Fines of $3,600: Belsat TV journo’s sad record in 2018

Judge Kru­pets imposed a fine of 980 Belaru­sian rubles) on Vol­ha Cza­jczyc. It is the eighth time the jour­nal­ist has been fined in 2018. Since Jan­u­ary, the total­i­ty exceed­ed BYN 7,200 (near­ly $ 3,600)

In mid July, Vol­ha Cza­jczyc and her hus­band and col­league Andrus Kozel were warned the thy might lose their prop­er­ty if they did not pay fines for pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties with­in two weeks. Court offi­cers have threat­ened our col­leagues with social wel­fare agen­cies.

Just this year the Belaru­sian courts imposed a total of 12 fines on Vol­ha and Andrey (our col­leagues have to pay almost 9,000 BYN to the state). The rea­son for the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists is pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty. All cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed under Arti­cle 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es — pro­duc­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of media mate­ri­als, i.e. work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

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Accord­ing to Reporters With­out Bor­ders, it is our jour­nal­ists who are harassed by Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment agen­cies most. In 2017, Bel­sat TV jour­nal­ists paid over $ 14,000 of fines. 94% of fines for the so-called ille­gal pro­duc­tion of media prod­ucts fell on Bel­sat TV con­trib­u­tors, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) report­ed.

Bel­sat TV which has been broad­cast­ing over ten years, has been repeat­ed­ly denied accred­i­ta­tion for its jour­nal­ists in Belarus. The For­eign Min­istry has 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.

Fines to Journalists for Violating Article 22.9 of the Administrative Code (Chart) (Updated)