Belarus: Use Europe Games to Spur Media Freedom

World Press Free­dom Day, which will take place on May 3, was cre­at­ed to eval­u­ate and advance press free­dom around the world. Belarus has long had a poor record on media free­dom and free­dom of expres­sion. In the past two years, Belaru­sian author­i­ties have fur­ther tight­ened reg­u­la­tions on online resources, car­ried out ground­less search­es of the edi­to­r­i­al offices of sev­er­al news orga­ni­za­tions, and increased pros­e­cu­tions and oth­er harass­ment of free­lance jour­nal­ists, ulti­mate­ly ini­ti­at­ing a record num­ber of crim­i­nal charges against jour­nal­ists and blog­gers.

«Belaru­sian author­i­ties have a long and sor­ry his­to­ry of con­tempt for media free­dom, so it’s like­ly they may harass inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in the lead-up and dur­ing the Euro­pean Games,» said Rachel Den­ber, deputy Europe and Cen­tral direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. «The Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees should be ready to address this.» 

Pres­i­dent Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka will have been in office for 25 years in July. His tenure has been marked by entrenched author­i­tar­i­an rule, Human Rights Watch and the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists said. The gov­ern­ment severe­ly restricts inde­pen­dent media and inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions and refus­es per­mis­sion for most human rights groups to reg­is­ter and oper­ate freely. 

How­ev­er, in recent years the gov­ern­ment made some improve­ments to the human rights sit­u­a­tion. It has down­grad­ed «unreg­is­tered» involve­ment in non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions from a crim­i­nal offense to an admin­is­tra­tive one, and has released most high-pro­file polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. 

But 2019 is on track to be one of the worst years for media free­dom and free­dom of expres­sion in Belarus in the past decade, Human Rights Watch and the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists said. In 2018, author­i­ties pros­e­cut­ed dozens of free­lance jour­nal­ists for coop­er­at­ing with unreg­is­tered for­eign media, fin­ing them between US$230 and US$580. In the first three months of 2019, at least sev­en jour­nal­ists were pros­e­cut­ed on these charges. 

Police often arrest jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing unau­tho­rized peace­ful protests along with the pro­test­ers. Belaru­sian author­i­ties use «anti-extrem­ism» leg­is­la­tion to sup­press legit­i­mate speech.

In April, police raid­ed the Min­sk office of Bel­sat — a satel­lite tele­vi­sion sta­tion reg­is­tered in Poland that is the only inde­pen­dent tele­vi­sion chan­nel broad­cast­ing in Belarus. The raid was in con­nec­tion with a dubi­ous crim­i­nal libel inves­ti­ga­tion brought by a pub­lic offi­cial in response to an inci­dent in 2018.

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, Belaru­sian courts hand­ed down sus­pend­ed five-year sen­tences to three blog­gers with Russ­ian-lan­guage web­sites, accus­ing them of incit­ing extrem­ism and sow­ing social dis­cord between Rus­sia and Belarus.

In 2018 and 2019, author­i­ties pros­e­cut­ed 14 jour­nal­ists from inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions for alleged­ly using pass­words for the state news agency, BelTA, with­out pay­ing the fee for autho­riza­tion to access it. The crim­i­nal charges against them were even­tu­al­ly replaced with admin­is­tra­tive charges. Each was fined between 3,000 and 17,000 Belaru­sian rubles (US$1,420 — $8,050). 

A court found Mary­na Zolata­va, the edi­tor of TUT.BY, one of the pub­li­ca­tions under inves­ti­ga­tion, guilty of crim­i­nal neg­li­gence for alleged­ly being aware that her staff was using login data for BeITA’s paid sub­scrip­tion. It fined her 7,650 Belaru­sian rubles.

In the con­text of gov­ern­ment efforts to con­trol the media in Belarus, free­dom of expres­sion activists believe that these cas­es were pur­sued as retal­i­a­tion against news out­lets rather than in response to gen­uine con­cern about ille­gal activ­i­ty, Human Rights Watch and the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists said.

Human rights and media free­dom groups have repeat­ed­ly urged the Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees to estab­lish media free­dom pro­ce­dures for the Min­sk Games. In let­ters sent in Jan­u­ary 2018 and Jan­u­ary 2019, the Sport & and Rights Alliance, a coali­tion of inde­pen­dent groups includ­ing Human Rights Watch and the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists, urged the EOC to imme­di­ate­ly set up a hot­line or griev­ance mech­a­nism, «share the details wide­ly with the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty as well as exter­nal­ly,» and «pro­vide assur­ances that com­plaints will be han­dled imme­di­ate­ly and effec­tive­ly.» 

The Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees, an asso­ci­a­tion of 50 Nation­al Olympic Com­mit­tees, owns and reg­u­lates the Euro­pean Games. The EOC and its mem­bers are part of the Olympic Move­ment and gov­erned by the Olympic Char­ter, which has explic­it guar­an­tees for media free­dom. The Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) made media free­dom griev­ance pro­ce­dures avail­able dur­ing the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and the 2018 Pyeon­chang Win­ter Olympics, and FIFA made a griev­ance pro­ce­dure avail­able dur­ing the 2018 World Cup in Rus­sia. 

«Media griev­ance sys­tems have become an impor­tant new stan­dard to advance media free­dom around mega-events like the Euro­pean Games,» said Gul­noza Said, Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor at the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists. «In a repres­sive envi­ron­ment such as Belarus, it is essen­tial for the Euro­pean Olympic Com­mit­tees and the IOC to stand up for press free­dom and ensure that jour­nal­ists can do their jobs safe­ly.»