Media Problems in Belarus: Between the Present and the Future

In late 2016, there was an impres­sion that the sit­u­a­tion was chang­ing for the bet­ter, as only 13 jour­nal­ists had been sub­ject­ed to police deten­tion over the year, where­as the BAJ record­ed 167 deten­tions in the peak year of 2011. Since April 2016, there had been almost no instances of jour­nal­ists being fined for coop­er­a­tion with a for­eign media out­let with­out accred­i­ta­tion, where­as there had been 48 instances in which jour­nal­ists were fined for the mere fact that their reports were pub­lished by for­eign media out­lets, irre­spec­tive of the con­tent of the report.

How­ev­er, there were no fun­da­men­tal changes for the bet­ter. More­over, author­i­ties increased pres­sure on jour­nal­ists in March 2017, when mas­sive protests start­ed to be held in Belarus. In the spring of 2017, the BAJ record­ed 96 deten­tions of jour­nal­ists. Ten of them end­ed with the sen­tenc­ing of jour­nal­ists to jail terms of up to 15 days. Author­i­ties also resumed pun­ish­ing reporters for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media out­lets. As of the end of May, judges had imposed 22 fines total­ing more than €7,500 on jour­nal­ists.

The government’s puni­tive machine is still in action. Author­i­ties con­tin­ue to insti­tute crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against jour­nal­ists. For­mer­ly, jour­nal­ists were most­ly charged with defama­tion – the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus has six arti­cles penal­iz­ing defama­tion, includ­ing slan­der and insult against the pres­i­dent – but in 2016, they start­ed to active­ly use the Crim­i­nal Code’s Arti­cle 130, which penal­izes foment­ing racial, eth­nic, reli­gious and social enmi­ty or dis­cord. In par­tic­u­lar, Eduard Palčys, the founder of the web­site 1863x.com known for crit­i­cism of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, was con­vict­ed under this arti­cle in Octo­ber. In Decem­ber, author­i­ties arrest­ed three Belaru­sian con­trib­u­tors to Russia’s Reg­num News Agency. Siarhej Šyp­cien­ka, Yury Paŭlaviec and Dzmit­ry Alimkin alleged­ly insult­ed the Belaru­sian lan­guage and attempt­ed to “dri­ve a wedge between the two broth­er­ly nations.” They have been in deten­tion for about six months now.

Other major problems include:

— the exces­sive pow­ers of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, which is enti­tled to ini­ti­ate the clo­sure of a media out­let and block access to news web­sites with­out a court deci­sion;

— restric­tions on access to infor­ma­tion about gov­ern­ment agen­cies’ activ­i­ties for jour­nal­ists;

— the use of laws against extrem­ism for putting pres­sure on media out­lets and jour­nal­ists.

The BAJ has devel­oped a roadmap for reform­ing the media sec­tor. For the ini­tial stage, we pro­pose mea­sures that would not require amend­ments to laws and can be car­ried peri­od with­in a short peri­od of time. At the sec­ond stage, it is nec­es­sary to make seri­ous changes in laws cur­rent­ly in force. At the final stage, we pro­pose fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the legal basis with a view to reform­ing the entire sys­tem of gov­ern­ment-soci­ety-media rela­tions and bring­ing it into line with inter­na­tion­al demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards.

The measures to be carried out at the initial stage include:

— stop­ping the prac­tice of pun­ish­ing jour­nal­ists under Part Two of Arti­cle 22.9 of the Civ­il Offens­es Code for coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media out­lets;

— stop­ping the prac­tice of plac­ing sus­pects in cus­tody and impris­on­ing con­victs in cas­es relat­ed to free­dom of expres­sion, “unless the crit­i­cism or insult was intend­ed or like­ly to incite immi­nent vio­lence” (the Johan­nes­burg Prin­ci­ples on Nation­al Secu­ri­ty, Free­dom of Expres­sion and Access to Infor­ma­tion);

— ensur­ing equal access to infor­ma­tion for all jour­nal­ists work­ing for online and offline media out­lets, irre­spec­tive of the form of own­er­ship;

— impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on the use of extra­ju­di­cial penal­ties against media out­lets, includ­ing the block­ing of news web­sites.

The measures to be carried out at the second stage include:

— decrim­i­nal­iz­ing defama­tion;

— chang­ing laws against “extrem­ism” on the basis of rec­om­men­da­tions from the Office of the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media;

— abol­ish­ing the require­ment for new­ly found­ed media out­lets to obtain state reg­is­tra­tion and intro­duc­ing the noti­fi­ca­tion prin­ci­ple for the reg­is­tra­tion of media out­lets;

— trans­fer­ring the reg­is­tra­tion func­tion from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion to an inde­pen­dent body;

— strip­ping the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of super­vi­so­ry func­tions and the pow­er to use penal sanc­tions against media out­lets;

— lift­ing the ban on Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists’ coop­er­a­tion with for­eign media out­lets with­out accred­i­ta­tion because this runs counter to the con­sti­tu­tion and the country’s inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments;

— chang­ing the pro­ce­dure of pro­vid­ing pub­lic funds for sup­port for media out­lets and pro­vid­ing that this should be done irre­spec­tive of the form of own­er­ship and only on a com­pet­i­tive basis;

The measures to be carried out at the third stage include:

— pri­va­tiz­ing state-owned media out­lets, pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies, print­ing plants and press dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works;

— pro­hibit­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies from being founders of media out­lets, except pub­li­ca­tions that pub­lish offi­cial gov­ern­ment reports and ordi­nances;

— estab­lish­ing an inde­pen­dent reg­u­la­to­ry body for the broad­cast­ing sec­tor;

— trans­form­ing Belaru­sian State Tele­vi­sion and Radio Com­pa­ny into a pub­lic tele­vi­sion net­work.