Heavy fines: Trials of four Belsat TV journalists today

Ales Silich is being tried for film­ing a protest ral­ly of two cyclists near the Opera House in Min­sk. Maryia Art­sy­basha­va sug­gests that she will have to appear before court for mak­ing the same news item. She does not know bet­ter as the police failed to give any details or show the pro­to­col to her.

Offi­cial­ly, the jour­nal­ists are accused of vio­lat­ing the law on mass media (Arti­cle 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code), i.e. for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

“Such increase of pres­sure on Bel­sat TV at this very moment means that the author­i­ties are get­ting ready for the autumn protest cam­paign announced by the oppo­si­tion. How­ev­er, the pur­pose of this pres­sure is not quite clear. It is a well-known fact that the fines is not the thing that make jour­nal­ists afraid – they pay fines and con­tin­ue to work. Appar­ent­ly, the author­i­ties sim­ply want to remind jour­nal­ists that they should not relax, that they are keep­ing a close eye on them. But I can assure the author­i­ties that our jour­nal­ists will not cease to cov­er events live, write arti­cles for our and con­tin­ue doing their job,” Alyak­sei Min­chonak, the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bel­sat Tv in Belarus, says.

“Such increase of pres­sure on Bel­sat TV at this very moment means that the author­i­ties are get­ting ready for the autumn protest cam­paign announced by the oppo­si­tion. How­ev­er, the pur­pose of this pres­sure is not quite clear. It is a well-known fact that the fines is not the thing that make jour­nal­ists afraid – they pay fines and con­tin­ue to work. Appar­ent­ly, the author­i­ties sim­ply want to remind jour­nal­ists that they should not relax, that they are keep­ing a close eye on them. But I can assure the author­i­ties that our jour­nal­ists will not cease to cov­er events live, write arti­cles for our and con­tin­ue doing their job,” Alyak­sei Min­chonak, the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Bel­sat Tv in Belarus, says.

Pro­to­cols were drawn upon Kat­syary­na Andreye­va and Syarhei Kavaliou for livestream­ing a protest ral­ly on 3 July and the Air­borne Forces Day cel­e­bra­tion on July 29.

(UPD) Judge Ivan Kast­syan has announced the court’s deci­sion: Kat­syary­na Andreye­va and Syarhei Kavaliou got a fine of BYN 1,150 (near­ly $600) each; Ales Silich and Maryia Art­sy­basha­va have been BYN 805 ($410) fined.

From the begin­ning of the year, the total sum of fines imposed on Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ists and con­trib­u­tors has amount­ed to more than $11,000.

Bel­sat TV which has been broad­cast­ing for nine years, has been denied accred­i­ta­tion for its jour­nal­ists dur­ing these very nine years. The Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry has repeat­ed­ly declared that it could not issue any accred­i­ta­tion to Bel­sat because the jour­nal­ists work­ing for the TV sta­tion … break the law.

Thus, the cir­cle clos­es: jour­nal­ists are denied accred­i­ta­tion because they break the law and they break the law, because they work with­out accred­i­ta­tion that they seek… And it explains the exis­tence of absur­dist Arti­cle 22.9 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, which pro­vides pun­ish­ment for ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts’. If you have accred­i­ta­tion, you are allowed be a jour­nal­ist. If you do not have it – you are out­lawed.