Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting July 20 – 26, 2015

On July 20, BAJ received a reply from the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s office regard­ing the organization’s protest against pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists. The agency refused to con­sid­er the claim on the mer­its say­ing there are no grounds for that. The Gen­er­al prosecutor’s office says the chair­per­son of BAJ is not enti­tled to being an offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the jour­nal­ists. “The court deci­sion in an admin­is­tra­tive case can be appealed by the per­son whom it con­cerns, by their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, defend­ers,” says the reply dat­ed July 17. The chair­per­son of BAJ Andrei Bas­tunets says the reply is not sur­pris­ing. “We appealed to the prosecutor’s office not in regard to spe­cif­ic cas­es. We did it on the grounds of the law on peti­tions of phys­i­cal and legal bod­ies, which we under­lined in our peti­tion. In my view, the prosecutor’s office has super­vi­so­ry pow­ers to issue a protest regard­ing this or that court rul­ing. We meant to draw the atten­tion of state agen­cies to the sit­u­a­tion that can­not be deemed law­ful.”

Also, on July 9 BAJ sent sim­i­lar peti­tions to the Supreme Court, the Min­istry of Home Affairs and the KGB. BAJ wants pub­lic atten­tion and state bod­ies’ pos­i­tive response to the sit­u­a­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists who work for mass media out­side Belarus, and who are fined for that the mass media are not accred­it­ed in Belarus.

On July 20, admin­is­tra­tive cas­es against jour­nal­ists Ales Kirke­vich and Ales Dzian­isau were opened on the grounds of a video report about an exhi­bi­tion of Lithuan­ian dolls in Hrod­na; the mate­r­i­al was pub­lished on Bel­sat. The jour­nal­ists were ques­tioned; wit­ness­es in the case are an artist and his wife, own­er of the gallery hous­ing the exhi­bi­tion. The jour­nal­ists were already once held liable under the same arti­cle 22.9 (ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts) on April 22, for a report about an exhi­bi­tion in the local muse­um.

As became known on July 20, FM-radio Unistar fired jour­nal­ist Siarhei Hrud­nit­s­ki. The rea­son for the dis­missal was that the jour­nal­ist read news from the inde­pen­dent agency Bela­PAN on the air. The jour­nal­ist pub­lished this infor­ma­tion him­self on his Face­book page. The pro­gram direc­tor of the radio Ali­ak­san­dr Nali­vai­ka con­firmed the dis­missal, but argued that the rea­son for the dis­missal was dif­fer­ent: the radio was under­go­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al and staff changes, he said.

On July 23, the Hly­bokaye dis­trict court fined jour­nal­ist Zmitser Lupach for 4.5 mil­lion rubles. The chair of court Iry­na Kazak found him guilty for vio­lat­ing art. 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code. The case was based on the arti­cle “Rel­a­tives revealed of a bor­der guard who died on Sep­tem­ber 17, 1939 in Hly­bokaye dis­trict” which was pub­lished on June 9 on the web­site of the Euro­ra­dio. The first hear­ing was sched­uled for July 10, but then the case was sent back to the police for com­ple­tion. Mean­time, the jour­nal­ist had sev­er­al talks with KGB employ­ees. The jour­nal­ist pub­li­cized the infor­ma­tion that he was pressed to coop­er­ate with the spe­cial ser­vices, but refused to do so.

On July 24, a jour­nal­ist from Brest Ales Liauchuk had a vis­i­tor from the police of Kami­anet­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment. The inspec­tor came from Kami­anets to draw up an admin­is­tra­tive report accord­ing to art. 22.9. The inspec­tor appeared just after the jour­nal­ist returned from hol­i­days; the inspec­tor told that the infor­ma­tion about the journalist’s return came from the Bor­der Com­mit­tee. The grounds for the case was a report about a reli­gious con­flict in a town near­by pub­lished on Bel­sat at the begin­ning of June. Ales Liauchuk has been fined under art. 22.9 already three times, the sum of the fines is around 20 mil­lion rubles, or over 1300 USD.