Resolution of the 10th Congress of the Belarusian Association of Journalists

The BAJ Con­gress notes that the sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech over the past three years in Belarus has failed to change towards democ­ra­ti­za­tion. Fur­ther­more,

• since 2017, pres­sure from the author­i­ties on inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism has increased, espe­cial­ly on free­lance jour­nal­ists, who are still out­lawed in Belarus;
• changes have been intro­duced in the first read­ing in media leg­is­la­tion, which aim at increas­ing state con­trol online; as before, the law was draft­ed with­out pub­lic dis­cus­sion;
• the prac­tice of using anti-extrem­ism leg­is­la­tion and the Crim­i­nal Code to restrict free­dom of expres­sion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion has been expand­ed.

The media in Belarus were also affect­ed by the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• increas­ing influ­ence of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da; at the same time, mea­sures tak­en by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to strength­en the country’s infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty have proved insuf­fi­cient and con­tra­dic­to­ry;
• the media con­sump­tion has changed, the num­ber of media has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly;
• access of jour­nal­ists to infor­ma­tion has become even more restrict­ed.

The 10th Con­gress of BAJ affirms the need to:

• con­duct pub­lic dis­cus­sion on changes in media leg­is­la­tion before its adop­tion in the sec­ond read­ing, and to involve nation­al and inter­na­tion­al experts to assess whether the pro­posed changes meet the inter­na­tion­al demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards;
• rec­og­nize at the leg­isla­tive lev­el the right of free­lancers to col­lect and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion in domes­tic and for­eign mass media;
• defend the coun­try’s infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty in the media space;
• pro­mote the con­ver­gence of media, their devel­op­ment and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

The Con­gress decides to:

• rec­og­nize the work of the Coun­cil of the NGO «Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists» as sat­is­fac­to­ry;
• approve the Strat­e­gy of the NGO «Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists” for 2018 — 2020 (attached);
• approve the amend­ments to the Code of Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics of BAJ pro­posed by the Ethics Com­mis­sion (attached);
• adopt­ed the State­ment.