Justice ministry seeking closure of Belarusian Association of Journalists

Accord­ing to the ministry’s press office, the BAJ received a warn­ing for vio­lat­ing reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the activ­i­ties of non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions but did not act on it on time, “which is unac­cept­able.”

In par­tic­u­lar, as the min­istry said, a non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion is giv­en three days to inform the author­i­ties about the res­o­lu­tion of an issue raised in a warn­ing.

When reached by Bela­PAN, BAJ Deputy Chair­per­son Barys Harec­ki said that the orga­ni­za­tion intend­ed to fight for its legal sta­tus “till the end.”

“It is obvi­ous that this is a bru­tal reprisal cam­paign against the orga­ni­za­tion,” he not­ed.

He said that the jus­tice min­istry had not offi­cial­ly informed the BAJ about its inten­tion to close the orga­ni­za­tion. He also said that they could not fix the prob­lems raised in the ministry’s warn­ing because their Min­sk office was still sealed off and they had no access to their papers. He point­ed out that they had told the jus­tice min­istry about their sit­u­a­tion.

Even if the BAJ los­es its legal sta­tus, it will con­tin­ue its activ­i­ties aimed at “defend­ing itself and its col­leagues,” Mr. Harec­ki stressed.

“The BAJ is not only a legal address and a reg­is­tra­tion license but 25 years of suc­cess­ful work that keeps going. This is more than 1,300 media peo­ple who remain mem­bers of the BAJ despite pres­sure. We are con­fi­dent that our com­mu­ni­ty will not dis­ap­pear,” he said.

On July 15, the BAJ received a let­ter from the jus­tice min­istry say­ing that a warn­ing had been issued to the orga­ni­za­tion. 

The min­istry explained that the BAJ had failed to sub­mit cer­tain doc­u­ments. In addi­tion, there were issues with lease agree­ments for some of the BAJ’s offices in the provinces. 

The min­istry instruct­ed the BAJ to take steps to resolve the issues and noti­fy it on July 16 at the lat­est.

“It is note­wor­thy that the warn­ing was issued by Deputy [Jus­tice] Min­is­ter Siarhiej Kali­noŭs­ki on July 8 and the stamp on the let­ter says that it was sent on July 9 but [postal oper­a­tor] Belpošta’s track­ing sys­tem shows that the let­ter was received from the sender on July 13, one day before an attack on the organization’s office,” the BAJ said at the time.

On July 14, law enforce­ment offi­cers con­duct­ed a search at the BAJ’s office in Min­sk. The prop­er­ty was sealed off after the search.