Journalism in extreme conditions: How the BAJ Legal Center works

What help can the BAJ Legal Cen­ter pro­vide? How can con­flicts in the Belaru­sian media sphere be resolved? Why does Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism need new eth­i­cal stan­dards under extreme con­di­tions? We dis­cussed the answers to these ques­tions with Aleh Aheyeu, head of the BAJ Legal Cen­ter.

Deputy Chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Aleh Aheyeu. Pho­to: BAJ

“Minimize the impact of repression”

Who can turn to BAJ lawyers?

We don’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists who left and those who stayed. We see the jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty as one enti­ty. Media lawyers are there to help every­one, whether they left or stayed.

What prob­lems do jour­nal­ists approach you with?

There are some pecu­liar­i­ties. The num­ber of requests for legal assis­tance from jour­nal­ists stay­ing in Belarus has sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreased. There is a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tion: the wave of repres­sion is grow­ing, while there are few­er requests for legal assis­tance from Belarus. There are sev­er­al rea­sons for this.

It has become clear to every­one that it is impos­si­ble to pro­tect one­self with legal mech­a­nisms in the coun­try because they are not respect­ed. The bod­ies that should pro­tect rights – courts, prosecutor’s office, police – have turned into repres­sive struc­tures. As a result, they have earned the badge “puni­tive.”

It is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to mount a legal defense in Belarus. While we do assist in cer­tain cas­es — prepar­ing com­plaints and offer­ing advice, for instance — our pri­ma­ry objec­tive is not to shield indi­vid­u­als from repres­sion but to mit­i­gate its con­se­quences.

Jour­nal­ists who have left Belarus pri­mar­i­ly request assis­tance in obtain­ing legal sta­tus (includ­ing for their fam­i­lies and rel­a­tives) in their new coun­try of res­i­dence. Con­se­quent­ly, they focus more on the leg­isla­tive tools of their host coun­tries.

“Belarus does not offer training in media law”

How did you gath­er your team?

The pro­fes­sion­als at the BAJ Legal Cen­ter are high­ly spe­cial­ized and pos­sess unpar­al­leled exper­tise. In Belarus, edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions do not offer train­ing in media law. The lawyers that BAJ has been train­ing for decades are excep­tion­al legal pro­fes­sion­als who deeply under­stand the country’s legal land­scape and are well-versed in inter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

It is imprac­ti­cal for lawyers to be aware of the leg­is­la­tion of all coun­tries where Belaru­sian media out­lets are based. Although there are inter­na­tion­al legal stan­dards, each coun­try has its own spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics. In such cas­es, we col­lab­o­rate with col­leagues from the coun­tries where our jour­nal­ists work to pro­vide legal sup­port in accor­dance with local leg­is­la­tion.

So you receive sup­port from part­ner orga­ni­za­tions?

Rather from indi­vid­ual lawyers. We work with dif­fer­ent lawyers for dif­fer­ent cas­es. Some cas­es need a lawyer spe­cial­iz­ing in a par­tic­u­lar area, like media, tax, or bank­ing law. We also work with orga­ni­za­tions that help Belaru­sians obtain legal sta­tus.

What new trends have we seen in legal teams’ work in 2024?

The Legal Center’s three main focus­es are pro­tect­ing jour­nal­ists’ rights, pro­vid­ing legal edu­ca­tion to the media, and improv­ing the sit­u­a­tion of free­dom of speech in Belarus.

From 2022 to 2024, we stopped mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the Belaru­sian author­i­ties because they weren’t ready to lis­ten to us. Also, we were declared an extrem­ist for­ma­tion and banned.

Aleh Aheyeu. Pho­to: BAJ

Need­less to say, we don’t have the chance or appetite to engage with such author­i­ties. This is not just BAJ’s view but that of the wider civ­il sec­tor, too. There are only two ways to inter­act with the author­i­ties: by mak­ing enquiries or by complaining—everything else has been put on hold.

How­ev­er, there are pro­pos­als on the table for reg­u­lat­ing the media after the polit­i­cal changes in Belarus. We’re devel­op­ing legal rules align­ing with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards in the new Belarus. We’re fig­ur­ing out how to approach the media, how to reg­u­late it in a respect­ful and civ­i­lized way, and how to do it in the con­di­tions of an unre­pres­sive state appa­ra­tus.

Legal Center has acted as a mediator three times this year

Can you give some exam­ples of your work?

One of the pub­lic cas­es involved a Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist who was banned from enter­ing the Euro­pean Union. Poland placed him on a list of banned per­sons. Over the year, this case made some progress in the Pol­ish court sys­tem.

It is also worth not­ing that some cas­es have their roots in the past, when Belarus had not yet denounced the Option­al Pro­to­col to the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights (Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka signed the law on Octo­ber 27, 2022). This document’s denun­ci­a­tion has deprived Belarus cit­i­zens of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­mit a com­plaint to the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee. Our lawyers are work­ing on cas­es ini­ti­at­ed before the denun­ci­a­tion of the Option­al Pro­to­col to reach a favor­able con­clu­sion for jour­nal­ists.

Belaru­sians are often called “mas­ters of quar­rels,” which refers to their incli­na­tion to engage in dis­putes and con­flicts on non-issues. Have your legal coun­sel had to inter­vene in the inter­nal process­es of Belaru­sian media orga­ni­za­tions?

Dur­ing the year, BAJ assumed the role of medi­a­tor on three occa­sions. Con­flicts between var­i­ous actors in the media sec­tor have occurred pre­vi­ous­ly. This year, we con­duct­ed three medi­a­tions between jour­nal­ists and edi­to­r­i­al offices. I want to high­light that media con­flicts in our coun­try are rel­a­tive­ly civ­i­lized com­pared to oth­er coun­tries. While emo­tions may occa­sion­al­ly over­whelm the par­tic­i­pants of a dis­pute, such sit­u­a­tions are not uncom­mon glob­al­ly.

In total­i­tar­i­an regimes, media cov­er­age is often lack­ing in diver­si­ty, where­as in civ­i­lized coun­tries, there is typ­i­cal­ly a range of per­spec­tives on any giv­en issue. There­fore, the state of the media in our coun­try is not as con­cern­ing as it may appear.

The top­ic of eth­i­cal stan­dards for Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists is cur­rent­ly being dis­cussed. Con­se­quent­ly, the cir­cum­stances that are made pub­lic are eval­u­at­ed in accor­dance with the estab­lished eth­i­cal stan­dards. Cer­tain cas­es involv­ing cov­er­ing the Belaru­sian regime sup­port­ers or meme char­ac­ters were dis­cussed for a month. The objec­tive was not to argue but to under­stand how to cov­er such sit­u­a­tions from an eth­i­cal point of view.

Media sector in extreme conditions: Challenges and responses

Over the past year, pro­pos­als have been devel­oped to cre­ate a self-reg­u­la­to­ry body for the media com­mu­ni­ty, and eth­i­cal stan­dards have been reviewed with jour­nal­ists. New chal­lenges have emerged, includ­ing the need to address the lim­i­ta­tions of the cur­rent code of ethics, cre­at­ed in the 2000s, in light of devel­op­ments such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, social media, and the evolv­ing media land­scape. Today’s real­i­ties require a new agree­ment with­in the indus­try. Devel­op­ing, dis­cussing, and “rat­i­fy­ing” stan­dards, which we plan to do next year, has tak­en a lot of effort this year.

Self-reg­u­la­tion is a process where­by a pro­fes­sion­al group impos­es addi­tion­al restric­tions on itself beyond those required by law. All reg­u­la­tion is ulti­mate­ly about set­ting lim­its. Eth­i­cal stan­dards entail a pro­fes­sion agree­ing to self-reg­u­late in the pub­lic inter­est, lim­it­ing itself more than law requires.

The new code of ethics includes a sec­tion on “activ­i­ties in extreme con­di­tions,” in which Belaru­sian media must now oper­ate.

Deputy Chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Aleh Aheyeu. Pho­to: BAJ

Fol­low­ing the 2020 protests in Belarus, the media com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized the need to blur pro­test­ers’ faces. While there are no explic­it pro­hi­bi­tions on dis­play­ing the faces of pro­test­ers in a pub­lic set­ting, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties have been known to use such images for repres­sion pur­pos­es. In light of this, the media com­mu­ni­ty agreed to refrain from show­ing pro­test­ers’ faces to avoid expos­ing them to poten­tial admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty.

The media sec­tor has risen to this chal­lenge, but many sim­i­lar ones are yet to be met. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties have begun to pros­e­cute experts who pro­vide com­ments to “extrem­ist” mass media. Even though the media are inter­est­ed in the max­i­mum per­son­al­iza­tion of any mate­r­i­al, the media com­mu­ni­ty has agreed to anonymize infor­ma­tion sources and experts and to use pseu­do­nyms. Self-lim­i­ta­tion is an effec­tive strat­e­gy.

While this does not halt the ongo­ing wave of repres­sion, it enables us to mit­i­gate the impact of such actions on the indi­vid­u­als involved. The cur­rent oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment for the Belaru­sian media sec­tor has been described as high­ly chal­leng­ing.