In jail, in exile, or burned out. State of Belarusian independent media as we head into 2023

Three difficult years

Belarus has nev­er been a bea­con of free press under Alexan­der Lukashenka’s admin­is­tra­tion, but the sit­u­a­tion has sig­nif­i­cant­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed fol­low­ing the rigged 2020 elec­tion, which was fol­lowed by mass protests that were even­tu­al­ly sup­pressed. Inde­pen­dent out­lets in the coun­try have faced wide­spread repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion.

In 2021, Lukashenka’s regime launched a bru­tal attack on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, with the offices of two of the most pop­u­lar out­lets, TUT.by and Nasha Niva, being prac­ti­cal­ly destroyed and their heads detained along with dozens of media work­ers from oth­er organ­i­sa­tions. Oth­er pro­fes­sion­als have fled the coun­try, with more than 100 choos­ing Ukraine as a safe haven, accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ).

On Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022 these jour­nal­ists were forced to flee again, this time from Russia’s war in Ukraine. As a result, many inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists are now work­ing from Poland, Lithua­nia, Geor­gia, Ger­many, and the Czech Repub­lic. This sec­ond “relo­ca­tion” has had a major impact on people’s finances and men­tal health, and has added to the already neg­a­tive agen­da that jour­nal­ists have been work­ing with since the 2020 protests. Despite these chal­lenges, how­ev­er, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists from Belarus remain deter­mined to con­tin­ue their work, even in the face of increas­ing dan­ger and repres­sion. 

Financial situation is stable at the moment but unpredictable

Barys Haret­s­ki, spokesper­son for the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), notes that one major prob­lem has been the freez­ing of Ukrain­ian bank accounts belong­ing to Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists. While the BAJ has been able to help around 60 peo­ple regain access to their funds, 43 accounts remain frozen, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ukrain­ian author­i­ties has slowed. 

Haret­s­ki adds that while there are suf­fi­cient funds avail­able to sup­port media organ­i­sa­tions, find­ing indi­vid­ual assis­tance is dif­fi­cult, as pro­grams tend to focus on indi­vid­u­als who were repressed in the past year. This means that many of the jour­nal­ists who fled the coun­try in 2020–2021 are unable to access the sup­port they need, although those who fled the war in Ukraine have bet­ter chances.

“There is a wor­ry that sup­port may decrease in the com­ing years, because the whole world has to sup­port Ukraine now, and we our­selves sup­port it. It is clear that some of the mon­ey has been redi­rect­ed to Ukraine because there is a big need there”, says Haret­s­ki. 

Nas­tas­sia Rou­da, direc­tor of Nasha Niva, also points to this issue. She adds that pre­vi­ous­ly her out­let man­aged to devel­op a busi­ness mod­el to be inde­pen­dent from any­body [a mix of adver­tis­ing rev­enue and sub­scrip­tions], but now they have to rely on grants. “We have lost our ground and now we have the uncer­tain­ty”, admits Rou­da.

Access to information and sources inside the country deteriorates, and officials pass restrictive laws

Access to infor­ma­tion has dete­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly for jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing Belarus, with offi­cials increas­ing­ly hid­ing offi­cial sta­tis­tics and declin­ing to com­ment on any­thing. Access to sources with­in the coun­try has also become more dif­fi­cult, as secu­ri­ty forces intim­i­date those who have been inter­ro­gat­ed and threat­en them with neg­a­tive con­se­quences if they share infor­ma­tion with the media. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, new restric­tive laws have made it a crim­i­nal offence to share infor­ma­tion with out­lets deemed “extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tions,” which includes almost all inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion ini­tia­tives. Vik­tar Kulin­ka, who sim­ply sent a pho­to of a Russ­ian mil­i­tary con­voy to the mon­i­tor­ing project “Belarus­ki Hajun”, has been sen­tenced to three years in prison. Even being a sub­scriber for such pub­li­ca­tions can be con­sid­ered an offence.

Direc­tor of Nasha Niva shares a case of repres­sions in the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, where 40 peo­ple were inter­ro­gat­ed, but jour­nal­ists found out about this only weeks lat­er. “This was a very seri­ous wake-up call. Just a year ago we couldn’t imag­ine such a delay,” says Rou­da. 

Anas­tasiya Boi­ka, edi­tor of Mediazona.Belarus, a small out­let with a staff of less than a dozen, notes that peo­ple in Belarus are hes­i­tant to speak to jour­nal­ists even anony­mous­ly: “They just don’t want to have any kind of rela­tion­ship with jour­nal­ists, they delete cor­re­spon­dence.” 

Boi­ka also points out that the prac­tice of clos­ing polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed court hear­ings to the pub­lic has become more com­mon, with jour­nal­ists now sur­prised when a hear­ing is open. Nobody shares any details from hear­ing with the media, which makes it prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble for jour­nal­ists to find out even what charges are being brought against indi­vid­u­als. 

Offi­cials are about to pass a law that would allow Alexan­der Lukashen­ka to strip cit­i­zen­ship from those con­vict­ed under extrem­ist charges, as well as those found guilty of “caus­ing seri­ous harm to the inter­ests of Belarus” if they are out­side the coun­try. Anoth­er new law allows for peo­ple to be found guilty in a tri­al with­out their pres­ence. The first such tri­al, which began in Decem­ber, involves jour­nal­ist Dmit­ry Navosha, founder of major sports pub­lish­ers sports.ru and tribuna.by, and co-founder of the sol­i­dar­i­ty fund BYSOL.

Journalists get burned out and leave the profession, and there is nowhere to find new ones

Accord­ing to Barys Haret­s­ki, spokesper­son for the BAJ, requests for psy­cho­log­i­cal help are on the rise as jour­nal­ists strug­gle with the neg­a­tive con­di­tions they have been work­ing under for the past three years. 

Nas­tas­sia Rou­da, direc­tor of Nasha Niva, also cites this issue, shar­ing that some of her jour­nal­ists left the out­let after get­ting burned out. Rou­da notes that the “mobil­i­sa­tion state” that jour­nal­ists have been liv­ing in for more than two years has tak­en a toll on their resources. The lack of plan­ning and the risks asso­ci­at­ed with work­ing for an “extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion,” includ­ing the dan­ger of arrest when try­ing to come to Belarus or harm to fam­i­ly mem­bers, have also con­tributed to the chal­lenges faced by jour­nal­ists.

“We don’t know what the future holds. And the ten­den­cy is such (it gets worse every year) that not every­one believes any­thing will get bet­ter in 2023,” acknowl­edges Rou­da.

The short­age of young, trained jour­nal­ists is anoth­er con­cern, as there are almost no pro­grams to teach new writ­ers and few who are will­ing to take on the risks asso­ci­at­ed with the work. Anas­tasiya Boi­ka, edi­tor of Mediazona.Belarus, notes that find­ing peo­ple to fill lead­er­ship posi­tions has been par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult, as many have been work­ing non-stop for the past two years and have had lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op the nec­es­sary skills. Her out­let opened a vacan­cy for a sec­ond edi­tor in June, and found one only half a year lat­er.

“It seems to me that in this whole sit­u­a­tion, it’s extreme­ly impor­tant not to for­get about peo­ple and to think about their moral state because, well, it’s like a night­mare. Imag­ine the lev­el of men­tal health of these peo­ple who have to write every day about the hor­rors hap­pen­ing in their coun­try, and in a neigh­bour­ing coun­try that’s at war. All of us, Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, have to think about how to save our­selves. Maybe man­agers should some­times turn a blind eye to [met­rics] num­bers, maybe give peo­ple the free­dom to write some­thing dif­fer­ent, just to give them a space where they can relax,” says Anas­tasiya Boi­ka, edi­tor of Mediazona.Belarus.

Some positive news: journalists stay strong

Despite the chal­lenges, there are some pos­i­tive devel­op­ments in the media land­scape. Barys Haret­s­ki notes that many out­lets have grown and there are promis­ing new projects, such as the region­al Most­media out­let based in Białys­tok, Poland, close to Belarus, which focus­es on Belaru­sians “on both sides of the bor­der.” 

Anas­tasiya Boi­ka also points to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Belaru­sian lan­guage, with some media that were pre­vi­ous­ly Russ­ian-lan­guage becom­ing bilin­gual and the audi­ence increas­ing­ly using the nation­al lan­guage. The audi­ence from Belarus is also grow­ing, though it is dif­fi­cult to count due to an active use of VPNs.

Nas­tas­sia Rou­da notes that out­lets like Nasha Niva have found new ways to con­nect with their audi­ence and invest in social media and new for­mats of con­tent. How­ev­er, over­all, she doesn’t see much pos­i­tiv­i­ty: “Jour­nal­ists are still behind bars, the tri­als con­tin­ue, we are wait­ing for the tri­al on TUT.by. We enter the new year with [spec­u­la­tions] that Belarus might enter the war. There is very lit­tle pos­i­tiv­i­ty in 2022.”