Lukashenka on Control over Internet: «We Don’t Know Yet How to Do It And Avoid Sanctions»

— I believe each state has its own answers to the  ques­tions of how to behave in the dig­i­tal space and how to reg­u­late the Inter­net, — said the Pres­i­dent. — As a sov­er­eign coun­try, Belarus has its own opin­ion on the moral, eth­i­cal, and legal bound­aries of Inter­net free­dom. I speak so freely about the Inter­net, because none of you could reproach me for restrict­ing the Inter­net in Belarus in any way. We should have done it, though. We just don’t know yet how to do that in a way to avoid the sanc­tions from the civ­i­lized soci­ety, that is why we let it alone for now. There’s no rush.

Accord­ing to Lukashen­ka, the recent­ly adopt­ed Con­cept of Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty describes the pol­i­cy on the Inter­net.

— How­ev­er, with­out com­mon rules rec­og­nized by all mem­bers of the infor­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ty, we will nev­er be able to ensure effec­tive pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens, — the Pres­i­dent added.

He spoke on Belarus’ efforts to strength­en rela­tions with the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries for more than 20 years with­in the frame­work of «the belt of good neigh­bor­hood» ini­tia­tive, which worked real­ly well.  Lukashen­ka believes, it is time per­haps to take it as mod­el for a new ini­tia­tive — the «belt of dig­i­tal neigh­bor­hood».

— This can be done by con­clud­ingcross-bor­der and oth­er agree­ments on infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty. From our point of view, the key ele­ments of such agree­ments could be the ideas of dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty and neu­tral­i­ty, which will pri­mar­i­ly guar­an­tee the non-inter­fer­ence of coun­tries in each oth­er’s infor­ma­tion resources.