Nar­ivonchik, “Уход иностранных рекламодателей и переток в интернет: рынок рекламы в 2022 году [The depar­ture of for­eign adver­tis­ers and the move to the Inter­net: the adver­tis­ing mar­ket in 2022],” Eko­nomich­eskaya Gaze­ta, April 14, 2023, https://neg.by/novosti/otkrytj/rynok-reklamy-v-belarusi-itogi-2022-goda/.
• 152“Глава Мининформа анонсировал ‘немножко непопулярные’ меры в сфере СМИ [The head of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion announced ‘slight­ly unpop­u­lar’ mea­sures in the field of mass media],” Smart­press, March 25, 2022, https://smartpress.by/news/20608/.
• 153“БТ, БелТА, “Дом прэсы”. Хто прэтэндуе на “субсідыі” ад сродкаў рэкламадаўцаў [BT, BelTA, “Press House”. Who claims ‘sub­si­dies’ from adver­tis­ers’ funds],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, April 11, 2023, https://baj.by/be/content/bt-belta-dom-presy-hto-pretendue-na-subsidyi-….
• 154“Лишил ли сбор в 20% работы рекламщиков и куда они отправились на заработки [Did adver­tis­ers lose their jobs because of the 20% tax and where did they go to earn mon­ey?],” Tochka, March 9, 2023, https://tochka.by/articles/economics/lishil_li_sbor_v_20_raboty_reklams….
• 155“Mass Media Week in Belarus,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Decem­ber 2–22, 2013, https://baj.by/sites/default/files/analytics/files/rassylka02-22_12_201….
• 156“Мінінфарму абрэзалі дзяржаўнае фінансаванне. Апублікаваны дзяржбюджэт на 2022 год [The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion has been cut off from state fund­ing. The state bud­get for 2022 has been pub­lished],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Jan­u­ary 4, 2022, https://baj.by/be/analytics/mininfarmu-abrezali-dzyarzhaunae-finansavan….
• 157“Цифра дня. Кто из государственных СМИ стал рекордсменом по приросту финансирования [The num­ber of the day. Which state media broke the record for growth in fund­ing], Sal­i­dar­nast, Jan­u­ary 7, 2023, https://gazetaby.com/post/cifra-dnya-kto-iz-gosudarstvennyx-smi-stal-re….
• 158“Лукашэнка падпісаў рэпрэсіўныя змены ў закон, які ставіць крыж на незалежных СМІ ў Беларусі [Lukashen­ka signed repres­sive changes to the law that puts inde­pen­dent media in Belarus in the crosshairs],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, July 3, 2023, https://baj.by/be/content/lukashenka-padpisau-represiunyya-zmeny-u-zako….
• 159“В Беларуси смогут запрещать работу СМИ недружественных стран [Belarus will be able to ban the media of unfriend­ly coun­tries],” Sput­nik Belarus, July 1, 2023, https://sputnik.by/20230701/v‑belarusi-smogut-zapreschat-rabotu-smi-ned….
• 160“Amend­ments to Law on Mass Media in Belarus – a sym­met­ri­cal response to the actions of unfriend­ly coun­tries,” BT, April 18, 2023, https://www.tvr.by/eng/news/obshchestvo/izmeneniya_v_zakon_o_smi_v_bela…; “Другое чытанне са старым зместам: ‘палатачнікі’ без пярэчанняў ухвалілі папраўкі ў Закон аб СМІ [Sec­ond read­ing of the same con­tent: “rep­re­sen­ta­tives” approved amend­ments to Media Law with­out objec­tion],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, May 31, 2023, https://baj.by/be/content/drugoe-chytanne-sa-starym-zmestam-palatachnik….
• 161“В Беларуси смогут запрещать работу СМИ недружественных стран [Belarus will be able to ban the media of unfriend­ly coun­tries],” Sput­nik Belarus, July 1, 2023, https://sputnik.by/20230701/v‑belarusi-smogut-zapreschat-rabotu-smi-ned….
• 162“Belarus: Crack­down on Inde­pen­dent Jour­nal­ism,” Human Rights Watch, March 29, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/29/belarus-crackdown-independent-journ….
• 163“Belarus: BAJ demands an end to the use of anti-extrem­ist leg­is­la­tion to restrict free­dom of speech,” IFEX, Novem­ber 17, 2021, https://ifex.org/belarus-baj-demands-an-end-to-the-use-of-anti-extremis….
• 164“Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus: April 2023,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, May 5, 2023, https://spring96.org/en/news/111622.
• 165https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-belarus-202….
• 166The reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed lists can be found at “Mea­sures to counter extrem­ism and reha­bil­i­tate Nazism,” Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, Octo­ber 14, 2021, https://mvd.gov.by/ru/news/8642.
• 167Belarus black­lists 625 oppo­si­tion fig­ures as ‘extrem­ists’,” Al Jazeera, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/28/belarus-labels-625-members-of….
• 168“Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus: May 2023,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, June 2, 2023, https://spring96.org/be/news/111871
• 169“’Чарговая спроба адарваць ад аўдыторыі’. Чаму на асабістыя старонкі журналістаў у сацсетках сталі чапляць экстрэмісцкі цэтлік? [‘Anoth­er attempt to lim­it the audi­ence.’ Why did the per­son­al pages of jour­nal­ists in social net­works begin to be labeled extrem­ist?],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, April 6, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/chargovaya-sproba-adarvac-ad-audytoryi-cham….
• 170“Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus: May 2023,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, June 2, 2023, https://spring96.org/be/news/111871.
• 171Cathal Sheerin, “March 2023,” “Repres­sion and resis­tance in Belarus: A month­ly chronol­o­gy,” IFEX, https://ifex.org/repression-and-resistance-in-belarus-a-monthly-chronol….
• 172“’Ці рэальна запомніць тры тысячы экстрэмісцкіх матэрыялаў?’ Праваабаронцы — пра крыміналізацыю інфапрасторы [‘Is it real­is­tic to remem­ber three thou­sand extrem­ist mate­ri­als?’ Human rights defend­ers on the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of infor­ma­tion space],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists,” April 12, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/ci-realna-zapomnic-try-tysyachy-ekstremisck….
• 173“’Ці рэальна запомніць тры тысячы экстрэмісцкіх матэрыялаў?’ Праваабаронцы — пра крыміналізацыю інфапрасторы [‘Is it real­is­tic to remem­ber three thou­sand extrem­ist mate­ri­als?’ Human rights defend­ers on the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of infor­ma­tion space],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists,” April 12, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/ci-realna-zapomnic-try-tysyachy-ekstremisck….
• 174In August 2022, a sur­vey found that 24 per­cent of respon­dents con­sumed non-state media less than once a week or nev­er while 33 per­cent con­sumed state media over the same peri­od. By March 2023, the fig­ures were 18 and 37, respect­ful­ly. See “Belaru­sians’ media con­sump­tion, atti­tudes to mobi­liza­tion and polit­i­cal iden­ti­ties,” Chatham House, Novem­ber 2022, p, 4, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ed8DA3fhRtuYXwaDyoMiC7XBaW0gTaNA/view and “Belaru­sians’ views on the war and val­ue ori­en­ta­tions,” Chatham House, March 2023, p. 3, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T12smHhJBhLv_gzE2FnEfdnFMS_0qujy/view. All of Chatham House’s Belarus sur­veys can be found at https://en.belaruspolls.org/page25707154.html.
• 175Olga Klasovskaya, “Прапаганда на кані. Як незалежным медыя ўтрымаць пазіцыі? [Pro­pa­gan­da on horse­back. How can inde­pen­dent media main­tain a posi­tion?],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, May 16, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/prapaganda-na-kani-yak-nezalezhnym-medyya‑u….
• 176Belarus Polis, “Home,” accessed August 2023, https://en.belaruspolls.org/.
• 177“Dekoder: Как беларуские медиа пережили революцию, репрессии и эмиграцию [Dekoder: How the Belaru­sian media sur­vived rev­o­lu­tion, repres­sion and emi­gra­tion],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 2, 2022, https://baj.by/be/analytics/dekoder-kak-belaruskie-media-perezhili-revo….
• 178“Цяжка ўявіць, што я больш ніколі не буду пісаць”. Пагаварылі з калегамі, якія сышлі з журналістыкі [“It’s hard to imag­ine that I’ll nev­er write again.” Talk­ing to col­leagues who have retired from jour­nal­ism,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, March 15, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/cyazhka-uyavic-shto-ya-bolsh-nikoli-ne-budu….
• 179These projects cov­er a vari­ety of top­ics, includ­ing gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, human rights and polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, cul­ture, pol­i­tics, busi­ness, etc. “Slod­ky Stony, GUTARKA, VORONA и ещё 17 проектов беларусских журналистов [Sweet moans, Con­ver­sa­tion, the Crow and 17 more projects by Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists],” Press Club Belarus, August 26, 2022, https://press-club.pro/dosved/slodky-stony-gutarka-vorona-i-eshchyo-17-….
• 180“After two years of per­se­cu­tion in Belarus, endan­gered jour­nal­ists adapt to sur­vive,” Reporters With­out Bor­ders, August 8, 2022, https://rsf.org/en/after-two-years-persecution-belarus-endangered-journ….
• 181Andrei Pechinin, “’Большинство содержат дезинформацию’. Эксперт — о том, почему в топ по просмотрам вышли видео беларусских госмедиа [‘Most con­tain mis­in­for­ma­tion.’ An expert on why videos of Belaru­sian state media came out in the top in terms of views],” Media IQ, Jan­u­ary 5, 2023, https://mediaiq.info/bolshinstvo-soderzhat-dezinformaciju-ekspert-o-tom….
• 182Simon Kemp, “Social media sta­tis­tics for Belarus in 2023,” Dig­i­tal 2023: Belarus, Datare­por­tal, Feb­ru­ary 13, 2023, https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-belarus.
• 183https://telemetr.io/en/country/belarus and https://by.tgstat.com/en/ratings/channels/news?sort=reach.
• 184Mari­na Gold­stein, “How Insta­gram is push­ing ‘yabat­ki’ off its plat­form,” iSANS, Decem­ber 15, 2021, https://isans.org/columns-en/how-instagram-is-pushing-yabatki-off-its‑p….
• 185Mari­na Gold­stein, “Tik­Tok in Belarus: audi­ence, trends, and new oppor­tu­ni­ties,” iSANS, March 23, 2022, https://isans.org/columns-en/tiktok-in-belarus-audience-trends-and-new-….
• 186Sev­er­al oth­er very pop­u­lar inde­pen­dent chan­nels were not includ­ed for unclear rea­sons. It is also note­wor­thy that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the sub­scribers of gov­ern­ment-run web­sites are actu­al­ly based in Rus­sia, not in Belarus. For this month and oth­ers dat­ing from late 2020, see “Количество просмотров беларуских YouTube-каналов в декабре 2022 [The num­ber of views of Belaru­sian YouTube chan­nels in Decem­ber 2022],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, Jan­u­ary 3, 2023, https://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=20476.
• 187Yuri Drakahrust, “Як прапаганда Лукашэнкі расьце ў Youtube. Тлумачыць мэдыяаналітык Міхаіл Дарашэвіч [How Lukashenka’s pro­pa­gan­da is grow­ing on YouTube. Media ana­lyst Mikhail Doro­she­vich explains],” Radio Lib­er­ty, April 14, 2023, https://www.svaboda.org/a/32362484.html.
• 188As of June 9, 2023.
• 189As of June 9, 2023.
• 190Liam Scott, “Hard News: The Strug­gle to Report on Myan­mar and Belarus From Exile,” New Lines Mag­a­zine, March 22, 2023, https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/hard-news-the-struggle-to-report-on‑m….
• 191“Топ-60 сайтов в Беларуси в ноябре 2022 [Top 60 web­sites in Belarus in Novem­ber 2022],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, Decem­ber 29, 2022, https://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=20469.
• 192“Беларуская аудитория сайтов российских телевизионных каналов [Belaru­sian audi­ence of Russ­ian TV chan­nels sites],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, March 20, 2019, http://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=11509.
• 193Pyotr Parfy­onenko, “Как «Яндекс» угнетает продвижение повестки беларусских негосСМИ [How Yan­dex dis­crim­i­nates against the con­tent of Belaru­sian non-state media],” Media IQ, Octo­ber 3, 2022, https://mediaiq.info/kak-yandeks-ugnetaet-prodvizhenie-povestki-belarus… and Pyotr Parfy­onenko, “Как Google оставляет беларусов в российском медиаполе [How Google leaves Belaru­sians in the Russ­ian media field],” Media IQ, Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022, https://mediaiq.info/kak-google-ostavlyaet-belarusov-v-rossijskom-media….
• 194Andrei Pechinin, “Рецепт восхитительной селёдки, или О чём пишут «новые независимые» медиа Беларуси [Recipe for deli­cious her­ring, or What the ‘new inde­pen­dent’ media of Belarus write about],” Media IQ, Octo­ber 31, 2022, https://mediaiq.info/recept-voshititelnoj-seljodki-ili-o-chjom-pishut‑n….
• 195For exam­ple, a Sep­tem­ber 2021 rank­ing of the Top 20 web­sites includ­ed three blocked media sites that are only acces­si­ble via VPN. See “Топ-20 сайтов в Беларуси в сентябре 2021 [Top 20 sites in Belarus in Sep­tem­ber 2021],” Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy, Octo­ber 13, 2021, http://www.infopolicy.biz/?p=18067.
• 196“Top App Rank­ing,” Belarus, Sim­i­lar­web, accessed on June 6, 2023, https://www.similarweb.com/apps/top/google/store-rank/by/communication/….
• 197“Как чувствует себя байнет? Главные цифры за год [How is the Bynet doing? Key fig­ures for the year],” Smart­press, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2022, https://smartpress.by/idea/tekhnologii/17738/.
• 198“Как меняется байнет: тренды от hoster.by [How the bynet is chang­ing: trends from hoster.by],” Smart­press, March 16, 2023, https://smartpress.by/idea/tekhnologii/39836/?sphrase_id=4818574.
• 199See “Обращения граждан и представителей юридических лиц [Appeals of cit­i­zens and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of legal enti­ties],” Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, https://www.mfa.gov.by/zvarot/ and “«Нам неизвестны факты, когда за петицию задерживали человека». Писать и отправлять электронные сообщения чиновникам теперь нужно по-новому [‘We are not aware of any evi­dence of a per­son being detained for a peti­tion.’ Writ­ing and send­ing e‑mails to offi­cials now needs to be done in a new way],” City­Dog, Octo­ber 1, 2023, https://citydog.io/post/pomoshch-peticii/.
• 200“Перш за ўсё — паказаць, як шмат людзей не згодныя з дзеяннямі ўлады’. Павел Лібер пра планы ‘Голасу’ на рэферэндум [‘Our goal is to show how many peo­ple dis­agree with the actions of the state.’ Pavel Liber about the plans of ‘Golos’ for the ref­er­en­dum],” Nasha Niva, Feb­ru­ary 12, 2022, https://nashaniva.com/?c=ar&i=284594.
• 201New Belarus, “home,” accessed August 2023, https://newbelarus.com/.
• 202“Либер о своем новом проекте: Пора участвовать в создании страны. Последние двадцать восемь лет нас старательно от этого изолировали [Lieber on his new project: It’s time to par­tic­i­pate in the cre­ation of the coun­try. For the past twen­ty-eight years, we have been dili­gent­ly iso­lat­ed from this],” Zerka­lo, Decem­ber 2, 2023, https://news.zerkalo.io/economics/27375.html.
• 203Clement Giradot, “The tech work­ers exiled from Europe’s last dic­ta­tor­ship,” Rest of the World, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023, https://restofworld.org/2023/belarus-tech-exile-lukashenko/.
• 204“Beal­ru­sian Hajun Project,” Telegram, accessed August 2023, https://t.me/s/Hajun_BY.
• 205“’30 тысяч человек сообщили о перемещении войск’. Интервью с создателем ‘Беларускага Гаюна’ Антоном Мотолько [‘30,000 peo­ple report­ed troop move­ments.’ Inter­view with the cre­ator of ‘Belaru­sian Hajun’ Anton Motolko],” Medi­a­zona Belarus, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2023, https://mediazona.by/article/2023/02/25/hajun.
• 206TGStat, “Rat­ing of Telegram Chan­nels,” accessed June 8, 2023. https://by.tgstat.com/en/ratings/channels?sort=members.
• 207BYSOL, “Home,” accessed August 2023, https://bysol.org/en/.
• 208For a list of sup­port­ed ini­tia­tives, see “’Імкнёмся дапамагаць, наколькі можам’, — заснавальнік BySol Стрыжак пра падтрымку палітзьняволеных [‘We try to help as much as we can,’ BySol founder Strizhak on sup­port for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers],” Radio Lib­er­ty, Decem­ber 29, 2022, https://www.svaboda.org/a/32198591.html, BYSOL, “Ini­tia­tives,” accessed August 2023, https://bysol.org/en/initiatives/.
• 209Andrej Styzhak, “ BYSOL-2022…” Face­book, Decem­ber 28, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/andrej.strizhak/posts/pfbid0986cRkD2UDRdzRAyyY….
• 210“How does it work?,” BYSOL, accessed August 2023, https://bysol.org/en/about/.
• 211“Tri­al Obser­va­tion Report: Belarus v. Kat­siary­na Andreye­va and Daria Chultso­va,” Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion, Octo­ber 26, 2021, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/human_rights/reports/trial-observati….
• 212Matthias Williams and David Ljung­gren, “Belarus ref­er­en­dum approves pro­pos­al to renounce non-nuclear sta­tus – agen­cies.” Reuters, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/launchpad-russias-assault-ukraine-….
• 213“Belarus: Zone of Repres­sion,” Human Rights Watch, Jan­u­ary 12, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/12/belarus-zone-repression.
• 214“Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in its after­math,” UN Human Rights Coun­cil, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023, pp. 3–13, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G23/008/97/PDF/G2300897.p….
• 215Vol­ha Siakhovich, “Jour­nal­ists and media free­dom under attack in Lukashenko’s Belarus,” Index on Cen­sor­ship, Novem­ber 2, 2020, https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2020/11/journalists-and-media-freedom….
• 216“Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus,” Report of the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus, Anaïs Marin, UN Human Rights Coun­cil, May 4, 2022, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3974497#record-files-collapse-head….
• 217Kamil Klysin­s­ki and Piotr Zochowsi, “The legal­i­sa­tion of ter­ror. The Belaru­sian regime expands the legal basis for repres­sion,” Cen­ter for East­ern Stud­ies, May 21, 2021, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2021–05-21/legalisation‑t….
• 218For a list and analy­sis of many of these, see “New Leg­isla­tive Reg­u­la­tion in the Repub­lic of Belarus as the Author­i­ties’ Response to the Events of 2020 and How It Cor­re­lates with Inter­na­tion­al Stan­dards in the Field of Human Rights,” LawTrend and Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee, https://belhelcom.org/sites/default/files/new_legislative_regulation_in…. Fur­ther details and how the new leg­is­la­tion has been applied to media out­lets and work­ers can be found in “Экстремизм по-белорусски. Новая редакция Закона ‘О противодействии экстремизму’ [Extrem­ism Belaru­sian style. The new edi­tion of the Law ‘On coun­ter­ing extrem­ism’],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 1, 2022, https://baj.by/ru/analytics/ekstremizm-po-belorusski-novaya-redakciya‑z….
• 219For and analy­sis of these leg­isla­tive acts and their rela­tion to online media, see Herve Ascen­sio, “Report on the seri­ous threat to the OSCE human dimen­sion in Belarus since 5 Novem­ber 2020,” OSCE, May 11, 2023, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/d/5/543240.pdf.
• 220Ibid
• 221“Belarus Bans Trav­el Abroad For Per­sons Fac­ing ‘Polit­i­cal Charges,’ Top Offi­cials, Police,” RFE/RL, May 16, 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-travel-ban-officials-police/32414103.ht….
• 222“Поправки в Закон о лишении гражданства вступят в силу в июле [Amend­ments to the Law on Depri­va­tion of Cit­i­zen­ship will come into Force in July],” Office Life, Jan­u­ary 10, 2023, https://officelife.media/news/39710-popravki-v-zakon-o-lishenii-grazhda…. This arti­cle also includes a link to the amend­ed law.
• 223“Заочные суды в Беларуси начинаются. Кто будет первым? [Absen­tee Tri­als in Belarus Begin. Who will be the First?],” Malen­ka Media, Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, https://malanka.media/news/14534.
• 224“West­ern Democ­ra­cies, Human Rights Groups Denounce Belarus’ Use of Death Penal­ty to Tar­get Polit­i­cal Oppo­nents and Anti-War Activists,” Death Penal­ty Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, May 23, 2022, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/western-democracies-human-rights-grou….
• 225“Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus: May 2023,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, June 2, 2023, https://spring96.org/en/news/111863.
• 226https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3A%2F%2Fkgb.by%2…
• 227“Экстремизм по-белорусски. Новая редакция Закона ‘О противодействии экстремизму’ [Extrem­ism Belaru­sian style. The new edi­tion of the Law ‘On coun­ter­ing extrem­ism’],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 1, 2022, https://baj.by/ru/analytics/ekstremizm-po-belorusski-novaya-redakciya‑z….
• 228“Belaru­sian Supreme Court Declares Nex­ta Telegram Chan­nels ‘Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion’,” RFE/RL, April 9, 2022, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-nexta-telegram-terrorist/31794494.html.
• 229“Human rights defend­ers strong­ly protest against expan­sion of the death penal­ty in Belarus,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, March 28, 2023, https://dp.spring96.org/en/news/111225.
• 230“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 231https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-belarus-202… and https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-and-media‑b…
• 232“Belarus: New amend­ment to the Crim­i­nal Code leaves no room for legal human rights activ­i­ties,” FIDH, Jan­u­ary 31, 2022, https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/belarus/belarus-new-….
• 233“Утверждены поправки в законодательство по вопросам защиты суверенитета и конституционного строя [Amend­ments to leg­is­la­tion on the pro­tec­tion of sov­er­eign­ty and the con­sti­tu­tion­al order were approved],” Offi­cial Por­tal of the Pres­i­dent, June 15, 2021, https://president.gov.by/ru/events/podpisan-zakon-ob-izmenenii-zakonov-….
• 234“’Выпуск СМІ можа быць спынены’. Набыў моц закон, які закліканы абараняць суверэнітэт. Што важна ведаць? [‘The release of media release can be stopped.’ A law designed to pro­tect sov­er­eign­ty has come into force. What is impor­tant to know?],” Nasha Niva, Octo­ber 2021, https://dcsfxzu8xls6u.cloudfront.net/?c=ar&i=279443.
• 235Pravo.by, “Amend­ments to the law on coun­ter­ing extrem­ism [Belaru­sian],” May 14, 2021, https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12100104&p1=1&p5=0.
• 236“Belarus Law­mak­ers Approve Amend­ments That Severe­ly Restrict Civ­il Rights, Media,” RFE/RL, April 9, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-lawmakers-approve-amendments-that-sever….
• 237“Законы о недопущении реабилитации нацизма и противодействии экстремизму вступают в силу через месяц [Laws on pre­vent­ing the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazism and coun­ter­ing extrem­ism come into force in a month],” Ref­or­ma­tion, May 15, 2021, https://reform.by/225244-zakony-o-nedopushhenii-reabilitacii-nacizma-i-…; “Belarus tough­ens laws against pro­test­ers and ‘extrem­ism’,” Euronews, August 6, 2021, https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/08/belarus-toughens-laws-against-prote….
• 238Amend­ments to the Crim­i­nal Code, 2021, https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12100112&p1=1&p5=0
• 239“Belarus’s Lukashen­ka Endors­es ‘Anti-Extrem­ist’ Amend­ments To Crim­i­nal Code,” RFE/RL, June 8, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-amendments-criminal-code/31296060.html. See also “Диффамация. Изменения. Уголовная и административная ответственность за оскорбление, клевету, надругательство над госсимволами, разжигание розни [Defama­tion. Changes. Crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty for insult, slan­der, abuse of state sym­bols, incite­ment to dis­cord],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, March 21, 2022, https://baj.by/be/analytics/diffamaciya-izmeneniya-ugolovnaya-i-adminis….
• 240“Как белорусов судили за оскорбление Лукашенко и представителей власти? Большая подборка диффамационных приговоров [How were Belaru­sians tried for insult­ing Lukashen­ka and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials? A large selec­tion of defam­a­to­ry sen­tences],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, June 2, 2022, https://spring96.org/ru/news/107924.
• 241Ele­na Sher­sto­boe­va, “Legal Analy­sis of the Draft Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus ‘On Amend­ing the Codes relat­ed to Crim­i­nal Lia­bil­i­ty Issues,” OSCE, June 2021, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/a/7/490499_0.pdf.
• 242For a review of leg­is­la­tion pri­or to 2014, see “Часть 2: Регулятивная политика в сфере ИКТ [Part II: ICT Reg­u­la­to­ry Pol­i­cy],” Digital.Report, Octo­ber 12, 2014, https://digital.report/belarus-regulyativnaya-politika-v-oblasti-ikt.
• 243“Belaru­sian law on mass events amend­ed,” Offi­cial Por­tal of the Pres­i­dent, May 24, 2021, https://president.gov.by/en/events/belarusian-law-on-mass-events-amended.
• 244“Belarus intro­duces sweep­ing restric­tions on jour­nal­ists and activists,” Meduza, May 24, 2021, https://meduza.io/en/news/2021/05/24/belarus-introduces-sweeping-restri….
• 245Pravo.by, “CODE OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS ABOUT ADMINISTRATIVE OFFENSES,” Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, https://pravo.by/upload/docs/op/HK2100091_1611262800.pdf.
• 246“New Leg­isla­tive Reg­u­la­tion in the Repub­lic of Belarus as the Author­i­ties’ Response to the Events of 2020 and How It Cor­re­lates with Inter­na­tion­al Stan­dards in the Field of Human Rights,” LawTrend and the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee, https://belhelcom.org/sites/default/files/new_legislative_regulation_in….
• 247For an ongo­ing sum­ma­ry of just some of the repres­sion, see Cathal Sheerin, “Repres­sion and resis­tance in Belarus: A month­ly chronol­o­gy,” IFEX, https://ifex.org/repression-and-resistance-in-belarus-a-monthly-chronol….
• 248As of June 6, 2023. See https://prisoners.spring96.org/en.
• 249“Belarus must end sys­tem­at­ic repres­sion, release detainees, UN Human Rights Chief says,” UN, March 17, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/belarus-must-end-system….
• 250“1000 days of state ter­ror in Belarus,” Liber­co, May 5, 2023, https://www.libereco.org/en/1000-tage-staatlicher-terror-in-belarus/.
• 251“Крымінальны пераслед з пачатку выбарчай кампаніі 2020. Спіс ад праваабаронцаў ‘Вясны’ [Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion since the begin­ning of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paign. List from ‘Vias­na’ human rights defend­ers],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, August 9, 2021, https://spring96.org/be/news/99638.
• 252“The sit­u­a­tion with human rights in Belarus. May 2023,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, June 2, 2023, https://spring96.org/be/news/111871.
• 253“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 254Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 255At the same tri­al, three oth­er Vias­na col­leagues – Valiantsin Ste­fanovich, Uladz­imir Labkovich and Dzmit­ry Salauy­ou – received a total of 24 years behind bars for their human rights work. “Belarus: Ver­dict against Nobel lau­re­ate Ales Biali­ats­ki an effort to quash scruti­ny and dis­sent say UN experts,” UN, March 2, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/belarus-verdict-against….
• 256For exam­ple, in Gomel, just one of Belarus’s six dis­tricts, there were more than 1,500 “extrem­ism” cas­es opened from August 2020 to March 2023. 440 involved insult­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials, 217 insult­ing Lukashen­ka, 154 dox­ing, and 115 incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious or oth­er social hos­til­i­ty or strife. “Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 257“Admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion in 2022: At least 6,380 arrests,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Jan­u­ary 6, 2023, https://spring96.org/en/news/110354 and “Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in 2022: 1,242 per­sons con­vict­ed on polit­i­cal grounds,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Jan­u­ary 11, 2023, https://spring96.org/en/news/110392. Since 2020, more than 1,000 crim­i­nal cas­es have involved alleged defama­tion. “Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus in 2022,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, 2022, p. 10, https://spring96.org/files/reviews/en/review_2022_en.pdf.
• 258“Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Octo­ber-Decem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, March 15, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/en/overview-of-the-fight-against-extremism‑i….
• 259“Death penal­ty threats: review of the fight against extrem­ism in Belarus in April-June 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, July 22, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/death-penalty-threats/.
• 260“Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Octo­ber-Decem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, March 15, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/en/overview-of-the-fight-against-extremism‑i….
• 261“Что предусмотрено законом за экстремистскую деятельность, разъяснили в ОВД Климовичского райисполкома [What are the pro­vi­sions of the law on extrem­ist activ­i­ty, explained by the Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs of the Klimovichi dis­trict exec­u­tive com­mit­tee],” Rod­naya Niva, April 29, 2023, https://www.rodniva.by/2023/04/chto-predusmotreno-zakonom-za-jekstremis….
• 262For an updat­ed list, see “Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists in Belarus 2023, list of col­leagues in prison,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-belarus-202…. For 2023 con­vic­tions of those arrest­ed ear­li­er, see the ear­li­er lists at https://baj.by/en/analytics/68. Also “E‑NEWSLETTER – MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS №2 (72),” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 5, 2023, https://baj.by/en/analytics/e‑newsletter-mass-media-belarus-no2-72.
• 263“E‑NEWSLETTER – MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS №2 (72),” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 5, 2023, https://baj.by/en/analytics/e‑newsletter-mass-media-belarus-no2-72.
• 264“Attacks on Media Work­ers in Belarus in 2021–2022,” Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists, June 15, 2023, https://jfj.fund/attacks-on-media-workers-in-belarus-in-2021–2022/.
• 265“Belaru­sian Activist Gets 12 Years In Prison On Charges Called ‘Polit­i­cal­ly Moti­vat­ed’,” June 3, 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-pinchuk-extradited-russia-prison/324468….
• 266Kent Mas­ing, “Blog­ger Who Gave ‘Fun­ny’ Reac­tion To Lukashenko’s Image Dies In Penal Colony After Impris­on­ment,” Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times, May 7, 2023, https://www.ibtimes.com/blogger-who-gave-funny-reaction-lukashenkos-ima….
• 267“’Прычына смерці — ягоны стан здароўя.’ Завяршылася праверка па факце смерці Мікалая Клімовіча [‘The cause of death was his state of health.’ The inves­ti­ga­tion into the death of Myko­la Klimovich has been com­plet­ed],” Nasha Niva, June 1, 2023, https://nashaniva.com/318137.
• 268“Pavel Belavus,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, accessed August 2023, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/pavel-belavus.
• 269“Mary­na Zolata­va,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, accessed August 2023, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/maryna-zolatava.
• 270“Да 20 гадоў калоніі: фігурантам ‘справы Nex­ta’ запрасілі тэрміны [Up to 20 years in prison: the sen­tences request­ed for the ‘Nex­ta case’ defen­dants],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, April 21, 2023, https://spring96.org/be/news/111491.
• 271“Belaru­sian court sen­tences NEXTA’s for­mer chief edi­tor Roman Pro­ta­se­vich to 8 years in prison,” Novaya Gaze­ta Europe, May 3, 2023, https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/05/03/belarusian-court-sentences-….
• 272Andrew Hig­gins, “Belarus Turns a Sto­ry of Love and Protest Into a Tale of Betray­al,” New York Times, May 23, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/world/europe/belarus-roman-protasevi….
• 273“Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Mary­na Zolata­va sen­tenced to 12 years in prison, Valeryia Kast­si­uho­va to 10 years,” CPJ, March 17, 2023, https://cpj.org/2023/03/belarusian-journalist-maryna-zolatava-sentenced….
• 274“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 275“Belaru­sian author­i­ties sen­tence jour­nal­ist Andrzej Poc­zobut to 8 years in prison, detain jour­nal­ist Anas­ta­sia Sharke­vich,” CPJ, Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, https://cpj.org/2023/02/belarusian-authorities-sentence-journalist-andr….
• 276“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 277Ibid
• 278“Минского предпринимателя приговорили к 15 годам колонии по делу об администрировании чатов в телеграме [Min­sk busi­ness­man sen­tenced to 15 years in prison for admin­is­ter­ing Telegram chats],” Medi­a­zona Belarus, Novem­ber 6, 2022, https://mediazona.by/news/2022/11/06/kuzmickyi; “У Мінску да 12 гадоў калоніі ў закрытым рэжыме асудзілі 27-гадовага асвятляльніка [In Min­sk, a 27-year-old illus­tra­tor was sen­tenced to 12 years in prison],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Novem­ber 11, 2023, https://spring96.org/be/news/109778.
• 279Edi­to­r­i­al Board, “Belarus pun­ish­es Siarhei Sat­suk, a jour­nal­ist who exposed the truth,” Wash­ing­ton Post, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/28/siarhei-satsuk-belar….
• 280“Dzia­n­is Ivashyn,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, accessed August 2023, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/dzianis-ivashyn.
• 281“Belarus: Jour­nal­ist Ksenya Lut­ski­na Sen­tenced To Eight Years In Prison,” IFWIJ, Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, https://www.womeninjournalism.org/threats-all/belarus-journalist-ksenya….
• 282“Kat­siary­na Andree­va: Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist sen­tenced to more than eight years in prison,” Euronews, July 13, 2022, https://www.euronews.com/2022/07/13/katsiaryna-andreeva-belarusian-jour….
• 283“Jailed Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ist Charged With Trea­son 5 Months Before Her Release,” VOA, April 8, 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/jailed-belarusian-journalist-charged-with-tre….
• 284“Five Belaru­sian Activists Each Sen­tenced To 12 Years For Reveal­ing Law Enforce­ment Data,” RFE/RL, Jan­u­ary 18, 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-activists-black-book/32228962.html.
• 285“Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/andrei-aljaksandrau and “Belarus author­i­ties accuse impris­oned media expert Andrey Alyak­san­drau of high trea­son,” Bel­sat, July 1, 2021, https://belsat.eu/en/news/01–07-2021-belarus-authorities-accuse-impriso….
• 286“Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau [in Russ­ian],” Vias­na. 2022 https://prisoners.spring96.org/ru/person/andrei-aljaksandrau.
• 287“Defen­dants in Bela­PAN case sen­tenced to 4 to 14 years of prison,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Octo­ber 6, 2022, https://baj.by/en/content/defendants-belapan-case-sentenced‑4–14-years-….
• 288“’Дело Зельцера’: 114 осужденных, 99 из которых — к лишению свободы [‘The Zeltser case’: 114 con­vict­ed, 99 to prison],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Feb­ru­ary 16, 2023, https://spring96.org/ru/news/110804.
• 289Ari­na Polzik, “’Перамога’: в чем суть плана по свержению Лукашенко [‘Per­amo­ga’: what is the essence of the plan to over­throw Lukashen­ka],” DW, Jan­u­ary 26, 2022, https://www.dw.com/ru/peramoga-v-chem-sut-plana-po-sverzheniju-lukashen….
• 290“Review of the fight against “extrem­ism” in Belarus in July-Sep­tem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/review-of-the-fight-against-extremism-in-…, “Overview of the fight against “extrem­ism” in Belarus for Octo­ber-Decem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, March 15, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/en/overview-of-the-fight-against-extremism‑i…, “Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023]” and Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 291“Belarus: ‘Anti-extrem­ism’ leg­is­la­tion used to fur­ther sup­press civ­il soci­ety,” Joint Sub­mis­sion for the 78th ses­sion of the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly, Arti­cle 19 et al, June 5, 2023, p.13, https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SR-Input-Anti-extr….
• 292“Belaru­sian police divi­sion GUBOPiK busy fer­ret­ing out extrem­ist sleep­er cells,” Besh­enkovichi Region­al Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, March 13, 2023, https://beshenkovichi.vitebsk-region.gov.by/en/regionn-en/view/belarusi….
• 293“Shot in knees and jailed: what Belaru­sians risks for their anti-war stance,” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Jan­u­ary 24, 2023, https://spring96.org/en/news/110533.
• 294“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 295“Aleh Kanavalau,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/aleh-kanavalau.
• 296See “Review of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus in July-Sep­tem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/review-of-the-fight-against-extremism-in-… and “Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Octo­ber-Decem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, March 15, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/en/overview-of-the-fight-against-extremism‑i….
• 297“Key facts,” Right to Pro­tec­tion, https://www.defenders.by/right_to_protection, accessed June 8, 2023.
• 298The Names of the Attor­neys Detained on March 20 Have Become Known,” Right to Pro­tec­tion, March 21, 2023, https://defenders.by/tpost/th71utatn1-the-names-of-the-attorneys-detain….
• 299“Attor­ney Mikhail Makarov and his wife, attor­ney Vic­to­ria Gulko­va, were arrest­ed for 15 days,” Right to Pro­tec­tion, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2022, https://defenders.by/tpost/xlic8e08s1-attorney-mikhail-makarov-and-his-… and “Five Min­sk Bar attor­neys were arrest­ed on June 14,” Right to Pro­tec­tion, June 23, 2022, https://defenders.by/tpost/iot69u4i61-five-minsk-bar-attorneys-were-arr….
• 300“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 301“Закон аб рэгістрацыі каментатараў негатыўна паўплывае на імідж краіны [Com­ment reg­is­tra­tion law will neg­a­tive­ly affect the country’s image],” Racy­ja, April 14, 2019, https://www.racyja.com/hramadstva/paulyuk-bykouski-zakon-ab-registratsy/.
• 302“Об утверждении Положения о порядке предварительной идентификации пользователей интернет-ресурса, сетевого издания [On approval of the Reg­u­la­tions on the pro­ce­dure for pre­lim­i­nary iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of users of an Inter­net resource, a net­work pub­li­ca­tion],” Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, Novem­ber 26, 2019, http://www.government.by/ru/content/8427.
• 303“Belarus: New decree severe­ly lim­its right to anonymi­ty online,” ARTICLE 19, Jan­u­ary 4, 2019, https://www.article19.org/resources/belarus-new-decree-severely-limits-….
• 304“Совет министров утвердил порядок идентификации интернет-комментаторов в Беларуси [Coun­cil of Min­is­ters approves the pro­ce­dure for iden­ti­fy­ing Inter­net com­men­ta­tors in Belarus],” dev.com, Novem­ber 26, 2018, https://dev.by/news/sovmin-commentators.
• 305“Free Wi-Fi at ten Min­sk metro sta­tions in 2019,” BelTA, Decem­ber 5, 2018, https://eng.belta.by/society/view/free-wi-fi-at-ten-minsk-metro-station….
• 306All Belaru­sians and for­eign­ers in Belarus must pro­vide their pass­port infor­ma­tion when pur­chas­ing a SIM card or mobile sub­scrip­tion. Belaru­sians’ pass­port infor­ma­tion is part of an elec­tron­ic data­base includ­ing per­son­al data that is acces­si­ble by the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or. See “Oper­a­tion Heat in Action,” Char­ter 97, July 31, 2021, https://charter97.org/en/news/2021/7/31/431475/.
• 307Tetyana Lokot, “Belarus bans Tor and Oth­er Anonymiz­ers,” Glob­al Voic­es, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2015, https://advox.globalvoices.org/2015/02/25/belarus-bans-tor-and-other-an….
• 308“В Беларуси заблокированы 73 ресурса, среди них – сайты Радыё Свабода, Еврорадио, ‘Медиазона. Беларусь’ [73 resources have been blocked in Belarus, among them the sites of Radio Svabo­da, Euro­ra­dio, ‘Medi­a­zona. Belarus’],” Cur­rent Time, August 21, 2020, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/belarus-media-blocking/30796313.html.
• 309“Об установлении запретов и ограничений на перемещение товаров через таможенную границу Республики Беларусь [On the estab­lish­ment of pro­hi­bi­tions and restric­tions on the move­ment of goods across the cus­toms bor­der of the Repub­lic of Belarus],” Decree of the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, March 18, 1997, No. 218, http://pravo.levonevsky.org/bazaby09/sbor76/text76050.htm.
• 310Kamil Klysin­s­ki and Piotr Zochowsi, “The legal­i­sa­tion of ter­ror. The Belaru­sian regime expands the legal basis for repres­sion,” Cen­ter for East­ern Stud­ies, May 21, 2021, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2021–05-21/legalisation‑t….
• 311Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, “It’s Enough for Peo­ple to Feel It Exists: Civ­il Soci­ety, Secu­ri­ty and Sur­veil­lance in Belarus,” 2016, https://amnesty.org/download/Documents/EUR4943062016ENGLISH.PDF.
• 312Valery Kar­bele­vich, “За кім сочаць спэцслужбы ў Беларусі? За ўсімі. Карбалевіч пра скандал з праслухоўваньнем расейскай амбасады [Who are the spe­cial ser­vices in Belarus watch­ing? Every­one. Kar­bale­vich on the scan­dal of the wire­tap­ping of the Russ­ian Embassy],” Radio Lib­er­ty, June 15, 2022, https://www.svaboda.org/a/31899294.html.
• 313See, for exam­ple, “Уехавшие лидеры оппозиции vs ВНС: как национальные СМИ нарушали стандарты в январе [Left oppo­si­tion lead­ers vs BPA: how nation­al media broke stan­dards in Jan­u­ary],” Media IQ, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2021, https://mediaiq.by/article/uehavshie-lidery-oppozicii-vs-vns-kak-nacion….
• 314“Kotatogram: губазікаўцы паказалі, як яны аналізуюць пратэсныя чаты. Вось што варта ведаць [Kotatogram: GUBOPiK showed how it ana­lyzes protest chats. Here’s what you should know],” Nasha Niva, Decem­ber 17, 2022, https://nashaniva.com/305560.
• 315“Тлумачым, якім чынам сілавікі знаходзяць карыстальнікаў Telegram і як гэтага пазбегнуць [We explain how secu­ri­ty forces find Telegram users and how to avoid it],” Nasha Niva, August 11, 2022, https://nashaniva.com/294433.
• 316“Тэлеграм-бот ‘Магніт’, які сілавікі ставяць затрыманым: якія звесткі ён можа збіраць і як ад гэтага абараніцца [The Telegram bot ‘Mag­nit’, which the secu­ri­ty forces installed on detainee phones: what infor­ma­tion can it col­lect and how to pro­tect your­self from it],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, April 5, 2023, https://baj.by/be/analytics/telegram-bot-magnit-yaki-silaviki-stavyac‑z….
• 317“Belaru­sian police now uses Inter­net intel­li­gence to coun­ter­act eco­nom­ic crimes,” BelTA, March 2, 2023, https://eng.belta.by/society/view/belarusian-police-now-uses-internet‑i….
• 318Ali­ak­san­dr Kudryt­s­ki, “Belarus Rolls Out Big Broth­er to Counter Worst Unrest in Decades,” Bloomberg, March 27, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017–03-27/belarus-rolls-ou….
• 319“Com­men­tary to Decree No. 187 of 25 May 2017,” Offi­cial Inter­net Por­tal of the Pres­i­dent, May 26, 2017, http://president.gov.by/en/news_en/view/commentary-to-decree-no-187-of-…; “Белтелеком» хочет установить видеонаблюдение в минских многоэтажках. По 2 рубля с квартиры [‘Bel­t­ele­com’ wants to install video sur­veil­lance in Minsk’s high-rise build­ings. For 2 rubles per apart­ment],” Dev.com, May 20, 2022, https://devby.io/news/beltelekom-hochet-ustanovit-100-tysyach-videokame….
• 320“Belaru­sian police now uses Inter­net intel­li­gence to coun­ter­act eco­nom­ic crimes,” BelTA, March 2, 2023, https://eng.belta.by/society/view/belarusian-police-now-uses-internet‑i….
• 321“Review of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus in July-Sep­tem­ber 2022,” Human Con­stan­ta, Octo­ber 28, 2022, https://humanconstanta.org/en/review-of-the-fight-against-extremism-in-….
• 322“Минсвязи, Минобразования и компания Huawei подписали меморандум о взаимопонимании [Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Huawei signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing],” BelTA, July 4, 2019, https://www.belta.by/society/view/minsvjazi-minobrazovanija-i-kompanija…; Huawei Releas­es Pro­pos­al for Belarus Nation­al ICT Pri­or­i­ties, Help­ing Build an IT Belarus,” Huawei, May 16, 2018, https://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2018/5/Huawei-Belarus-Natio….
• 323“‘Белтелеком’ завершил тестирование сети пятого поколения 5G [Bel­t­ele­com com­plet­ed the test­ing of a 5G net­work],” Bel­t­ele­com, Jan­u­ary 14, 2021, https://beltelecom.by/news/main/beltelekom-zavershil-testirovanie-seti-….
• 324Valentin Weber, “The World­wide Web of Chi­nese and Russ­ian Infor­ma­tion Con­trols,” Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, Sep­tem­ber 2019, https://ctga.web.ox.ac.uk/files/theworldwidewebofchineseandrussianinfor….
• 325“О Стратегии развития информационного общества в Республике Беларусь на период до 2015 года и плане первоочередных мер по реализации Стратегии развития информационного общества в Республике Беларусь на 2010 год [On the Strat­e­gy for the Devel­op­ment of the Infor­ma­tion Soci­ety in the Repub­lic of Belarus for the peri­od until 2015 and the plan of pri­or­i­ty mea­sures for the imple­men­ta­tion of the Infor­ma­tion Soci­ety Devel­op­ment Strat­e­gy for the Repub­lic of Belarus for 2010],” Coun­cil of Min­is­ters, August 9, 2010, http://pravo.levonevsky.org/bazaby11/republic05/text187.htm; “Национальная программа ускоренного развития услуг в сфере ИКТ на 2011–2015 гг. [Nation­al pro­gram of accel­er­at­ed devel­op­ment of ser­vices in the field of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies for 2011–2015],” http://nmo.basnet.by/program/npurus/.
• 326Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, “It’s Enough For Peo­ple To Feel It Exists: Civ­il Soci­ety, Secre­cy And Sur­veil­lance In Belarus,” July 6, 2016, https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/its-enough-for-people-to-feel-it-exi…. Since much of Belarus’s inter­net traf­fic pass­es through Rus­sia, which also employs SORM, it is also pre­sum­ably spied on by that country’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices, which main­tain close rela­tions with their Belaru­sian coun­ter­parts.
• 327Andrei Solda­tov and Iri­na Boro­gan, “Russia’s Sur­veil­lance State,” World Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, Fall 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20140901223912/http://www.worldpolicy.org/j….
• 328“Apple сделает бесполезным оборудование белорусских спецслужб по взлому iPhone [Apple will make use­less the equip­ment of the Belaru­sian intel­li­gence ser­vices for crack­ing the iPhone],” Naviny.by, June 14, 2018, https://spektr.by/archives/53791.
• 329Odred Yaron, “Israeli Phone-hack­ing Firm Cellebrite Vowed Not to Sell to Sanc­tioned Coun­tries. So What’s It Doing in Belarus?,” Haaretz, August 18, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-s-israeli-phone-hacki… and https://twitter.com/joshuawongcf/status/1295792290099691521?lang=en.
• 330Adam Jaffe, “Cellebrite Stops Sell­ing Its Dig­i­tal Intel­li­gence Offer­ings in Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and Belarus, Cellebrite, March 18, 2021, https://www.cellebrite.com/en/cellebrite-stops-selling-its-digital-inte….
• 331“Big Broth­er is unwell: Why Syne­sis was hit by Euro­pean sanc­tions,” Euro­ra­dio, Jan­u­ary 18, 2021, https://euroradio.fm/en/big-brother-unwell-why-synesis-was-hit-european….
• 332“U.S. Trea­sury Tar­gets Belaru­sian Sup­port for Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine,” US Depart­ment of the Trea­sury, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0607.
• 333“Британский суд отклонил иск Syne­sis о снятии санкций [British court dis­miss­es Syne­sis’ claim to lift sanc­tions],” Dev.by, March 21, 2023, https://devby.io/news/synesis-london.
• 334U.S. Depart­ment of State, “2018 Invest­ment Cli­mate State­ments,” https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-investment-climate-statements/belarus.
• 335Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, “It’s Enough For Peo­ple To Feel It Exists: Civ­il Soci­ety, Secre­cy And Sur­veil­lance In Belarus,” Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, July 6, 2016, https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/its-enough-for-people-to-feel-it-exi….
• 336Ibid.
• 337“КГБ и ОАЦ будут следить за пользователями онлайн-услуг [The KGB and OAC will mon­i­tor users of online ser­vices],” Neto­b­ser­va­to­ry, https://netobservatory.by/kgb-i-oac-budut-sledit-za-polzovatelyami-onla….
• 338“КГБ и ОАЦ будут следить за пользователями онлайн-услуг [The KGB and OAC will mon­i­tor users of online ser­vices],” Neto­b­ser­va­to­ry, https://netobservatory.by/kgb-i-oac-budut-sledit-za-polzovatelyami-onla….
• 339See https://pravo.by/document/?guid=12551&p0=H12100099&p1=1&p5=0. For an Eng­lish analy­sis and com­par­i­son of the law to the EU’s GDPR, see Ale­na Potorskaya, “The Per­son­al Data Pro­tec­tion Law in Belarus,” Revera, May 25, 2021, https://revera.by/en/info-centr/news-and-analytical-materials/815-the‑p….
• 340Newslet­ter Belarus, Rodl & Part­ner, Octo­ber 2021, https://www.roedl.com/en-gb/de/media/publications/newsletters/newslette….
• 341“Что изменит новый закон о защите персональных данных в Беларуси [What will change in regard to the new law on the pro­tec­tion of per­son­al data in Belarus],” Human Con­stan­ta, May 25, 2021, https://humanconstanta.org/chto-izmenit-novyj-zakon-o-zashhite-personal….
• 342Kamil Klysin­s­ki and Piotr Zochowsi, “The legal­i­sa­tion of ter­ror. The Belaru­sian regime expands the legal basis for repres­sion,” Cen­ter for East­ern Stud­ies, May 21, 2021, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2021–05-21/legalisation‑t….
• 343https://cpd.by/en/about-center/
• 344“Пресса в эпоху репрессий: кто пишет доносы на независимые СМИ и как им противостоять? [The press in an era of repres­sion: who writes denun­ci­a­tions of inde­pen­dent media and how to counter them?],” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, June 7, 2022, https://baj.by/be/analytics/pressa-v-epohu-repressiy-kto-pishet-donosy-….
• 345Includ­ing the user’s name, sur­name, type of ID, ID num­ber, and name of the state body which issued the ID, as per Art. 6, Reg­u­la­tion on com­put­er clubs and inter­net café func­tion­ing.
• 346Index on Cen­sor­ship, “Belarus: Pulling the Plug. Pol­i­cy Paper on Dig­i­tal Chal­lenges to Free­dom of Expres­sion in Belarus,” Jan­u­ary 2013, https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IDX_Belaru….
• 347“Belarus must end sys­tem­at­ic repres­sion, release detainees, UN Human Rights Chief says,” Unit­ed Nations, March 17, 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/belarus-must-end-system….
• 348“’We don’t want Belarus to become an infor­ma­tion black hole.’ Dis­cus­sions at Free Jour­nal­ism Forum,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Decem­ber 2, 2022, https://baj.by/en/analytics/we-dont-want-belarus-become-information-bla….
• 349“Barom­e­ter,” Reporters With­out Bor­ders, accessed April 2023, https://rsf.org/en/barometer; “A Record Num­ber of Jour­nal­ists Were Detained World­wide Pri­or to Evan Gershkovich’s Arrest,” The Wall Street Jour­nal, April 20, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a‑record-number-of-journalists-were-detain….
• 350Anna Plot­niko­va, “Jour­nal­ism in Belarus ‘Dealt a Huge Blow’,” Voice of Amer­i­ca, Jan­u­ary 4, 2023, https://www.voanews.com/a/journalism-in-belarus-dealt-a-huge-blow/69045….
• 351“Belarus enacts new rules restrict­ing cit­i­zens from leav­ing,” DW, June 1, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-enacts-new-rules-restricting-citizens-fro….
• 352Igor Ilyash, “Lukashen­ka is repop­u­lat­ing Belarus with pro-gov­ern­ment cit­i­zens,” open­Democ­ra­cy, Jan­u­ary 11, 2023, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/belarus-alexander-lukashenka-rebui….
• 353“’Ты что, против президента писал?’ Журналист белорусской службы Радио Свобода – о желтых бирках в колонии, ШИЗО и своем освобождении [‘Did you write against the pres­i­dent?’ A jour­nal­ist of the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Radio Lib­er­ty – about yel­low tags in the colony, the deten­tion cen­ter and his release],” Cur­rent Time, Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/32056566.html.
• 354“Attacks on Jour­nal­ists, Blog­gers and Media Work­ers in 2021–2022: Belarus,” Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists (forth­com­ing).
• 355’Не скучаете по вашему уютному домику?’ Белорусские силовики уговаривают политических эмигрантов вернуться в страну и ‘начать новую жизнь’. А тех, кто соглашается, отправляют в СИЗО [‘Don’t you miss your cozy house?’ Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces per­suade polit­i­cal emi­grants to return to the coun­try and ‘start a new life.’ And those who agree are sent to jail],” Meduza, Feb­ru­ary 10, 2023, https://meduza.io/feature/2023/02/10/ne-skuchaete-po-vashemu-uyutnomu‑d….
• 356“Поправки в Закон о лишении гражданства вступят в силу в июле [Amend­ments to the Law on Depri­va­tion of Cit­i­zen­ship will come into Force in July],” Office Life, Jan­u­ary 10, 2023, https://officelife.media/news/39710-popravki-v-zakon-o-lishenii-grazhda…. This arti­cle also includes a link to the amend­ed law.
• 357Igor Ilyash, “Lukashen­ka is repop­u­lat­ing Belarus with pro-gov­ern­ment cit­i­zens,” open­Democ­ra­cy, Jan­u­ary 11, 2023, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/belarus-alexander-lukashenka-rebui….
• 358Anas­tasi­ia Kruope, “In Belarus, Jailed for Pro­tect­ing Loved Ones,” Human Rights Watch, Jan­u­ary 23, 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/23/belarus-jailed-protecting-loved-ones.
• 359“Mass media in Belarus in 2022. Annu­al review,” Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Jan­u­ary 20, 2023, https://baj.by/en/analytics/mass-media-belarus-2022-annual-review.
• 360Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, ”Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists in Belarus 2023, list of col­leagues in prison,” July 18, 2023, https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-belarus-202….
• 361“Белорусский активист Антон Мотолько сообщил, что силовики разгромили квартиру его матери при обыске [Belaru­sian activist Anton Motolko says secu­ri­ty forces smashed his moth­er’s apart­ment dur­ing a search],” Cur­rent Time, June 28, 2022, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/motolko-razgromili-kvartiru/31920092.html.
• 362Anton Mardilovich, “’Все разбурено’. Беларуские силовики демонстративно громят квартиры при обыске [‘Every­thing destroyed. Belaru­sian secu­ri­ty forces demon­stra­tive­ly smash apart­ments dur­ing search­es],” Medi­a­zona, May 19, 2022, https://mediazona.by/article/2022/05/19/mayhem.
• 363Pavel Slunkin, “A prison of the mind: Lukashenka’s pur­suit of exiled Belaru­sians,” ECFR, Jan­u­ary 30, 2023, https://ecfr.eu/article/a‑prison-of-the-mind-lukashenkas-pursuit-of-exi…. This strat­e­gy of intim­i­da­tion became legal in 2023. See “Lukashen­ka Signs Law Allow­ing Con­fis­ca­tion Of Prop­er­ty For ‘Unfriend­ly Actions’ Against Belarus,” RFE/RL, Jan­u­ary 6, 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-law-confiscation-property-unfriendly-ac….
• 364“Обзор борьбы с ‘экстремизмом’ в Беларуси за январь-март 2023 [Overview of the fight against ‘extrem­ism’ in Belarus for Jan­u­ary-March 2023],” Human Con­stan­ta, April 18, 2023, https://humanconstanta.org/obzor-borby-s-ekstremizmom-v-belarusi-za-yan….
• 365“Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in its after­math,” UN Human Rights Coun­cil, March 4, 2022, pp. 11–12, https://t.co/l2X8haATLF.
• 366“Sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in its after­math,” UN, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2023, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G23/008/97/PDF/G2300897.p….
• 367Losik over­saw the Telegram chan­nel Belarus Golovno­vo Moz­ga (Belarus of the Brain) and worked as a jour­nal­ist for RFE/RL’s Belaru­sian ser­vice. Arrest­ed in 2020, he was sen­tenced to 15 years in prison in 2021. See “Ihar Losik,” List of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers, Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, https://prisoners.spring96.org/en/person/ihar-losik.
• 368“Ігар Лосік другі раз запар трапіў у штрафны ізалятар [Ihar Losik was impris­oned for the sec­ond time in a row],” Radio Lib­er­ty, April 6, 2023, https://www.svaboda.org/a/32352195.html.
• 369“‘We Have To Save The Media’: After Two Years Under Attack, Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ists Fight To Sur­vive,” RFE/RL, Mayt 3, 2022, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-journalists-jailed-world-press-freedom-….
• 370Yury Drakakhurst, “Хто і навошта прыдумаў «пакаяльныя» відэа? Адказвае прадстаўнік ByPol Аляксандар Азараў [Who invent­ed ‘repen­tant’ videos and why? The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of ByPol ​​Alexan­der Azarov answers],” Radio Lib­er­ty, May 19, 2021, https://www.svaboda.org/a/31855304.html.
• 371“25 March, Inter­na­tion­al Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Belarus, Marked with more repres­sion,” EUvs­Dis­in­for, March 25, 2023, https://euvsdisinfo.eu/25-march-international-day-of-solidarity-with-be….
• 372Evgeniya Brovk­i­na, “’Dress up the figher’. How the genre of apolo­gies to the cam­era has evolved [‘Наряди змагара’. Как эволюционировал жанр извинений перед камерой],” Medi­a­zona, Octo­ber 11, 2021, https://mediazona.by/article/2021/10/11/apologize‑2.
• 373Ibid
• 374Ilya Sulzhys­ki, “The Evo­lu­tion of Lies: New Forms of State Pro­pa­gan­da in Belarus,” 7th Annu­al ‘Belaru­sian Stud­ies in the 21st Cen­tu­ry’ Con­fer­ence, Feb­ru­ary 18–19, 2022, https://belarusdigest.com/story/7th-annual-belarusian-studies-in-the-21….
• 375Herve Ascen­sio, “Report on the seri­ous threat to the OSCE human dimen­sion in Belarus since 5 Novem­ber 2020,” OSCE, May 11, 2023, https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/d/5/543240.pdf.
• 376“Мониторинг языка вражды в отношении ЛГБТК+ в СМИ Беларуси в 2021 году [Mon­i­tor­ing hate speech against LGBTQ+ in the Belaru­sian media in 2021],” Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance, Jan­u­ary 5, 2022, https://j4t.info/2022/01/05/monitoring-yazyika-vrazhdyi-v-otnoshenii-lg….
• 377“Mon­i­tor­ing of the Hate Speech against LGBTQ+ in the media of Belarus in 2022,” Jour­nal­ists for Tol­er­ance, 2022, https://j4t.info/2023/02/04/monitoring-yazyika-vrazhdyi-v-otnoshenii-lg….
• 378Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists, https://jfj.fund/jfj/journalists-for-tolerance/.
• 379“Задержания, обыски и профилактические беседы перед референдумом. Хроника преследования 12–15 февраля [Deten­tions, search­es and pre­ven­tive inter­views before the ref­er­en­dum. Chron­i­cle of the per­se­cu­tion 12–15 Feb­ru­ary],” Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Feb­ru­ary 15, 2022, https://spring96.org/ru/news/106806.
• 380“ГУБОПиК снова «отличился» гомофобным видео, попутно обозвав белоруса фашистом. Но именно фашисты ненавидели геев — и вот почему [GUBOPiK again ‘dis­tin­guished itself’ with a homo­pho­bic video and call­ing a Belaru­sian a fas­cist. But it was the fas­cists who hat­ed gays-and here’s why],” Zerka­lo, Decem­ber 28, 2022, https://news.zerkalo.io/cellar/29236.html.
• 381“Месяц не гордости, а страха. Как чувствуют себя сегодня ЛГБТК-люди в Беларуси [A month not of pride, but fear. How do LGBTQ peo­ple in Belarus feel today?],” Euro­ra­dio, June 23, 2022, https://euroradio.fm/ru/mesyac-ne-gordosti-straha-kak-chuvstvuyut-sebya….
• 382“Attacks on Media Work­ers in Belarus in 2021–2022,” Jus­tice for Jour­nal­ists, June 15, 2023, https://jfj.fund/attacks-on-media-workers-in-belarus-in-2021–2022/.
• 383Luke Pierce, “Tech Army Set Up by Europe’s Last Dic­ta­tor Turns on Its Cre­ator,” Dai­ly Beast, Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/belarus-hi-tech-park-turns-on-its-creator….
• 384Yle­nia Gos­toli, “How I became the spokesper­son for a secre­tive Belaru­sian ‘hack­tivist’ group,” TRT World, Feb­ru­ary 10, 2022, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-i-became-the-spokesperson-for-a‑s….
• 385https://twitter.com/cpartisans?lang=en
• 386Ryan Gal­lagher, “Hack­ers Release Data Trove From Belarus in Bid to Over­throw Lukashenko Regime, KYC360, August 26, 2021, https://kyc360.riskscreen.com/news/hackers-release-data-trove-from-bela….
• 387See https://belsat.eu/en/tag/cyber-partisans/
• 388See https://bypol.org/en
• 389Hleb Lia­pei­ka, “Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists col­lab­o­rate with the hack­tivists who have a lot of sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion — how does it work and is this eth­i­cal?,” The Fix, Octo­ber 25, 2022, https://thefix.media/2022/10/25/belarusian-journalists-collaborate-with….
• 390“Belaru­sian cyber par­ti­sans hack into impor­tant state data­base,” Euro­ra­dio, March 8, 2023, https://euroradio.fm/en/belarusian-cyber-partisans-hack-important-state….
• 391Hleb Lia­pei­ka, “Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists col­lab­o­rate with the hack­tivists who have a lot of sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion — how does it work and is this eth­i­cal?,” The Fix, Octo­ber 25, 2022, https://thefix.media/2022/10/25/belarusian-journalists-collaborate-with….
• 392“Belarus dic­ta­tor’s fam­i­ly loves EU lux­u­ries, flight data show,” EUob­serv­er, Decem­ber 1, 2022, https://euobserver.com/world/156494.
• 393Patrick How­ell O’Neill, “Hack­ers are try­ing to top­ple Belarus’s dic­ta­tor, with help from the inside,” MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review, August 26, 2021, https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/26/1033205/belarus-cyber-parti….
• 394https://cepa.org/article/belaruss-digital-brain-drain-another-casualty-….
• 395Mikhail Poloznyakov “’Мегазадача Белоруссия’. Как Роскомнадзор цензурирует беларуский интернет [’Mega Task Belarus’: How Roskom­nad­zor cen­sors the Belaru­sian Inter­net],” Medi­a­zona Belarus, Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, https://mediazona.by/article/2023/02/08/rknby.
• 396Car­ley Page, “Ukraine says Belaru­sian hack­ers are tar­get­ing its defense forces,” TechCrunch, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/25/belarus-hackers-ukraine/.
• 397Phil Muncast­er, “Ghost­writer Group Tar­gets NATO Refugee Effort,” Infos­e­cu­ri­ty Mag­a­zine, March 2, 2022, https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ghostwriter-group-targets-na….
• 398Adam Rawns­ley, “Face­book Blocks ‘Ghost­writer’ Hack­ers Tar­get­ing Ukraine’s Army,” Dai­ly Beast, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2022, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ghostwriter-hackers-targeting-ukraines-ar….
• 399Shane Hunt­ley, “An update on the threat land­scape,” Threat Analy­sis Group, Google, March 7, 2022, https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/update-threat-landscape-ukrai….
• 400Dary­na Anto­niuk, “Belarus-linked hack­ing group tar­gets Poland with new dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign,” The Record, April 19, 2023, https://therecord.media/ghostwriter-belarus-hacking-group-targets-polan….
• 401“The Ghost­writer Cam­paign as a Mul­ti-vec­tor Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tion,” Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, 2023, https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2699483/Ghostwrit….
• 402“Десятки новостных ресурсов в Беларуси и России оказались ‘взломаны’ хакерами из Anony­mous [Dozens of news resources in Belarus and Rus­sia were “hacked” by hack­ers from Anony­mous],” Marketing.by, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2021, https://marketing.by/novosti-rynka/desyatki-novostnykh-resursov-v-belar….
• 403Brid­get John­son, “Anony­mous Hack­ers Vow to Accel­er­ate Cyber War, ‘Par­a­lyze’ Putin Regime ‘by Any Means Nec­es­sary’,” Home­land Secu­ri­ty Today, March 15, 2022, https://www.hstoday.us/featured/anonymous-hackers-vow-to-accelerate-cyb….
• 404https://industrialcyber.co/industrial-cyber-attacks/hacker-group-disclo…
• 405“State provider spoofs DNS respons­es for users,” Human Con­stan­ta, May 26, 2021, https://humanconstanta.org/en/state-provider-spoofs-dns-responses-for‑u….
• 406“Call for inputs on human rights in Belarus for the report of the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights in Belarus to the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly,” Access Now, ARTICLE 19, Human Con­stan­ta, and Inter­na­tion­al Media Sup­port (IMS), May 31, 2021, https://www.mediasupport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Belarus-Submiss….
• 407Thomas Brew­ster, “Big Web Secu­ri­ty Firms Ditch Rus­sia, Leav­ing Inter­net Users Open To More Krem­lin Snoop­ing,” Forbs, March 11, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/11/russians-exposed….
• 408Sarah Coble, “Avast Sus­pends Oper­a­tions in Rus­sia and Belarus,” Infos­e­cu­ri­ty, March 11, 2022, https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/avast-suspends-russia/.