Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting March 16 – 22, 2015

March 16, it became known that at the bor­der cross­ing «Kamen­ny Loh» Belaru­sian cus­toms offi­cers seized 47 copies of the report Human Rights Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus in 2014, in Eng­lish and Belaru­sian, pre­pared by the Human Rights Cen­tre Vias­na on the basis of month­ly reviews of human rights vio­la­tions.

The reviews were brought from Lithua­nia by Smarhon human rights activist Aleh Dzer­ha­chou in his car, reports Spring96. 47 books will most prob­a­bly be sent for exam­i­na­tion, which must deter­mine whether it is per­mit­ted to import these books in Belarus.

Also on March 14, five copies of a book were seized on the Belaru­sian-Pol­ish bor­der point from a his­to­ry sci­en­tist Pali­na Sharen­da-Pana­siuk. The book His­toric City Ensem­bles in Times of Changes, a col­lec­tion of mate­ri­als of a sci­en­tif­ic con­fer­ence in Poland in 2014, was sent for exam­i­na­tion by spe­cial ser­vices. The cus­toms offi­cers did not go into details about how long the exam­i­na­tion would last.

March 16, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion replied to BAJ’s request that it had issued writ­ten warn­ings to sev­er­al peri­od­i­cals, includ­ing the state-run mag­a­zine Vozhyk and the Baranavichy news­pa­per Nash Kraj. We remind that pre­vi­ous­ly, in Feb­ru­ary, the Min­istry warned sev­er­al inde­pen­dent out­lets because they used abbre­vi­a­tion RB in their pub­li­ca­tion data instead of the full name the Repub­lic of Belarus. Also on March 20, the warn­ing on the same grounds (dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 25) reached the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Novy Chas.

March 16, the jour­nal­ist from Homel Mikalay Bianko informed that he had filed a com­plaint to the UN HRC against vio­la­tion of his rights to gath­er, store and dis­sem­i­nate

infor­ma­tion. Before that, he had tried to dis­pute the offi­cial warn­ing issued to him by the region­al prosecutor’s office. On March 5, 2014 he and his col­league Yuliya Sivets were warned against work for for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion. The warn­ing was giv­en for mate­ri­als on the web­site of the Radio Racy­ja.

March 17, jour­nal­ist Ales Kirke­vich was sum­moned to the Lenin dis­trict police depart­ment of Hrod­na. The police con­duct­ed an inquiry under art. 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (unlaw­ful pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts). The inquiry was ini­ti­at­ed by the KGB. On March 18, for the same rea­sons, jour­nal­ist Ales Dzian­isau was ques­tioned, too. The grounds for the check-up was a video report on Bel­sat about Slut­sk belts in Hrod­na muse­um. The mate­ri­als of the case include screen­shots of the web­site with the report. Also, it fol­lows that the muse­um employ­ee Hali­na Khimko was also sum­moned to the police and for a talk with the KGB, she was asked to iden­ti­fy the jour­nal­ists in pho­tos.

March 17, a jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na Andrei Mialesh­ka was invit­ed by phone to the local police for talk; he refused to turn up with­out an offi­cial sum­mons.

March 17, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion report­ed that on March 13 it had restrict­ed access to five more infor­ma­tion­al resources, under the anti-drugs traf­fick­ing Decree No 6 (dat­ed Decem­ber 28, 2014). We remind that it had already blocked two web­sites “that used vul­gar and tabooed vocab­u­lary and were able to dam­age the nation­al inter­est of the Repub­lic of Belarus”. The right to restrict access to web­sites has been grant­ed to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion since Jan­u­ary 1, 2015 by the amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media.

March 17, pub­lish­er Ihar Lohv­in­au said that the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk sup­port­ed the plea to pay the con­fis­ca­tion by instal­ments with­in two months. We remind that on Jan­u­ary 9, 2015 the Eco­nom­ic Court ruled to seize the “ille­gal prof­it” of the book­store in the amount of 961 mil­lion rubles and imposed a fine of 30 basic amounts (5 mln 400 rubles). The “ille­gal entrepreneur’s activ­i­ties” were qual­i­fied as such because the book­store did not get reg­is­tra­tion as a dis­trib­u­tor of print prod­ucts, although it had applied for reg­is­tra­tion to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion more than six times.

March 17, peo­ple in plain­clothes detained the cor­re­spon­dent of the Radio Svabo­da Hali­na Abakunchyk. She was inter­view­ing retail sell­ers at the shop­ping cen­ter where peo­ple were expect­ing Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka to appear for a talk with the sell­ers. The pre­text for the deten­tion was that the cor­re­spon­dent had not been accred­it­ed for the meet­ing. In her turn, she said she was not going to attend the meet­ing, but only gath­ered people’s opin­ions about their busi­ness issues. The cor­re­spon­dent was tak­en to a police car, her ID was checked, then a police­man saw her off to a pub­lic taxi bus and made sure that she leave the venue.

March 18, free­lance jour­nal­ist Ales Liauchuk was sum­moned to the Mask­ous­ki dis­trict police depart­ment of Brest. He was ques­tioned under art. 22.9 (unlaw­ful pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts), blamed for being author of the report on Bel­sat TV under ini­tials AL. His author­ship, accord­ing to the inspec­tor, was con­firmed by the per­son he had inter­viewed. On March 26, the case was con­sid­ered in court, with­out the journalist’s par­tic­i­pa­tion. The court rul­ing was not yet report­ed to him. Ear­li­er, on Decem­ber 24, Ales Liauchuk was fined under sim­i­lar charges for 40 basic amounts (6 mil­lion rubles). On Jan­u­ary 22, 2015 the Brest region­al court turned down the appeal.

March 19, Ihar Barysau, the edi­tor of the web­site Nash Mahilow, and his wife Ale­na Barysa­va were sum­moned to the Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict police of Mahilow. The police inspec­tor want­ed to find out the journalist’s rela­tion to the web­site. The jour­nal­ist was nei­ther a sus­pect nor a wit­ness in a case; the case under art. 188 part 2 (defama­tion) was not open yet. The jour­nal­ist refused to tes­ti­fy, under arti­cle 27 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Belarus. We remind that on March 12, the editor’s flat was searched. The police were con­duct­ing a check-up in rela­tion to an arti­cle dat­ed Jan­u­ary 8. The arti­cle alleged that a direc­tor gen­er­al of a local enter­prise in Mahilow had lost a big sum in a casi­no. Upon three hours’ search­es, infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers and per­son­al com­put­ers were seized, with­out seizure pro­to­cols.