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  • Warnings to Mass Media and Journalists

    Belaru­sian law envis­ages a spe­cif­ic extra-judi­cial sanc­tion against mass media – writ­ten warn­ings from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion.
    Accord­ing to art, 49 of the Law on Mass Media, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion issues a warn­ing against any mass media or an Inter­net resource if:

    - its actions con­tra­dict to the require­ments of the Law, includ­ing bring­ing to everyone’s notice the infor­ma­tion the dis­sem­i­na­tion of which is restrict­ed or pro­hib­it­ed in accor­dance with Arti­cles 37 and 38 of the Law;

    - the mass medi­um dis­sem­i­nat­ed untrue infor­ma­tion that may harm the state or pub­lic inter­ests;

    - the mass medi­um pro­duced and/or dis­sem­i­nat­ed the prod­uct of the mass medi­um with­out per­mis­sion of the edi­tor-in-chief (edi­tor) of the mass medi­um;

    - the mass medi­um dis­sem­i­nat­ed the data not cor­re­spond­ing to real­i­ty, and dis­grace hon­or, dig­ni­ty or busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion of nat­ur­al per­sons or busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion legal per­sons.

    The Law estab­lish­es that two warn­ings against the edi­to­r­i­al office or its founder dur­ing a year„ and two pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al warn­ings against media offi­cials, can serve as grounds to start legal pro­ceed­ings to close down the mass medi­um. The pro­ceed­ings can be ini­ti­at­ed by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion or the prosecutor’s office with­in six months after the wan­ing was issued. This is not oblig­a­tion, but the right of the state bod­ies.

    In 1997, the State Com­mit­tee on Print (pre­de­ces­sor of the min­istry of Infor­ma­tion) closed down the news­pa­per Svabo­da; in 2001, the prosecutor’s office closed down the news­pa­per Paho­nia; in 2006 the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion closed down the news­pa­per Zgo­da.

    In 2011, the news­pa­pers Nar­o­d­naya Volya and Nasha Niva had three and four warn­ings respec­tive­ly, and the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion filed the suit for clo­sure, but lat­er with­draw under pub­lic pres­sure. The edi­to­r­i­al offices were held account­able with admin­is­tra­tive fines.

    In 2011 also, the radio Autora­dio was deprived of the right to broad­cast for hav­ing broad­cast “calls for extrem­ism” – this was the phrase of Andrei San­nikau, a can­di­date for pres­i­den­cy in 2010: “The fate of the coun­try is resolved in the square, not in the kitchen”.

    Warn­ings from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion are com­mon­place: in 2011 there were 83 warn­ings to 67 mass media; in 2015 there have been over 20 of them because of inac­cu­ra­cy in pub­lish­ing data, for exam­ple, because the news­pa­pers used abbre­vi­a­tion RB for the Repub­lic of Belarus. The news­pa­pers that received warn­ings under this pre­text were most­ly non-state – Haze­ta Slonim­skaya, Intex-press, Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas, Borisovskiye Novosti, Reklam­nyj Borzho­mi, Novy Chas, Nash Kraj and oth­ers.

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