Andrei Bastunets: Press freedom has never been easy in Belarus

Belaru­sian author­i­ties were busy in 2015: the gov­ern­ment intro­duced new laws aimed at restrict­ing media out­lets and dis­trib­u­tors; free­lance jour­nal­ists con­tribut­ing to for­eign media out­lets found them­selves fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion; and web­sites pub­lish­ing mate­r­i­al that “may harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus” were extra­ju­di­cial­ly blocked.

Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko may have won his fifth con­sec­u­tive elec­tion on 11 Octo­ber, but this also raised con­cerns. Observers not­ed the elec­toral process failed to meet cer­tain inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, includ­ing equal media access for can­di­dates, high­light­ing the pres­sure media work­ers find them­selves under to com­ply with tight­en­ing gov­ern­ment con­trol.

Andrei Bas­tunets, chair­per­son of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, spoke to Map­ping Media Free­dom Vol­ha Siakhovich about the country’s free­dom of expres­sion cli­mate.

Vol­ha Siakhovich: How would you describe the sit­u­a­tion with media free­dom in Belarus in 2015?

Andrei Bas­tunets: Press free­dom has nev­er been easy in Belarus. The coun­try has been ranked 157th out in 180 coun­tries in the World Press Free­dom Index by Reporters With­out Bor­ders for some years, which is the worst posi­tion among all Euro­pean coun­tries. We can also see the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the sit­u­a­tion with press free­dom and free­dom of expres­sion as a whole at the sys­temic lev­el, with the fur­ther tight­en­ing of the legal frame­work for activ­i­ties of the media set forth by new amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media came into force from the begin­ning of 2015. They had been adopt­ed by the Belaru­sian par­lia­ment unex­pect­ed­ly in Decem­ber 2014 with­out any pub­lic dis­cus­sion.

Why were the amend­ments made?

Andrei Bas­tunets: The Belaru­sian author­i­ties are always in keep­ing with the trend of sti­fling free­dom of speech through legal restric­tions. The cur­rent author­i­ties’ actions against the media are relat­ed to the 2015 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign and eco­nom­ic crises in Belarus. These cir­cum­stances have pro­voked the tight­en­ing of state con­trol over the media field. It affect­ed tra­di­tion­al media, the web and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of print out­lets. Before the elec­tion, all media had been sub­ject­ed to more strict lim­i­ta­tions.

What prob­lems are asso­ci­at­ed with state con­trol over the dis­tri­b­u­tion of media?

Andrei Bas­tunets: In accor­dance with new legal pro­vi­sions all media out­lets dis­trib­u­tors (except for edi­to­r­i­al boards) have been oblig­ed to sub­mit to the min­istry of infor­ma­tion the required infor­ma­tion for their incor­po­ra­tion into the State Reg­is­ter until 1 July 2015. Any non-reg­is­tered dis­trib­u­tors’ activ­i­ty is con­sid­ered ille­gal. The min­istry of infor­ma­tion has var­i­ous penal­ty tools that can be applied in rela­tion to media dis­trib­u­tors, includ­ing the ban­ning of their activ­i­ty. The dis­trib­u­tors are now in fact forced to mon­i­tor the con­tent of the dis­trib­uted media under threat of sanc­tions. That may lead to the hid­den cen­sor­ship.

Sev­er­al inde­pen­dent out­lets that used to sell the major part of their print-runs through dif­fer­ent trade com­pa­nies and entre­pre­neurs have faced a reduc­tion in sales since a sig­nif­i­cant part of press dis­trib­u­tors have not agreed to apply to the min­istry of infor­ma­tion of Belarus for a spe­cial per­mit. At the same time, the “Bel­posh­ta” and “Sayuz­druk — state-owned monop­o­list press dis­trib­u­tors — con­tin­ue to dis­crim­i­nate against Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media refus­ing to co-oper­ate with them.

What neg­a­tive con­se­quences have fol­lowed the changes to the legal reg­u­la­tion regard­ing the web?

Andrei Bas­tunets: There is an active inter­fer­ence by the min­istry of infor­ma­tion of Belarus into the web, which has remained the freest seg­ment in the Belaru­sian media space. Accord­ing to the adopt­ed amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media and pro­vi­sions of pres­i­den­tial decree No.6 of 28 Decem­ber 2014 On Urgent Actions to Coun­ter­act Ille­gal Drug Traf­fick­ing, which came into force at the begin­ning of 2015, the min­istry of infor­ma­tion was autho­rised to block access to web­sites extra­ju­di­cial­ly for pub­lish­ing infor­ma­tion pro­hib­it­ed by law. It par­tic­u­lar­ly includes the infor­ma­tion, which ‘may harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus’. Now own­ers of web­sites are oblig­ed to mon­i­tor their web con­tents includ­ing com­ments of users.

Any state agency can con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of a “black list” of web­sites. It is enough to inform the min­istry of infor­ma­tion that, in its opin­ion, a web­site vio­lates the law. It is impor­tant to note that the process has been com­plete­ly removed from the judi­cial sphere and has been assigned to the state agen­cies and the min­istry of infor­ma­tion. A pro­ce­dure for judi­cial review of such deci­sions is not pro­vid­ed.

Not only are web­sites to be blocked, but blogs as well. It is a mech­a­nism of a man­i­fest­ly repres­sive char­ac­ter and it does not agree with the prin­ci­ples of free­dom of expres­sion. In addi­tion, this mech­a­nism is in the hands of the author­i­ties who do not respect these basic prin­ci­ples. Now it is clear that there are no pos­si­bil­i­ties to appeal against their deci­sions in fact besides appli­ca­tions to the author­i­ties them­selves.

On 18 June 2015, the min­istry of infor­ma­tion used its pow­er and blocked access to the web­site KYKY.org. As it was stat­ed in the min­is­te­r­i­al report, some KYKY online pub­li­ca­tions “con­tained deroga­to­ry state­ments con­cern­ing the Belaru­sian Vic­to­ry Day pub­lic hol­i­day, as well as the cit­i­zens of the coun­try who cel­e­brat­ed it, thus… call­ing in ques­tion the sig­nif­i­cance of this event for the state and dis­tort­ing the his­tor­i­cal truth about the Great Patri­ot­ic War”. The edi­to­r­i­al staff had to remove all pub­li­ca­tions that the min­is­te­r­i­al offi­cers dis­liked in order to get back online.

What were the main restric­tions to media free­dom fac­ing Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists last year?

Andrei Bas­tunets: We wit­nessed inten­si­fied per­se­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists con­tribut­ing for for­eign media, deten­tions of jour­nal­ists by police, inter­fer­ence of the min­istry of infor­ma­tion in the work of media and the block­ing of access to infor­ma­tion for jour­nal­ists. The sit­u­a­tion remained high­ly unfa­vor­able, and the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and media was record­ed dur­ing in the course of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Belarus in Octo­ber 2015.

Although no new crim­i­nal cas­es were brought against jour­nal­ist in 2015, Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin remains a sus­pect in an espi­onage case which has been going on since 25 Novem­ber 2014, when he was first detained. Alesin is a mil­i­tary expert and a colum­nist of the week­ly Belaru­sians and Mar­ket. At first, the jour­nal­ist was charged with trea­son and co-oper­a­tion with for­eign secret ser­vices or intel­li­gence agen­cies. The charge of trea­son was with­drawn and he was freed, but he still stands accused of co-oper­a­tion with for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vices.

The reduc­tion in the deten­tion of jour­nal­ists is a wel­come trend. In 2014, 29 jour­nal­ists were detained and 10 legal cas­es were brought under the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences. In 2015, the num­ber of deten­tions dropped to 13, while 28 cas­es were brought under the code.

In your opin­ion, why do the Belaru­sian author­i­ties chase free­lancers co-oper­at­ing with for­eign media?

Andrei Bas­tunets: Pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists coop­er­at­ing with for­eign media start­ed in 2014 was con­tin­u­ing in 2015. Dur­ing 2015, Belaru­sian free­lance jour­nal­ists have been fined 28 times under Art. 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences for “ille­gal mak­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing mass media pro­duc­tions”. As before, the author­i­ties repressed the inde­pen­dent media work­ers for the mere fact of pub­li­ca­tion of their pieces in for­eign media. I believe, this is explained by the desire of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to restrict the influ­ence of for­eign media as the impor­tant inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion in the con­di­tions of the lack of inde­pen­dent audio­vi­su­al media in Belarus. All the fined free­lance jour­nal­ists worked for for­eign radios or TV chan­nels broad­cast­ing for Belarus in Belaru­sian of Russ­ian lan­guages. As the Belaru­sian author­i­ties are not able to con­trol these media, they aim to con­trol Belaru­sian cit­i­zens con­tribut­ing to them.

The pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists dra­mat­i­cal­ly inten­si­fied at the begin­ning of sum­mer 2015. At the begin­ning of August 2015, after the president’s promise to look into the prob­lem dur­ing his inter­view to jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent media, ini­ti­at­ing such cas­es was stopped. How­ev­er, there were no legal guar­an­tees that the sit­u­a­tion would not repeat after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. And in Decem­ber police­men in the Gomel region drew up three reports for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media. Now we are expect­ing that the reports will be sent to the court.

What are the cur­rent main chal­lenges with the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists?

Andrei Bas­tunets: As always, the chal­lenges of Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists are the pro­tec­tion of jour­nal­is­tic free­dom and free speech val­ues through inter­ac­tion with state bod­ies, legal assis­tance and inter­na­tion­al advo­ca­cy.

Mapping Media Freedom