UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders Michel Forst Advises Journalists to Contact Him Directly

UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion with human rights defend­ers Michel Forst is in Belarus with an unof­fi­cial vis­it at the invi­ta­tion of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the Legal Ini­tia­tive, and the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Tut.by edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va spoke about the “BelTA case”, in which she was con­vict­ed. Accord­ing to Zolata­va, the vio­la­tion com­mit­ted by the jour­nal­ists was out of pro­por­tion with the scale of pros­e­cu­tion of news out­lets and jour­nal­ists — deten­tions, search­es, inter­ro­ga­tions, heavy fines, and a crim­i­nal case. She believes that the pres­sure on Tut.by may be due to the fact that inde­pen­dent media is much more pop­u­lar with the audi­ence than state-owned media. The gov­ern­ment is try­ing hard to take inde­pen­dent media under con­trol.

Bela­PAN jour­nal­ist Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va point­ed out that the “BelTA case” could have been launched, among oth­er things, in order for the author­i­ties to be able to dig into the com­put­ers of jour­nal­ists.

“The author­i­ties received a lot of infor­ma­tion about the work of the Bela­PAN agency and the Tut.by por­tal, who are their sources of infor­ma­tion, etc.” , Tat­siana said.

Speak­ing about the prob­lems of jour­nal­ists, Kar­avenko­va not­ed that gov­ern­ment offi­cials are try­ing to stop all con­tacts with the jour­nal­ists, who are denied accred­i­ta­tion. For exam­ple, Bela­PAN has been unable to get access to events with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Pres­i­dent and the Prime Min­is­ter for more than a year.

«And we can’t appeal. They just respond to our ‘why’s’ — ‘because’, — Tat­siana said.

Deutsche Welle jour­nal­ist Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki explained, there were obvi­ous elec­toral cycles in Belarus, in which there were peri­ods of cleanis­ing and lib­er­al­iza­tion, and then the screws are tight­ened again. «If we con­sid­er the BelTA case an ele­ment of this cycle, it began too ear­ly. If this is true, it could be a cer­tain sign of changes in the think­ing of the rul­ing elites, ”Byk­ous­ki said.

Barys Haret­s­ki, Deputy Chair­man of BAJ, men­tioned the prob­lems of access to infor­ma­tion, harass­ment of jour­nal­ists of the Bel­sat TV chan­nel, deten­tions and oth­er obsta­cles to jour­nal­ists.

This was also illus­trat­ed by the exam­ple of Novy Chas jour­nal­ist Dziyana Ser­adz­iuk , who was tried for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized event, but in fact she had been cov­er­ing an street action near the Ukrain­ian Embassy.

The UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion with human rights defend­ers Michel Forst said that the sit­u­a­tion in the field of media and the rights of jour­nal­ists are with­in the scope of his pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

Mr. Forst point­ed out that he often works in coop­er­a­tion with the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on press free­dom. He explained the UNESCO mech­a­nism for the pro­tec­tion of jour­nal­ists. In extreme sit­u­a­tions, the UNESCO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al may direct­ly con­tact the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of a par­tic­u­lar coun­try and ask to step in. How­ev­er, it remains con­fi­den­tial and is not pub­li­cized.

The UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the sit­u­a­tion of human rights defend­ers, Michel Forst advised jour­nal­ists to con­tact him direct­ly with a request to respond to some events. In this case, he will be able to fol­low up and launch the mech­a­nism of inter­na­tion­al reac­tions,  And that can ulti­mate­ly have a pos­i­tive effect on the sit­u­a­tion.

Dur­ing his unof­fi­cial vis­it to Belarus, Mr. Forst meets with human rights activists, jour­nal­ists, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, and the Min­istry of Jus­tice.