The Internet Governance Forum aims to legitimize suppression of free speech

The Belaru­sian IGF forum orga­niz­ers say it’s the “biggest open plat­form in the coun­try to dis­cuss impor­tant Inter­net top­ics,” and “every­one can con­tribute to design­ing the agen­da.”

“In a polit­i­cal cri­sis with exten­sive repres­sions, par­ties can­not have a fruit­ful dia­logue,” reads the joint state­ment from BAJ, Human Con­stan­ta, Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee, Barys Zvozskau Belaru­sian Human Rights House, Legal Ini­tia­tive, Office for Euro­pean Exper­tise and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (OEEC) and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions.

Activists for human rights remind that the forum wasn’t held in 2020–2023 for rea­sons relat­ed to fraud­u­lent elec­tions, when Inter­net access was great­ly lim­it­ed. Fur­ther­more, Hoster.by com­pa­ny, which has been under pres­sure before and is a for­mer affil­i­ate of Tut.by, now coor­di­nates the event.

“Due to the cur­rent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Belarus impact­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es, we will not crit­i­cize the event’s nation­al orga­niz­ers,” stat­ed the human rights activists. “Nev­er­the­less, we have ques­tions for the inter­na­tion­al part­ners who have con­firmed their par­tic­i­pa­tion and encour­age them to con­sid­er the wider con­se­quences.”

Since 2020, the gov­ern­ment has increased its efforts to sup­press online crit­i­cism, result­ing in the block­ing of many inde­pen­dent news sources and label­ing some groups’ online con­tent as “extrem­ist” or “ter­ror­ist.” This has forced sev­er­al media out­lets to shut down or relo­cate abroad.

“The Forum aims to legit­imize the sup­pres­sion of media free­dom.”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of BAJ and Human Con­stan­ta believe that the par­tic­i­pa­tion of high-rank­ing for­eign part­ners will con­tribute to this legit­imiza­tion. This will send a clear sig­nal of accept­ing such prac­tice amidst the grow­ing repres­sion in Belarus.

The state­ment high­lights that advo­cates for human rights endorse the fun­da­men­tal forum prin­ci­ples of being trans­par­ent, acces­si­ble, col­lab­o­ra­tive, and non-com­mer­cial. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in Belarus, hav­ing such dis­cus­sions is present­ly not fea­si­ble.

“We believe that imi­tat­ing an open forum with inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions’ sup­port is harm­ful. We urge inter­na­tion­al actors not to par­tic­i­pate in the event and espe­cial­ly not to fund fan­cy ban­quets for offi­cials and law enforcers who con­tin­ue to destroy what remains of online free­dom in the coun­try.”

The state­ment authors request that you write a let­ter, send a post­card and demand free­dom for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers who had upheld the forum’s devel­op­ment as a dia­logue plat­form before the 2020 cri­sis, such as Mary­na Zolata­va, Lud­mi­la Chek­ina, and Nas­ta Loi­ka.

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