Report: Women journalists are frontline warriors at the protests and in prisons in Belarus

Belarus has always been a chal­leng­ing coun­try when it comes to press free­dom as the mas­sive crack­down against crit­i­cal voic­es became more intense after last year’s elec­tion. The chal­lenges have mul­ti­plied for women jour­nal­ists espe­cial­ly as the envi­ron­ment is becom­ing more repres­sive with every sin­gle day. More than five hun­dred jour­nal­ists are said to have faced deten­tion since last year. Accord­ing to data doc­u­ment­ed by The Coali­tion For Women In Jour­nal­ism, 77 women jour­nal­ists faced dif­fer­ent sorts of harass­ment, deten­tion, and impris­on­ments in the year 2020. The num­ber is 15 until this year and it is increas­ing every day. 

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the impris­oned jour­nal­ists have col­lec­tive­ly spent more than 1200 days in prison. It has also been report­ed that the state-owned pub­lish­ing house refused to print for five news­pa­pers. A major crack­down was exe­cut­ed and Tut.By news offices. The news out­lets’ offices were raid­ed, equip­ment was con­fis­cat­ed. There were reports of sev­er­al arrests. The web por­tal and social media accounts were also blocked. The harsh and threat­en­ing response towards jour­nal­ists and news media has result­ed in a five-point decline in the coun­try’s rat­ing in the Press Free­dom Index doc­u­ment­ed by RSF. Belarus stands at 158 out of 180 coun­tries. The country’s press free­dom sit­u­a­tion is even worse than Rus­sia. 

CFWIJ doc­u­ment­ed the release of Tut.By cor­re­spon­dent Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vish, the staff reporter was final­ly released from the Belaru­sian deten­tion cen­ter after com­plet­ing her sen­tence peri­od on May 19. Kat­siary­na was tak­en into police cus­tody for vio­lat­ing med­ical con­fi­den­tial­i­ty in her inves­ti­gat­ing sto­ry regard­ing a mur­dered activist. The day Kat­siary­na was released, Tut.By offices were raid­ed and many staffers were report­ed to be detained by the author­i­ties. Their equip­ment was con­fis­cat­ed and social media sites and accounts were blocked. 

Only a few days before the raid at Tut.By offices, their staff reporter Lyubov Kasper­ovich was detained by the author­i­ties and lat­er charged with fif­teen days in prison for her cov­er­age of a mass demon­stra­tion held in Min­sk. The jour­nal­ist was detained on May 14 while she was cov­er­ing the tri­al of 12 young oppo­si­tion sup­port­ers. In the same man­ner, pho­to­jour­nal­ist Tat­syana Kapi­ton­a­va was detained for cov­er­ing an unau­tho­rized event on May 13. Police arrest­ed her while she was record­ing at the event. Accord­ing to the eye­wit­ness­es, police inten­tion­al­ly came to arrest her. There was a mas­sive crack­down report­ed against jour­nal­ists and civil­ians as they were orga­niz­ing a protest ral­ly against Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko. It was report­ed that most of the arrest­ed jour­nal­ists were women. 

Giv­en the dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion of the coun­try, CFWIJ has been keep­ing an eye on the unfold­ing events around press free­dom in the coun­try. We have signed a joint state­ment ear­li­er with the inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions call­ing all the EU agen­cies to apply their restric­tions and sanc­tions against Belarus. The plat­form has designed an in-focus page con­tain­ing all the impor­tant infor­ma­tion and doc­u­ment­ed state­ments of a num­ber of women jour­nal­ists. The page is cre­at­ed to appre­ci­ate the ded­i­cat­ed women jour­nal­ists of Belarus who despite all the hard­ships show up at work and break bar­ri­ers to pur­sue their pas­sion. A lot of infor­ma­tion can be found regard­ing the jour­nal­ists report­ing on the ground in our Twit­ter thread and State­ments. Also, there is record­ed instaL­ive where you may hear the first-hand sto­ries of the strug­gle of women pro­test­ers.

Belaru­sian par­lia­ment moved anoth­er bill to fur­ther legal­ize their abuse of pow­er on April 2. The pro­posed bill includes amend­ments in mass media law and mass gath­er­ings law. If the bill gets par­lia­men­tary approval it will fur­ther dimin­ish the press free­dom in the coun­try as well as restrict the work­ing jour­nal­ists even more. The bill includes con­di­tions like expand­ing legal restric­tions on news media out­lets and more author­i­ta­tive pow­er for author­i­ties to refuse any sort of accred­i­ta­tion or shut them com­plete­ly. The pro­posed rec­om­men­da­tions will fur­ther restrict women jour­nal­ists from report­ing on mass events in the coun­try. 

The Coali­tion For Women In Jour­nal­ism reg­is­tered the case of deputy chair­man of Belaru­sian PEN cen­ter, Tat­siana Niad­bai who was inter­ro­gat­ed by an inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee on March 3. The inter­ro­ga­tion was in link with a raid on Press Club that was done on Decem­ber 22, 2020. The hous­es of sev­er­al Press Club employ­ees were also raid­ed. Tat­siana had worked as a coor­di­na­tor at the Press Club until 2017. The jour­nal­ist could not reveal any details after inter­ro­ga­tion as author­i­ties made her sign a non-dis­clo­sure form. Darya Chultso­va and Kat­syray­na Andreye­va, both were arrest­ed in Novem­ber 2020 for cov­er­ing a protest ral­ly. The jour­nal­ists were live-stream­ing the police tor­ture in the ral­ly that was held in the mem­o­ry of mur­dered protest activist, Raman Ban­daren­ka. Both women jour­nal­ists were sen­tenced to two years in prison on Feb­ru­ary 18, for their report­ing on state oppres­sion. 

CFWIJ also doc­u­ment­ed the arrest case of Ali­na Skrabuno­va, a Bel­sat TV cor­re­spon­dent who was arrest­ed for report­ing on a ral­ly held in sup­port of an oppo­si­tion can­di­date. Ali­na was released the same day and was fined 1,350 Belaru­sian rubles. A for­mer woman jour­nal­ist, Kse­nia Lut­ski­na was harassed by author­i­ties over tax eva­sion charges. She was detained on Decem­ber 22, 2020, at a shop­ping cen­ter she had gone shop­ping for. The author­i­ties raid­ed her house and took the equip­ment in con­fis­ca­tion. On Jan­u­ary 17, CFWIJ report­ed the case of Tat­siana Bub­likawa, a Bela­PAN reporter who suf­fered police mis­treat­ment after a raid was con­duct­ed at her office in Min­sk. The police mis­han­dling caused her pan­ic attack and the jour­nal­ist end­ed up in the hos­pi­tal. 

The Coali­tion For Women In Jour­nal­ism reached out to Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ists Asso­ci­a­tion to learn the lat­est updates. The deputy chair­per­son of BAJ Barys Haret­s­ki shared in the state­ment, “Pres­sure on the media in Belarus has been sky­rock­et­ing since last sum­mer. This year we have faced an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of repres­sion against jour­nal­ists. In less than a year we’ve seen over 550 deten­tions of jour­nal­ists, more than 70 cas­es of vio­lence against jour­nal­ists, and 34 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are being held behind bars at the moment. Half of the jour­nal­ists in cus­tody are women, some of them report declin­ing health. Many print out­lets have been effec­tive­ly destroyed by the author­i­ties, with more than 50 media web­sites remain­ing blocked. Last year’s wide­spread deten­tions and admin­is­tra­tive arrests of jour­nal­ists were main­ly replaced by arrests on crim­i­nal charges, where jour­nal­ists face up to 7 years in prison. This is a major crack­down on inde­pen­dent media and bru­tal sup­pres­sion of free speech.”

Accord­ing to the lat­est reports around the pro­posed bill, CFWIJ believes that the bill will cause more chal­lenges to work­ing jour­nal­ists in Belarus in an already tense sit­u­a­tion of press free­dom. These pro­posed amend­ments will pro­hib­it pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists from report­ing freely on gov­ern­ment mat­ters. As men­tioned in the bill, the pro­posed law also denies jour­nal­ists from doing any live-stream­ing of any unau­tho­rized mass event. The police will be giv­en more pow­er to stop any film­ing or pho­tog­ra­phy hap­pen­ing at the protests. The Coali­tion For Women In Jour­nal­ism demands that the Belaru­sian par­lia­ment reject these unjus­ti­fied demands pro­posed in the ill just to curb the remain­ing press free­dom in the coun­try. We demand the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment to release all the women jour­nal­ists that are being held unlaw­ful­ly.