RSF’s 15 recommendations for ending the four-month-old crackdown on press freedom in Belarus

Belarus has con­firmed its sta­tus as Europe’s most dan­ger­ous coun­try for jour­nal­ists. Around 370 have been arrest­ed since 9 August just for doing their job and eight are still being held. As the data gath­ered by RSF and its local part­ner, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), shows, the police delib­er­ate­ly use vio­lence against reporters cov­er­ing demon­stra­tions with the clear aim of gag­ging the media and mak­ing the protests “dis­ap­pear.”

449 VIOLATIONS

Press free­dom vio­la­tions have been reg­is­tered since the start of the Belaru­sian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign on 8 May, but the num­ber has soared since the day after the elec­tion, held on 9 August. Vio­la­tions have quadru­pled in the past four months. The author­i­ties have imposed an increas­ing­ly hos­tile cli­mate in which they have not only arrest­ed many jour­nal­ists arbi­trar­i­ly, but also car­ried out search­es, with­drawn accred­i­ta­tions mas­sive­ly, cen­sored and dis­con­nect­ed the Inter­net, and ham­pered the print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of news­pa­pers.

368 ARRESTS

Of near­ly 370 arrests of jour­nal­ists between 9 August and 30 Novem­ber, around 80 have result­ed in a prison sen­tence. The author­i­ties deny jour­nal­ists the right to cov­er the events that have shak­en the coun­try for the past four months. In almost all the pros­e­cu­tions, the jour­nal­ists have been accused of “par­tic­i­pat­ing in an ille­gal demon­stra­tion” or “dis­obey­ing the police” in an unfair tri­al with often anony­mous or absent pros­e­cu­tion “wit­ness­es.”

1/2 ARRESTED JOURNALISTS IS CONVICTED

Arrests have led with increas­ing fre­quen­cy to con­vic­tion and impris­on­ment. More than a third of all cas­es of jour­nal­ists being jailed took place in Novem­ber. In August, few­er than 10% of arrest­ed jour­nal­ists were jailed, but the pro­por­tion has increased to near­ly one out of every two jour­nal­ists arrest­ed in Novem­ber.

Even longer sentences

The length of time that jour­nal­ists are detained in Belarus has grown steadi­ly since the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Sen­tences keep on get­ting harsh­er. In August, a jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced to an aver­age of five days in prison. Now the aver­age is 13 days. In anoth­er sign of a much more dra­con­ian pol­i­cy, at least sev­en jour­nal­ists have been sub­ject­ed to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions (or under inves­ti­ga­tion and threat­ened with such pros­e­cu­tions) involv­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sen­tences of sev­er­al years in prison.

62 CASES OF TORTURE AND MISTREATMENT

At least 62 jour­nal­ists have been vic­tims of vio­lence, mis­treat­ment or even tor­ture while detained, accord­ing to the BAJ. They include Rus­lan Kule­vich of Hrodna.life, who was vio­lent­ly arrest­ed in the west­ern city of Hrod­na on 11 August and was threat­ened with being killed although he was wear­ing a “press” vest. When released two days lat­er, he was hos­pi­tal­ized with frac­tures to both fore­arms and con­cus­sion caused by the blows he received while held, and he was denied food and med­ical atten­tion. Despite clear evi­dence of vio­lence, no inves­ti­ga­tion was car­ried out and no one was pun­ished. Police and prison guards act with com­plete impuni­ty in Hrod­na, as else­where in Belarus.

Recommendations for ending the repression 

In order to end the crack­down and estab­lish new bases for press free­dom in Belarus, RSF is address­ing 15 rec­om­men­da­tions to the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies. They include a request to the Euro­pean Union to freeze all finan­cial assis­tance to Belarus for as long as it con­tin­ues to flout human rights.

For the authorities in Belarus:

1. In accor­dance with the rec­om­men­da­tions on free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of the media that the OSCE rap­por­teur issued on 5 Novem­ber under the Moscow Mech­a­nism, RSF rec­om­mends that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties should:

• Pro­vide jour­nal­ists and media with a safe and hos­pitable envi­ron­ment;

• Guar­an­tee the safe­ty of all jour­nal­ists and refrain from any per­se­cu­tion linked to their work or any form of obstruc­tion, includ­ing seiz­ing and dam­ag­ing their equip­ment;

• Pros­e­cute per­sons accused of press free­dom vio­la­tions in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards;

• Enable an inde­pen­dent body to quick­ly inves­ti­gate all alle­ga­tions of tor­ture, mis­treat­ment, sex­u­al assault or enforced dis­ap­pear­ance;

• Facil­i­tate accred­i­ta­tion for for­eign jour­nal­ists;

• Refrain from any inter­fer­ence of Inter­net access, includ­ing mobile Inter­net, and end the cen­sor­ship and block­ing of news web­sites and any restric­tion on blog­gers;

• End the infor­ma­tion ministry’s pros­e­cu­tion of the TUT.by news web­site aimed at no longer rec­og­niz­ing its mass media sta­tus, and unblock the 70 web­sites that are cur­rent­ly inac­ces­si­ble;

• Allow inde­pen­dent print media to access print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices;

• Stop requir­ing all media to keep records and to reveal to the author­i­ties the names of per­sons who post com­ments;

2. Drop crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions and admin­is­tra­tive pro­ceed­ings against jour­nal­ists who have just been doing their job, and review crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive deci­sions already tak­en against jour­nal­ists who were just doing their job;

3. Facil­i­tate vis­its to Belarus by the OSCE Rap­por­teur and Unit­ed Nations inde­pen­dent experts and facil­i­tate the UN Human Rights Council’s spe­cial pro­ce­dures; 

4. Engage in the Coun­cil of Europe acces­sion process in which Belarus would under­take to com­ply with oblig­a­tions under the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights and there­fore accept the juris­dic­tion of the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights. Belarus could there­by ben­e­fit from the tech­ni­cal assis­tance that the Venice Com­mis­sion pro­vides on democ­ra­cy and the rule of law.

For European institutions and EU Member States: 

5. Offer and increase assis­tance to threat­ened jour­nal­ists and media work­ers, such as a safe pas­sage through their coun­tries, refuge and med­ical assis­tance if nec­es­sary.

        — Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and Coun­cil:

6. Freeze any finan­cial assis­tance for Belarus under the Euro­pean Neigh­bour­hood Instru­ment* for as long as the com­mon val­ues and uni­ver­sal fun­da­men­tal val­ues of the rule of law and human rights are not respect­ed.

* (except assis­tance for the pro­mo­tion of human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms by civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions and non-state actors)

       - Coun­cil of the EU:

7. Con­tin­ue efforts to impose eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and oth­er restric­tive mea­sures on per­sons or enti­ties involved in or sup­port­ing vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al elec­toral stan­dards and inter­na­tion­al human rights law, espe­cial­ly vio­la­tions of free­dom of expres­sion and media free­dom.

8. Sus­pend all or part of EU fund­ing in the event of a seri­ous or per­sis­tent dete­ri­o­ra­tion in democ­ra­cy, human rights or the rule of law in Belarus. To this end, speed up adop­tion of the Reg­u­la­tion of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and Coun­cil offer­ing this pos­si­bil­i­ty to the Com­mis­sion under its neigh­bour­hood pol­i­cy.

For the Council of Europe:

9. Include the pro­mo­tion and improve­ment of press free­dom, free­dom of expres­sion and plu­ral­ism, which have so far been com­plete­ly absent from the 2019–2021 Action Plan for Belarus, mak­ing them one of the pri­or­i­ty goals and projects of any fur­ther action plans and allo­cat­ing them the nec­es­sary resources.

For the OSCE:

10. Sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­demn attacks, intim­i­da­tion and cen­sor­ship of jour­nal­ists and media in Belarus and demand inde­pen­dent and impar­tial inves­ti­ga­tions when such vio­la­tions take place;

11. Firm­ly and active­ly request imple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions on free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of the media that the OSCE rap­por­teur addressed to the Belaru­sian author­i­ties;

12. Cre­ate a tool for mon­i­tor­ing mea­sures tak­en by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to estab­lish human rights, democ­ra­cy and the rule of law.

For the UN:

13. Sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­demn attacks, intim­i­da­tion and cen­sor­ship of jour­nal­ists and media in Belarus and demand inde­pen­dent and impar­tial inves­ti­ga­tions when such vio­la­tions take place;

14. Work with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to facil­i­tate the involve­ment of UN spe­cial pro­ce­dures in the pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of human rights in Belarus, espe­cial­ly the pro­ce­dure of the spe­cial rap­por­teur for free­dom of expres­sion;

15. Work with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties so that the UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights can quick­ly estab­lish a per­ma­nent bureau to pro­vide con­crete assis­tance with chang­ing human rights prac­tices, with spe­cial atten­tion to improv­ing free­dom of expres­sion, plu­ral­ism and media free­dom.

Ruled since 1994 by Alexan­der Lukashenko, who has man­aged to be reelect­ed as pres­i­dent in the first round every five years, Belarus is ranked 153rd out of 180 coun­tries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Free­dom Index.