Mass Media Week in Belarus. Info-posting October 26 – November 8, 2015

On Octo­ber 26, the Asmi­any cus­toms office informed the lawyer from Homel Leanid Sudalen­ka that no signs of extrem­ism had been found either in his lap­top or the print prod­ucts seized from him, so he could come up and take them back. We remind that the equip­ment and print prod­ucts were seized from him on May 25, when Sudalen­ka was com­ing back from Vil­nius, from the forum on non-com­mer­cial law. He com­plained against the seizure to the Ash­mi­any dis­trict court, but the court dis­missed the com­plaint.

On Octo­ber 29, the KGB pub­lished the press release that a spe­cial oper­a­tion had been held to detain a group of peo­ple who eaves­dropped on busi­ness­men, politi­cians, jour­nal­ists of state-run and inde­pen­dent media for three years. Accord­ing to the report, the KGB held over 80 search­es, revealed around 1500 pur­chasers of unlaw­ful ser­vices. For three years, the detainees con­duct­ed bug­ging and eaves­drop­ping, crack­ing e‑mails and accounts for com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Skype, Viber, What­sApp, of social accounts. Spe­cial equip­ment and for­eign cur­ren­cy were con­fis­cat­ed. Crim­i­nal cas­es have been ini­ti­at­ed against the sus­pects under art. 376, part 2 of the Crim­i­nal Code (unlaw­ful pro­duc­tion, pur­chase or sales of means of secret obtain­ing of infor­ma­tion, orga­nized by a group of peo­ple in con­spir­a­cy). The arti­cle envis­ages an impris­on­ment of up to 4 years. Also, there have been over 20 crim­i­nal cas­es against pur­chas­es of the ser­vices under art. 203 of the Crim­i­nal Code (vio­la­tion of pri­va­cy of cor­re­spon­dence, phone calls and oth­er type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, postal, tele­graph or oth­er mes­sages). The KGB was car­ry­ing out oper­a­tional-search and inves­tiga­tive activ­i­ties aimed to reveal and doc­u­ment oth­er episodes of the unlaw­ful activ­i­ties of the sus­pects, and to estab­lish all clients of the crim­i­nal group and the peo­ple affect­ed by the activ­i­ties.

On Octo­ber 28, the Coun­cil of Min­is­ters extend­ed the accred­i­ta­tion for the Euro­pean Radio for Belarus for one more year, until Novem­ber 10, 2016. The Euro­ra­dio start­ed to broad­cast on Feb­ru­ary 2006, the first accred­i­ta­tion was obtained on Novem­ber 2009.

We remind that two out­lets specif­i­cal­ly designed for Belaru­sian audi­ences – the Radio Racy­ja and Bel­sat – have long time request­ed accred­i­ta­tion to work in Belarus, but got refusals only. The OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media Dun­ja Mija­tović empha­sized the issue dur­ing the vis­it on Sep­tem­ber 15 – 16, 2014, call­ing on the author­i­ties to abol­ish the out­dat­ed pro­ce­dure of accred­i­ta­tion which vio­lates people’s right to access infor­ma­tion.

On Novem­ber 3, it became known about anoth­er episode of pres­sure on Ihar Barysau, the edi­tor of the news­pa­per Nash Mahilow. “After the police failed to hold him account­able under the crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive law, tax inspec­tors start­ed to work on him,” reports the web­site eurobelarus.info. Tax inspec­tors ques­tioned the edi­tors’ acquain­tances, friends and oth­ers. On Octo­ber 28, an unknown man tried to enter his flat under the pre­text it was a sea­son­al check-up of com­mu­ni­ca­tions; where­as the com­mu­nal enter­prise denied that there were being held any check-ups at that moment, and neigh­bors also said nobody vis­it­ed them with the same pur­pose.

On Novem­ber 4, the free­lancer from Hrod­na, BAJ mem­ber Ales Dzian­isau faced a ban to work and take pic­tures in the exhi­bi­tion hall, at the open­ing of an expo­si­tion of the French trav­el pho­tog­ra­ph­er Françoise Hughi­er. The direc­tor of the exhi­bi­tion hall Iry­na Sil­vanovich did not allow the jour­nal­ist to enter the venue. Mean­while, there were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er inde­pen­dent mass media at the event.

We remind that these were Iry­na Sil­vanovich and her hus­band, artist Ali­ak­san­dr Sil­vanovich who were sum­moned to tes­ti­fy as wit­ness­es in court against the free­lancers Ales Dzian­isau and Ali­ak­san­dr Kirke­vich in August 2015. Then, the jour­nal­ists were fined 25 b.a. each for that they had made a report about a pup­pet exhi­bi­tion in the same hall for Bel­sat TV chan­nel, and thus vio­lat­ed art. 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code.