Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting March 2 – 15, 2015

On March 2, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issued warn­ings under art. 22 of the Law on Mass Media to socio-polit­i­cal week­ly Borisovskiye Novosti and news­pa­per Reklam­nyj Bor­jo­mi for cut­ting the name the Repub­lic of Belarus to abbre­vi­a­tion RB in the pub­li­ca­tion data. Both the out­lets belong to the pri­vate uni­tary enter­prise Bukas Media Cen­ter. The warn­ings were signed by the Infor­ma­tion Min­is­ter Liliya Ananich. A lit­tle ear­li­er, sim­i­lar warn­ings were issued to region­al news­pa­pers Intex-press (Baranavichy) and Haze­ta Slonim­skaya.

On March 2 in Hly­bokaye (Viteb­sk region), an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist and BAJ mem­ber Zmitser Lupach was not allowed to enter the local exec­u­tive com­mit­tee because he had a pro­fes­sion­al pho­to cam­era with him. The secu­ri­ty offi­cer said entrance pro­fes­sion­al cam­eras was for­bid­den, refer­ring to a direc­tive if the chair­per­son of the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. The jour­nal­ist filed an offi­cial com­plaint to the com­mit­tee.

As became known on March 3, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee had ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal case under art. 367, part 1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (libel against the head of state) against Mikhail Luka­she­vich, a 63-year old res­i­dent of Brest. The case start­ed on Decem­ber 29, 2014 “for a polit­i­cal blog” which the man had run for 10 years on a fence and his own garage in Yes­enin street in Brest. The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee had found crime con­stituents in the notices writ­ten on the walls. The man refus­es to coop­er­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion, for which he had once been detained. His house was searched, brush­es and paint were seized. Luka­she­vich refus­es to talk to jour­nal­ists, but addressed for help to human rights defend­ers.

On March 4, an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Vik­tar Parfio­nen­ka from Hrod­na filed a per­son­al com­plaint to the Min­sk City Court. The jour­nal­ist plans to go through all instances to prove that the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs refus­es to accred­it him with­out any grounds. We remind that Vik­tar Parfio­nen­ka had applied for accred­i­ta­tion as a jour­nal­ist of the Belaru­sian Radio Racy­ja sev­en times.

On March 4, human right defend­er and BAJ mem­ber Nas­ta Loy­ka received a reply to her com­plaint she had filed upon the inci­dent that occurred on Jan­u­ary 23: jour­nal­ists did not man­age to get to the admin­is­tra­tive hear­ings over activists who planned to stage com­mem­o­ra­tive event ded­i­cat­ed to anniver­sary of Maj­dan in Ukraine. The action took place on Jan­u­ary 22, all par­tic­i­pants were detained. The next day, the detainees were not tak­en to court; the admin­is­tra­tive hear­ing took place at the police depart­ment of the Cen­tral dis­trict of Min­sk. Jour­nal­ists were not allowed to enter the build­ing (name­ly, BAJ mem­bers Tat­siana Vlasen­ka, Nat­sas­sia Reznika­va, Ali­ak­sei Shein, Aleh Hruzdzilovich). In the reply, the Min­sk City Court claims that all infor­ma­tion about the hear­ings was pro­vid­ed on the infor­ma­tion stand at the police depart­ment, and the hear­ings were held in an open regime. So to say, the judge held the hear­ing cor­rect­ly, and the issue of pass con­trol lies with­in the com­pe­tence of secu­ri­ty guards of the police depart­ment. The jour­nal­ists and human rights activists are going to com­plain against the sit­u­a­tion fur­ther.

On March 4, in the court­room of the Zavad­s­ki dis­trict court in Min­sk, pho­to jour­nal­ist Uladz Hry­dzin was detained while cov­er­ing a crim­i­nal tri­al. He says he start­ed to adjust his equip­ment before the begin­ning of the process, which attract­ed the atten­tion of court secu­ri­ty offi­cers. They detained the jour­nal­ist and took him to the police depart­ment of the Zavad­s­ki dis­trict where his ID was checked and pho­tos in the cam­era viewed. He was set free around one and a half hour lat­er. How­ev­er, a lit­tle lat­er, the head of the police depart­ment phoned him and invit­ed the jour­nal­ist for a talk. The jour­nal­ist declined the invi­ta­tion.

On March 4 BAJ filed a request to the Min­is­ter of Home Affairs’ Deputy Mikalay Melchanka. “The media tell about a direc­tive issued by you this Feb­ru­ary ban­ning to take pho­to or video of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings. Refer­ring to this direc­tive, police offi­cers have sev­er­al times detained jour­nal­ists in places open for the pub­lic. This way jour­nal­ists’ rights were vio­lat­ed (though) guar­an­teed by the Law on Mass Media. BAJ asks to inform whether it is true that /…/ rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of Home Affairs have issued any direc­tive in this regard, and if yes, please, send us a copy.”

Also on March 4, BAJ phoned to Vik­tar Novikau, the deputy head of the press ser­vice of the Min­istry, but he denied know­ing any­thing about the direc­tive. A day before Ali­ak­san­dr Bar­suk­ou, the head of the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, answer­ing the ques­tion on a hot­line, assured that “nobody banned tak­ing pho­tos”. Mean­while, on March 6 the Min­istry of Home Affairs gave an offi­cial com­ment to BelTA claim­ing that pub­li­ciz­ing of doc­u­ments of inter­nal use was not manda­to­ry. “The require­ment is aimed at ensur­ing safe­ty in the coun­try and increas­ing vig­i­lance of employ­ees of home affairs in the part of pre­vent­ing poten­tial threats of dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter: from provo­ca­tions to ter­ror­ist acts,” said the imper­son­al press release.

On March 5 a cor­re­spon­dent of the infor­ma­tion­al agency Bela­PAN Uladz­imir Lapt­se­vich received a reply to his request he had addressed to the Mahilow Region Coun­cil of Deputies. It’s been almost a year that the jour­nal­ist fails to get admis­sion to fol­low meet­ings of the Coun­cil. The jour­nal­ist want­ed to know which doc­u­ment reg­u­lat­ed the process of accred­i­ta­tion. It turned out that the Coun­cil used the rules of work of the region­al Coun­cil. The rules envis­age that the num­ber of peo­ple and who will fol­low the meet­ings is up to the chair­per­son of the Coun­cil. The fact that the cor­re­spon­dent does not get accred­i­ta­tion vio­lates his rights under the Law on Mass Media and the trans­paren­cy prin­ci­ple ensured by the Law on Local Gov­er­nance and Self-Gov­er­nance.

On March 6, Tama­ra Scha­pi­otk­i­na, from Biaroza town, Brest region, was fined for 40 basic amounts (7 mil­lion 200 thou­sand rubles) for work with­out accred­i­ta­tion for the Belaru­sian Radio Racy­ja. The grounds for pros­e­cu­tion was an inter­view with a traf­fic offi­cer made on Jan­u­ary 8 and lat­er pub­lished on the Radio Racy­ja. Alleged­ly, it was Tama­ra who had tak­en the inter­view. The case had been sent to court, but on Feb­ru­ary 27, the Lenin dis­trict court of Brest sent the admin­is­tra­tive pro­to­col for com­ple­tion. On March 5, the jour­nal­ist received a court sum­mons in an SMS. On March 6, she came to court before 9am, with a lawyer. How­ev­er, the lawyer was informed that the hear­ing had already been over and the jour­nal­ist did not appear at court as the sum­mons request­ed. When the jour­nal­ist entered the judge’s room, the lat­ter asked her rude­ly to go out. The judge said the jour­nal­ist would learn the court deci­sion in a let­ter that would be sent to her by post. The jour­nal­ist filed a com­plained to the chair­per­son of the court, and anoth­er one to the prosecutor’s office. We remind that Tama­ra Shcha­pi­otk­i­na had been already fined on Decem­ber 17, 2014 under sim­i­lar charges.

On March 7, tourists were detained in Iwye, Hrod­na region; the police checked their IDs and delet­ed their pho­tos of the prosecutor’s office, fire­fight­ers’ sta­tion, mar­riage reg­is­tra­tion hall and of the pub­lic library.

On March 11, the sec­ond hear­ing took place in the law­suit filed by a nurse against Borisovskiye Novosti. The nurse claims that arti­cle “Who is guilty of a patient’s death in the 2nd poly­clin­ics?” (dat­ed Decem­ber 24, 2014) spread lies about her and dam­aged her busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion. She wants the news­pa­per to pub­lish refu­ta­tion and pay 50 mil­lion for moral dam­age. The hear­ing last­ed four hours, the judge heard both the sides; con­tin­u­a­tion is on March 30.

On March 11 the term to bring activists to admin­is­tra­tive lia­bil­i­ty for an unsanc­tioned pick­et had expired. The case deals with an action of sol­i­dar­i­ty with Char­lie Heb­do vic­tims. Four peo­ple, includ­ing the leader of the Unit­ed Civ­il Par­ty Ana­tol Liabedz­ka, took part in the sol­i­dar­i­ty actions near the French Embassy in Min­sk. The police drew up admin­is­tra­tive reports for an unsanc­tioned action. Lat­er, the issue was raised at a press con­fer­ence with Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. Then, the admin­is­tra­tive report was sent back for com­ple­tion, and that’s it.

On March 12, Ihar Barysau, the edi­tor of the web­site Nash Mahilow, told that the police were con­duct­ing a check-up in rela­tion to an arti­cle dat­ed Jan­u­ary 8; the police pre­sent­ed a search­es war­rant under art. 188 part 2 (defama­tion). The arti­cle alleges that a direc­tor gen­er­al of a local enter­prise in Mahilow had lost a big sum in a casi­no. From the police offi­cers’ words, the case had not been open yet, it was only a pre­lim­i­nary inquiry. Upon three hours’ search­es, infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers and per­son­al com­put­ers were seized, with­out seizure pro­to­cols. Also, the police did not allow to engage human rights activists as wit­ness­es of the search­es; instead, two oth­er peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed whom the offi­cers had invit­ed. On the same day, the local office of Vias­na in Mahilow was searched, by the same police offi­cers who had ser­ar­ched the editor’s flat. The police seized three com­put­ers and a modem from Vias­na office.

On March 12, two peo­ple in plain clothes paid a vis­it to par­ents of Verani­ka Charkasa­va, a jour­nal­ist mur­dered ten years ago. The vis­i­tors called on the door at 6.30 am. One of them intro­duced him­self as an employ­ee of the police, the oth­er did not talk. They want­ed to have a talk with Veranika’s son. Veranika’s step­fa­ther Uladz­imir Mialesh­ka answered that every­thing had its lim­its and their patience too, and declined fur­ther talks. We remind, Verani­ka Charkasa­va, jour­nal­ist of the news­pa­per Sal­i­dar­nasc’, was stabbed on Octo­ber 20, 2004 in Min­sk. The mur­der­er has not been found yet.

On March 12, the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va was fined by the Cen­tral dis­trict court of Homel for 20 basic amounts (3 mln 600 rubles) for work for for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion (art. 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code). The grounds for the case was a TV report on Bel­sat about a strike of local pri­vate entre­pre­neurs. The admin­is­tra­tive report was drawn up on March 8 by the head of the pub­lic order unit of the Cen­tral dis­trict police depart­ment, sub­colonel Yury Panin. The jour­nal­ist will appeal against the court deci­sion.

On March 14 the Nation­al legal Inter­net-por­tal pub­lished Rul­ing No 6 of the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion (dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 18). The doc­u­ment estab­lish­es the pro­ce­dure of form­ing and stor­ing data about infor­ma­tion resources viewed by Inter­net users. Since Jan­u­ary 1, 2016, Inter­net providers are oblig­ed to store actu­al infor­ma­tion about which resources users view. Providers are oblig­ed to store infor­ma­tion about users for a year: num­ber and date of sign­ing a user’s con­tract, name, address, MAC address etc.

On March 14 the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist from Biarozau­ka Yury Dzi­ashuk report­ed that peo­ple he has talked to have trou­bles with the offi­cials. For instance, a librar­i­an from Biaroza city library was invit­ed for a talk to the KGB after the jour­nal­ist talked to her. Mean­time, the librar­i­an denies this infor­ma­tion. Also, the jour­nal­ist says employ­ees of the Lida muse­um are banned to talk to him. On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2014 Yury Dzi­ashuk received a pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al warn­ing against coop­er­a­tion with for­eign mass media with­out accred­i­ta­tion.