Mass Media Week in Belarus Info-posting March 23 – April 6, 2015

On March 16, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion reg­is­tered Lohv­in­au book­store in the Reg­is­ter of Dis­trib­u­tors of Print­ed Prod­ucts. The con­firm­ing let­ter reached Lohv­in­au on March 23. We remind that the absence of reg­is­tra­tion in 2014 was used as a pre­text to charge Lohv­in­au book­store with ille­gal trade and impose con­fis­ca­tion of almost a bil­lion rubles. Before that, the book­store had applied for reg­is­tra­tion to the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry more than six times.

On March 24 BAJ received a reply to its request filed at the end of Feb­ru­ary to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ask­ing to tell what books the Repub­li­can com­mis­sion on extrem­ism con­sid­ered to be extrem­ist. The reply dat­ed March 20 and signed by the Infor­ma­tion Minister’s Deputy Uladz­imir Matu­se­vich informs that “among the mate­ri­als where signs of extrem­ism were revealed are books by A.Hitler, G.Rockwell, A.al-Badr, man­u­als on war­fare and oth­ers.”

On Feb­ru­ary 5, the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich report­ed that by that time the Repub­li­can com­mis­sion on assess­ment of infor­ma­tion prod­ucts regard­ing extrem­ist con­tents had viewed over 100 mate­ri­als, and in 25 of them had found “fea­tures falling under def­i­n­i­tions “extrem­ism, pro­pa­gan­da of ideas of Nazism, racial, reli­gious intol­er­ance” or “lit­er­a­ture which could be used with ter­ror­ist aims”.

On March 25 the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich report­ed that amend­ments have been pre­pared to the pres­i­den­tial decree No 60 “On mea­sures to improve the use of the nation­al seg­ment of the Inter­net”. Accord­ing to the Min­is­ter, the amend­ments were aimed to close the gaps for web­site own­ers for respon­si­bil­i­ty for com­ments on their web­sites.

Accord­ing to p.12 of Decree No 60, respon­si­bil­i­ty for com­ments on web­sites was placed on their authors. Mean­time, the amend­ments made to the Law on Mass Media shift the lia­bil­i­ty on web­site own­ers.

As became known on March 25, the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs denied accred­i­ta­tion to BAJ mem­ber Andrei Mialesh­ka as a cor­re­spon­dent of the Radio Racy­ja. The appli­ca­tion for accred­i­ta­tion was filed in Novem­ber 2014, the offi­cial reply appeared only now. The refusal refers to points 10 and 15.4 f the Rul­ing on Accred­it­ing Jour­nal­ists of For­eign Mass Media mean­ing he had not filed all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments and had worked for the mass media before.

On March 26 the Mask­ous­ki dis­trict court of Brest heard the case of BAJ mem­ber Ales Liauchuk, with­out his par­tic­i­pa­tion. The jour­nal­ist learnt about the hear­ing on the next day by hone that he had been fined for 21 basic amounts (3 mln 780 thous rubles) for “ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts” (admin­is­tra­tive art. 22.9). The charges were based on a report on the web­site of Bel­sat signed AL.

On March 26, the Deputy Min­is­ter of Home Affairs Mikalay Melchanka refused to talk with BAJ chair­per­son Zhan­na Litv­ina and deputy chair Andrei Bas­tunets, although these were offi­cial recep­tion hours of the Deputy Min­is­ter. BAJ lead­ers want­ed to clar­i­fy issues with the unpub­li­cized ban to take pho­tos of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings. The Min­istry rep­re­sen­ta­tives answered that there had been an offi­cial state­ment and there was no neces­si­ty to dis­cuss it any more.

On March 26, reports appeared that some Belaru­sian providers blocked access to Charter’97, Belarus­par­ti­san, Vias­na etc. The notice of block­ing said that the web­sites had been blocked under pres­i­den­tial edict No 60 dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 1, 2010. On March 28, access to Charter’97, belaruspartisan.org, prokopovi.ch, spring96.org was restored, with­out intel­li­gi­ble offi­cial com­ments. Accord­ing to the web­site electroname.com, which quot­ed an anony­mous source from the sphere of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, the block­ing occurred because two lists of web­sites with restrict­ed access were uni­fied. The first list, under edict No 60, restrict­ed access to oppo­si­tion­al and human rights web­sites to users in build­ings of pub­lic insti­tu­tions, state-run estab­lish­ments. The oth­er list was enforced in Jan­u­ary 2015 under the lat­est amend­ments to the media law and aimed at anti-drug traf­fick­ing and antiter­ror­ism; the list restrict access to some web­sites for all users. It looks like the web­sites from the ear­li­est list “fell under amnesty”.

On March 30, the Barysau dis­trict court held anoth­er hear­ing into the law­suit of a nurse against the news­pa­per Borisovskiye Novosti. The plain­tiff con­firmed her claims and motioned to attach to the case mass media pub­li­ca­tions on ana­log­i­cal inci­dents, and pre­sent­ed her per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics from the place of employ­ment. She reject­ed a com­pro­mise offer. The news­pa­per rep­re­sen­ta­tive made a non-guilty plea and motioned to dis­miss the addi­tion­al doc­u­ments of the plain­tiff. The hear­ing will con­tin­ue in April 16.

We remind that the law­suit for defense of busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion was filed against Borisovskiye Novosti for the arti­cle “Who is guilty of the death of a patient in the 2nd poly­clin­ics?” dat­ed Decem­ber 24, 2014.

On March 30, the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist from Mahilow Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou filed a super­vi­so­ry appeal to the chair of the Supreme Court of Belarus. We remind that on Octo­ber 8, he was fined 6 mil­lion Belaru­sian rubles (around EUR 450) on admin­is­tra­tive charges of ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts (arti­cle 22.9, part 2 of Belaru­sian Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offences); he was guilty of mak­ing the arti­cle under the title of «Along the Smug­gler’s Trail. Do the Russ­ian Sanc­tions Work in the Bor­der Area?» pub­lished with indi­ca­tion of his author­ship on the DW.de web­site on August 25, 2014. The jour­nal­ist’s pri­vate apart­ment as well as at the jour­nal­ist par­ents’ flat were searched on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2014, and two lap­tops and two flash cards were con­fis­cat­ed. The court of appeal upheld the sen­tence.

On April 1, the Mask­ous­ki dis­trict court of Brest fined Ina Khomich for 30 basic amounts for coop­er­a­tion with the Radio Racy­ja with­out accred­i­ta­tion, under art. 22.9. The jour­nal­ist argued that she had the right to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, which is guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion.

On April 2, the judge of the Chy­hu­nach­ny dis­trict court of Homel fined Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki, free­lancer and BAJ mem­ber, for 30 basic amounts (5.4 mil­lion rubles) under art. 22.9. He was found guilty of pro­duc­ing a report on Bel­sat dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 6 and titled “Teach­ers and medics get pun­ished for a mur­dered child”. The arti­cle was signed with a pen name. A police cap­tain ques­tioned the school employ­ees to find out who was shoot­ing the video report. Before the court hear­ing the judge turned down the motion that the free­lancers’ inter­ests were rep­re­sent­ed by the jurist, BAJ mem­ber Leanid Sudalen­ka.

On April 4, it became known that the Brest Region­al Court sent the case of Tama­ra Shcha­pi­otk­i­na for review. The judge admit­ted that the court of first instance held the hear­ing with vio­la­tions. 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. The judge said the jour­nal­ist would learn the court deci­sion in a let­ter that would be sent to her by post.