Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting August 17 – September 7, 2015

On August 19, jour­nal­ists Ales Kirke­vich and Ales Dzian­isau were found guilty of vio­lat­ing art. 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code and fined 25 basic amounts each (4.5 mil­lion rubles). The cas­es ground­ed on video reports about a Lithuan­ian pup­pet exhi­bi­tion in Hrod­na, pub­lished on Bel­sat web­site. The cas­es start­ed yet in July, but the case mate­ri­als were sent back to the police for com­ple­tion. The hear­ing resumed on August 14, with­out the jour­nal­ists’ par­tic­i­pa­tion. The wit­ness­es were sum­moned to court to tes­ti­fy, the artist Ali­ak­san­dr Sil­vanovich and his wife, direc­tor of the exhi­bi­tion hall Iry­na Sil­vanovich. The total sum of fines at that time amount­ed over 146 mil­lion rubles.

On August 19, in Biarozau­ka (Hrod­na region, Lida dis­trict) the flat of free­lance jour­nal­ist Yury Dzi­ashuk was searched. Police offi­cers looed through his notes, and seized a com­put­er and a print­er. The search­es were held with­in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of the fact of a flash mob held in the town on July 25, 2015.

On August 21, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion report­ed that it had restrict­ed access to two more unnamed web­sites for the rea­son that the resources, as the Min­istry deems, dis­trib­uted infor­ma­tion with signs of extrem­ism and hate speech.

On August 21, jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou was made to delete pho­tos of an infor­ma­tion­al stand about the launch of the elec­toral cam­paign, which was locat­ed near the admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in Mahilou. An employ­ee of the secu­ri­ty depart­ment went out and demand­ed to delete the pho­tos, as they were of an admin­is­tra­tive build­ing. The jour­nal­ist argued they were of an infor­ma­tion­al stand. He delet­ed the pho­tos and filed a com­plaint at the book of sug­ges­tions of the admin­is­tra­tion.

On August 22, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka released six polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, includ­ing BAJ mem­ber Yauhen Vaskovich. The 24-year old man had worked for Bobruyskiy Couri­er for some time before the impris­on­ment.

In May 2011, Yauhen Vaskovich and two oth­er fel­lows were sen­tenced to 7 years in prison for attack­ing the KGB build­ing in Babruysk (on the night of Octo­ber 17, 2010). They were found guilty of hooli­gan­ism and caus­ing cost­ly dam­age to prop­er­ty (the dam­age to the out­er façade was esti­mat­ed at 253 000 Br, which was in 2010 about 85$). Yauhen Vaskovich was serv­ing the term in Mahilou prison No4.

Pavel Syra­malotau plead­ed for par­don and was released in Sep­tem­ber 2012. Yauhen Vaskovich and Art­siom Prakapen­ka refused to appeal for par­don. The impris­on­ment term would have end­ed for them on Jan­u­ary 17, 2018.

On August 31, the news­pa­per Novy Chas again request­ed for ser­vices of Bel­sayuz­druk, state dis­trib­u­tor of print­ed press. The news­pa­per was left out from the state-run sys­tem of press dis­trib­u­tor before elec­tions in 2006. From that time, the pub­lic and jour­nal­ism com­mu­ni­ty pressed the author­i­ties to elim­i­nate eco­nom­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion, after which sev­er­al major news­pa­pers returned into the dis­tri­b­u­tion net (includ­ing Nasha Niva (8000 copies), and Nar­o­d­naya Volya (26000 copies)). How­ev­er, some out­lets, like Novy Chas are still dis­crim­i­nat­ed. Bel­sayuz­druk refus­es to coop­er­ate with the out­lets and pro­vide them with dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices. This time the edi­to­r­i­al office received a reply that the enter­prise does not have a pos­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide ser­vices, but promis­es to con­sid­er the issue by the end of the year. The region­al news­pa­pers Haze­ta Slonim­skaya and Intex-press (Baranavichy) expe­ri­ence the same trou­ble, although the edi­to­r­i­al offices and read­ers of the out­lets insis­tent­ly appeal to the dis­trib­u­tors.

On Sep­tem­ber 7 in Homel, free­lance jour­nal­ists Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Natal­lia Kry­vashei were closed in a dor­mi­to­ry, and the police were called, when they came to make a report about dwelling con­di­tions in the build­ing. The jour­nal­ists came fol­low­ing a com­plaint of a res­i­dent of the build­ing. The admin­is­tra­tor of the build­ing phoned to the com­mu­nal enter­prise Sovi­et were she was rec­om­mend­ed to close the jour­nal­ists down and call the police. Police offi­cers arrived and set the jour­nal­ists free, the lat­ter filed com­plaints against force­ful depri­va­tion of free­dom and inter­fer­ence into jour­nal­ists’ activ­i­ties.

 On Sep­tem­ber 7, non-staff cor­re­spon­dent of Nar­o­d­naya Volya Kat­siary­na Andreye­va was detained when she came to cov­er a pick­et of inter­est hold­ers who protest­ed against alleged fraud near the Palace of Inde­pen­dence. The jour­nal­ist was detained togeth­er with the pick­eters, although she had a con­fir­ma­tion of the edi­to­r­i­al task. She was kept for an hour and a half, and then released with­out any pro­to­cols.

On Sep­tem­ber 7, jour­nal­ist and mil­i­tary affairs ana­lyst Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin report­ed that he was still in the sta­tus of a sus­pect in the crim­i­nal case on coop­er­a­tion with for­eign spe­cial ser­vices. He said there were hard­ly any inves­tiga­tive oper­a­tions held. How­ev­er, he still stays under recog­ni­zance, through which he missed many impor­tant inter­na­tion­al meet­ings. He told about a draft law being pre­pared which would estab­lish that coop­er­a­tion with for­eign spe­cial forces would not be con­sid­ered as a crime if it did not inflict harm to the state. “If the amend­ments are adopt­ed, the inves­ti­ga­tors said the case would be closed,” said Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin.

We remind that he was detained on Novem­ber 25, and set free under recog­ni­zance on Decem­ber 10, 2014. He was first accused of state trea­son, but then the charges were changed for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign spe­cial forces.