Journalists face numerous obstacles when covering parliamentary elections in Belarus

Mahiliou

There was a con­flict between jour­nal­ists and can­di­date Ihar Marza­l­iuk, as well as the chair­man of the Mahil­iou precinct elec­tion com­mis­sion 32 Mary­na Zubaren­ka. The state tele­vi­sion has even made a sto­ry, call­ing the attempts of the Bel­sat crew to report on the can­di­date’s meet­ing with vot­ers as a «ram­page».

The meet­ing with Marza­l­iuk, can­di­date at Mahil­iou-Lenin­s­ki dis­trict 84 was held on Novem­ber 12 in Mahil­iou school № 12. Bel­sat jour­nal­ists attempt­ed to join the meet­ing. School prin­ci­pal Mary­na Zubaren­ka, who was also the chair­man of precinct elec­tion com­mis­sion 32, and can­di­date Ihar Marza­l­iuk tried to keep the jour­nal­ists out­side.

Lat­er they let them in, but barred them from film­ing.

Bel­sat crew says, the can­di­date’s agent Andrei Lebedzeu and the school prin­ci­pal Mary­na Zubaren­ka threat­ened to call the police under the pre­text that they did not have accred­i­ta­tion.

Mean­while, no accred­i­ta­tion is need­ed for film­ing a pub­lic per­son in a pub­lic place.

The jour­nal­ists filed a com­plaint about Zubarenka’s actions to the dis­trict com­mit­tee, since she did not let them attend the pub­lic meet­ing with a video «thus deny­ing their right to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion.»

The lead­er­ship of Bel­sat made a state­ment about the con­flict.

«The attempts of the Bel­sat crew to report on a can­di­date’s meet­ing with vot­ers was called a «ram­page» on the state TV.

In his inter­view to Belarus 1 TV, par­lia­men­tary can­di­date Ihar Marza­l­iuk tried to mis­lead the audi­ence, while the sto­ry made use of manip­u­la­tions.

We insist that our jour­nal­ists act­ed as pro­fes­sion­als and cer­tain­ly had noth­ing to do with the leaflets against the chair­man of the Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, which had alleged­ly been dis­trib­uted in Mahil­iou.

Belarus 1 sto­ry and oth­er sto­ries cre­at­ed on its basis by oth­er media should be regard­ed as an attack against Bel­sat, that might start a new wave of repres­sion against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists, — the state­ment says.

Minsk

Bela­PAN cam­era­man Siarhei Sat­siuk was barred from film­ing the bal­lot count at polling sta­tion 484. 

Just before the end of vot­ing, Sat­siuk approached the chair of the elec­tion com­mis­sion and asked where he could stand to film the bal­lot count. The chair showed him the place that was about 20 meters away from the tables.

In 10 min­utes, when the cam­era­man has already start­ed film­ing, she said she had just been told by the dis­trict com­mit­tee that film­ing was pro­hibit­ted.  He replied that he had all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments for work­ing at the polling sta­tion, and she agreed, Bela­PAN reports.

After some time, she approached Sat­siuk again and asked him to stop film­ing, refer­ing to the dis­trict com­mis­sion, again. Sat­siuk asked for legit­i­mate rea­sons, and the chair left again.

Soon, one of the elec­tion observers sud­den­ly began to demand that Sat­siuk should not film him. The cam­era­man replied that he had not been film­ing and was not going to film observers, as he was inter­est­ed in the vote count.  Final­ly, the police forced the cam­era­man to stay away from the table at a dis­tance that made any film­ing mean­ing­less.

Com­ment­ing on the inci­dent, Siarhei Sat­siuk stressed that at first nei­ther the chair­man nor the mem­bers of the elec­tion com­mis­sion did not oppose his pres­ence. Upon his arriv­ing at the polling sta­tion, he showed them his jour­nal­ist’s ID and cre­den­tials issued by the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, and the com­mis­sion gave him offi­cial per­mis­sion to film.

Mean­while, the CEC chair Lidia Yarmoshy­na rec­og­nized that the bar­ring Bela­PAN’s cam­era­man from film­ing was ille­gal. How­ev­er, no one is going to be pun­ished.

 «I can say right away: the actions of the chair of the com­mis­sion are ille­gal. He had the right and was sup­posed to film. But what can be done now? We can only shrug and improve our train­ing work­shops for the next elec­tions,» — said the chair of the CEC at the night news con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 18. 

Small street action held in Min­sk on the elec­tions’ eve. The par­tic­i­pants head­ed to the Inde­pen­dence Square to the build­ing of the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion.

On the way, strangers attacked the crew of RFE/RL. As a result, their cam­era was dam­aged.

In addi­tion, strangers in plain clothes attacked the pro­test­ers with fusees.

The Ministry of Information said to would analyze «some escapades»

Even before the elec­tion day, on Novem­ber 15 — deputy infor­ma­tion min­is­ter Ihar Buzous­ki promised to give legal assess­ment of the work of some media.  

He said: The work of the media can be assessed from two per­spec­tives. On the one hand — the legal aspect. Some of the escapades that we see today will cer­tain­ly be assessed from the legal point of view. But of course, there is also anoth­er kind of assess­ment — from the soci­ety.»

BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets points out, BAJ reg­is­tered exces­sive lim­its on free speech dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. This applies to cas­es when can­di­dates’ offi­cial speech­es were not broad­cast for unclear rea­sons.

«Of course, we con­sid­er the cas­es of bar­ring media employ­ees from doing their job dur­ing the elec­toral process and the vote count a vio­la­tion of free­dom of the media. This elec­tion cam­paign has not been asso­ci­at­ed with as many obsta­cles for jour­nal­ists and the media, as in some oth­er polit­i­cal cam­paigns, but we express our con­cern about the threats to inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists that have been expressed by state TV chan­nels and by the coun­try’s top offi­cials,» Andrei Bas­tunets says.

Inter­na­tion­al observers of OSCE ODIHR and the OSCE Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly stat­ed that the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Belarus did not meet impor­tant inter­na­tion­al stan­dards for demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions.