Mass Media Week in Belarus. Info-posting October 5 – 25, 2015

On Octo­ber 3, at noon the non-state agency Bela­PAN was sub­ject to DDoS attack, after its web­site naviny.by pub­lished an arti­cle about the reli­gious-polit­i­cal action “A prayer for Belarus” with par­tic­i­pa­tion of Alexan­der Lukashen­ka. The arti­cle crit­i­cized meth­ods for orga­niz­ing the event, quot­ed opin­ions of stu­dents who were forced to take part in the action. ON Octo­ber 5, BAJ made a state­ment denounc­ing the attack: “We think it is anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of the sys­temic pol­i­cy of con­trol over infor­ma­tion in our coun­try aimed to manip­u­late pub­lic opin­ion. We back the demand of the infor­ma­tion­al com­pa­ny Bela­PAN to ensure prop­er main­te­nance for web­sites in the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus and pro­tect them from any attacks. BAJ calls to stop any attacks on mass media in order to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al cit­i­zen right to get uncen­sored infor­ma­tion from mul­ti­ple sources.”

On Octo­ber 6 in Brest, jour­nal­ists Ales’ Liauchuk and Milana Khary­ton­a­va had to deal with inter­fer­ence on behalf of an observ­er at the polling sta­tion of the Brest State Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty. The jour­nal­ists sur­veyed stu­dents who had come to vote in ear­ly vot­ing under pres­sure. The stu­dents said that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the uni­ver­si­ty con­trolled stu­dents’ turnout in ear­ly vot­ing. The jour­nal­ists found out that the con­troller was Svi­at­lana Kur­gan, deputy dean of the uni­ver­si­ty, who was accred­it­ed at the polling sta­tion as an observ­er from the pub­lic asso­ci­a­tion Belaya Rus’. The jour­nal­ists said that Svi­at­lana Kur­gan inter­fered when the stu­dents were being inter­viewed, made them deny what they were say­ing. She refused to intro­duce, said she was just a per­son from the street; and she promised to sue the jour­nal­ists for defama­tion.

On Octo­ber 8, a jour­nal­ist from non-state news­pa­per Intex-press (Baranavichy) want­ed to know the num­ber of cit­i­zens who had vot­ed in ear­ly vote; how­ev­er, the chair­per­son of the Baranavichy city elec­toral com­mis­sion Tama­ra Shukala said that they did not have that infor­ma­tion. Lat­er, Intex-press received the fig­ures about ear­ly vot­ers from the Brest region­al elec­toral com­mis­sion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­mis­sion said they were gath­er­ing the data from the city elec­toral com­mis­sion. Lawyers of the news­pa­per filed a com­plaint to the Cen­tral Elec­toral Com­mis­sion.

On Octo­ber 9, Art­siom Lia­va, jour­nal­ist of the news­pa­per Novy Chas, was tak­ing pho­tos at polling sta­tion No 29 in Min­sk. Ale­na Pazen­ka, head­mas­ter of the school hous­ing the polling sta­tion, claimed that the jour­nal­ist inter­fered into the elec­toral process, com­piled a report against him and made him leave the polling sta­tion. The jour­nal­ist com­plained to CEC, how­ev­er, the com­mis­sion stat­ed that the actions of the mem­ber of the elec­toral com­mis­sion were law­ful. We remind that accord­ing to art. 13 of the Elec­toral Code, media rep­re­sen­ta­tives have the right to be present on the premis­es of polling sta­tions and attend meet­ings of elec­toral com­mis­sions. Jour­nal­ists have the right to gath­er infor­ma­tion and receive infor­ma­tion from state bod­ies accord­ing to art. 34 of the Law on Mass Media.

On Octo­ber 9, a jour­nal­ist of the web­site Bobruyskiy Couri­er Alexan­dra Glagoleva was mak­ing a report from polling sta­tion No 20 in Babruysk. The chair­per­son of the elec­toral com­mis­sion first denied the journalist’s right to stay there, then final­ly reg­is­tered her as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of mass media, but with the con­di­tion that the jour­nal­ists takes one pho­to and leaves. The jour­nal­ist had noth­ing to do but leave; she report­ed about the inci­dent and filed a com­plaint to the prosecutor’s office.

On Octo­ber 11, Art­siom Lia­va was not allowed to report from polling sta­tion No 33 in Lenin dis­trict in Min­sk (the chair­per­son – Dzmit­ry Ahu­lik). The grounds for the denied access was a report against the jour­nal­ist com­piled a day ear­li­er. It was writ­ten that the jour­nal­ist “vio­lat­ed rules at the polling sta­tion”, as result “issues arose about uncom­fort­able” elec­toral process (“he stopped the vot­ers and asked them ques­tions”). He refused to sit at a par­tic­u­lar place in order not to stand in vot­ers’ way. The whole pre­vi­ous day, there were no com­plaints at the polling sta­tion; the jour­nal­ist thinks that com­mis­sion from No 33 had had infor­ma­tion from sta­tion No 29, and there was a cen­tral­ized deci­sion not to allow him to polling sta­tions. He filed a com­plaint to the prosecutor’s office.

On Octo­ber 9, in the evening, two shoot­ing teams of the Ukrain­ian chan­nel 1+1 were detained on the Belaru­sian-Ukrain­ian bor­der, the infor­ma­tion pub­lished by Vol­ha Malcheuskaya, jour­nal­ist of TSN chan­nel, in her Twit­ter. The detainees were ques­tioned by the KGB, a scrupu­lous cus­toms inspec­tion was per­formed. After that, the jour­nal­ists were allowed entry to Belarus, noth­ing was seized.

On Octo­ber 11, a jour­nal­ist of the Pol­ish web­site Eastbook.eu tried to shoot the count­ing of bal­lots at polling sta­tion No 6 at the Per­shamays­ki dis­trict in Min­sk. Mem­bers of the com­mis­sion shield­ed them­selves with chairs; when she demand­ed that she want­ed to see the process, the chair­per­son of the com­mis­sion Natal­lia Kunouskaya replied that she was the chief and she dic­tat­ed the rules. A mem­ber of the com­mis­sion also demand­ed that she did not want to be seen in the video. The chair­per­son of the elec­toral com­mis­sion said that the jour­nal­ist was vio­lat­ing the rights of the per­son and ordered her to stay away from the table where bal­lots were count­ed.

On Octo­ber 12, from 1.20 to 1.35 at night, web­sites nn.by, char­ter97.org, belarus­par­ti­san.org, naviny.by, euro­ra­dio.fm were inac­ces­si­ble, report­ed Nasha Niva. The out­let under­lined that the glitch was strange because the out­lets belong to dif­fer­ent servers and domain zones.

On Octo­ber 15, the jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na Vik­tar Parfio­nen­ka report­ed that he had filed a com­plaint to the UN HRC against the facts that the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs had sev­en times denied accred­i­ta­tion to him as a cor­re­spon­dent of the Belaru­sian Radio Racy­ja (Poland). The jour­nal­ist tried to protest against the denials of accred­i­ta­tion in court, but it was use­less.

On Octo­ber 16, it was report­ed that the police of Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict of Hrod­na failed to find crimes com­po­nents in facts list­ed in com­plaint of the jour­nal­ist, BAJ mem­ber Andrei Mialesh­ka. In August 2015, he com­plained to the police ask­ing to find authors of a defam­a­to­ry arti­cle about the jour­nal­ist and his fam­i­ly mem­bers, which was pub­lished on a Russ­ian web­site. The police found out who admin­is­tered the web­site and asso­ci­at­ed social media from the web­site – the authors live in the same city as the jour­nal­ist. How­ev­er, the police did not find crime com­po­nents and are not going to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. The jour­nal­ist intends to com­plain to the prosecutor’s office.

After the elec­tions, the edi­to­r­i­al office of Nasha Niva request­ed a pos­si­bil­i­ty from Lidziya Yarmoshy­na, chair­per­son of the Cen­tral Elec­toral Com­mis­sion, to see the min­utes of all polling sta­tions in the cap­i­tal. The reply from Lidziya Yarmoshy­na says that CEC does not have the doc­u­ments – they stayed at the Min­sk City Com­mis­sion. How­ev­er, then the city com­mis­sion had ceased its work, no one picked up the phone. The jour­nal­ists want­ed to ver­i­fy infor­ma­tion that at many polling sta­tions min­utes were re-writ­ten after the bal­lot count com­plet­ed, and did not coin­cide with the data pub­li­cized imme­di­ate­ly after the bal­lots were count­ed.

On Octo­ber 23, it was report­ed that the state exam­i­na­tion com­mis­sion did not find extrem­ism in the book by Ana­tol Liabedz­ka, leader of the Unit­ed Civ­il Par­ty. The book “108 days and nights behind bars in the KGB”, in 30 copies, was seized from its author on May 9, 2015 on the bor­der point Kamen­ny Loh. Now the Ash­mi­any cus­toms office offi­cial­ly informed that he could take the books back.