Practice of oppressing members of media in Belarus must change, OSCE Representative says

“The author­i­ties have to stop impos­ing restric­tive mea­sures on free­lance jour­nal­ists, hin­der­ing them to do their job in a free and safe man­ner,” Mija­tović said. “A con­struc­tive solu­tion to this issue should be reached.”

Since the Representative’s lat­est state­ment on this issue in Decem­ber 2014, there have been six addi­tion­al cas­es involv­ing free­lance jour­nal­ists fined for work­ing with for­eign media with­out accred­i­ta­tion:

Kon­stan­tin Zhukovskiy, fined on 2 April by court in Gomel;

Inna Khomich, fined on 1 April by court in Brest;

Ales Levchuk, fined on 26 March and 24 Decem­ber 2014 by courts in Brest;

Laris­sa Shiryako­va, fined on 12 March by court in Gomel;

Tama­ra Shchep­etk­i­na, fined on 6 March and 17 Decem­ber 2014 by courts in Brest;

Ali­na Litvinchuk, on 16 Feb­ru­ary and 12 Jan­u­ary by court in Brest.

The law enforce­ment offi­cials have brought sim­i­lar charges against two oth­er free­lance jour­nal­ists, Alexan­der Denisov and Alexan­der Kirke­vich, who may face admin­is­tra­tive penal­ties soon.

“My Office stands ready to assist the author­i­ties in any way nec­es­sary in order to reverse this destruc­tive trend, as well as facil­i­tate a dia­logue and joint activ­i­ties of gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions and media orga­ni­za­tions on the top­ic,” Mija­tović said.

The Rep­re­sen­ta­tive also not­ed the increased num­ber of warn­ings issued by the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry to media out­lets in recent months, in some cas­es relat­ed to pet­ty offens­es such as wrong­ly spelling name of the Min­istry, using abbre­vi­a­tion for indi­cat­ing Repub­lic of Belarus or post­ing pub­li­ca­tion data on a wrong page, etc.

Offi­cial Belaruss­ian sources state that the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry has issued 27 warn­ings regard­ing 26 media out­lets in the peri­od from Jan­u­ary to March 2015. Accord­ing to the lat­est amend­ments to the law «On Mass Media” in Decem­ber 2014, media out­lets who receive two warn­ings or more from the Infor­ma­tion Min­istry, may lose their right to dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion.

Mija­tović also not­ed reports that a num­ber of inde­pen­dent online news plat­forms, includ­ing Charter97.org and Belaruspartisan.org have been inter­mit­tent­ly blocked at the end of March.