Lukashenko signs mass media law amendments into law

The law expands the list of infor­ma­tion, the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which by the media and inter­net resources is pro­hib­it­ed. In par­tic­u­lar, the law bans pub­lish­ing the results of pub­lic opin­ion polls relat­ing to the socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion con­duct­ed with­out nec­es­sary accred­i­ta­tion. It is also pro­hib­it­ed to post hyper­links to mate­ri­als con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion that is pro­hib­it­ed.

The Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al, the pros­e­cu­tors of the regions, the city of Min­sk shall be giv­en the right to restrict access to inter­net resources and online media which dis­sem­i­nate the infor­ma­tion to pro­mote extrem­ist activ­i­ties or to call for such activ­i­ties, as well as oth­er infor­ma­tion, the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which can harm the nation­al inter­ests.

Grounds for restrict­ing access to inter­net resources and block­ing media out­lets have been expand­ed. Now it can also be made on the basis of a deci­sion by the Inter­a­gency Com­mis­sion on Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty that find them to be dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion that can bring harm to nation­al inter­ests.

The law stip­u­lates that along with a court deci­sion, a media out­let can be banned by a deci­sion of the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry (for exam­ple, in case of two or more writ­ten warn­ings issued to a legal enti­ty, which has the func­tions of the edi­to­r­i­al board of a media out­let, or to a media out­let founder or own­er of a net­work pub­li­ca­tion).

The law envis­ages mea­sures aimed at min­i­miz­ing for­eign influ­ence on the Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion mar­ket. Regard­less of the time of the launch, a media out­let can­not be found­ed by for­eign legal enti­ties, for­eign cit­i­zens and state­less per­sons, or legal enti­ties with for­eign par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The law intro­duces a pos­si­bil­i­ty of revok­ing a jour­nal­ist’s accred­i­ta­tion if he or she or a legal enti­ty that has the func­tions of a media edi­to­r­i­al office has vio­lat­ed the estab­lished accred­i­ta­tion pro­ce­dure, or if infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­nat­ed is not true and defames the busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion that accred­it­ed the jour­nal­ist, or if an inten­tion­al ille­gal act is com­mit­ted in the course of pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

The law also enshrines a pos­si­bil­i­ty to restrict access to a copy of an inter­net resource, access to which was pre­vi­ous­ly restrict­ed.

The main pro­vi­sions of the law come into force one month after its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion.

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2021 (chart)