The pair were detained by police in Minsk on Monday evening when they were leaving a meeting with civic activists who had been released from detention. The activists had been detained for involvement in the Chernobyl Way rally on 26 April. Aliaksandr Yarashevich was also detained then, and served three days of arrest – only to receive another, harsher sentence on Tuesday.

The journalists were charged with noncompliance with orders of the police and petty hooliganism. Just like during the trial of 29 April, the sentences were based on contradictory testimonies of the police officers; one of them even admitted he re-wrote the detention protocols. The reporters denied the charges.

Independent journalists who arrived at the court to support their colleagues and report from the trials were not permitted to take photos or videos. The judges also barred audio recordings of the hearings.

While ratcheting up pressure on independent journalists, Belarusian authorities are signalling that they are eager for more dialogue with the European Union.   It resembles the situation of 2008 and 2009, when the police interfered with the work of reporters in Belarus, despite the broadening of official contacts between Belarus and the EU and hints of liberalisation inside of the country.

As Index pointed out in its recent Belarus: Pulling the Plug policy paper, keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of the Belarusian regime’s policy of self-preservation. The recent events show the authorities of the country are not going to ease their grip on free media and independent journalists.

The post Two more journalists arrested in Belarus appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The independent journalists covered an annual street action of the Belarusian opposition, The Chernobyl Way, that commemorates the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

The journalists were detained by plain-clothed police officers on Friday evening on their way to editorial office. The police claimed the journalists “behaved in a suspicious way” and allegedly forcibly resisted detention. Barbarych and Yarashevich spent the weekend in a detention centre and stood an administrative trial on Monday. Judge Kiryl Paluleh sentenced them to three days of arrest each for “unlawful resistance to legitimate claims of police officers”, despite the fact accusations against the reporters were only based on contradictory evidence from the police.

The journalists denied the charges, saying the plain-clothed officers failed to present valid police IDs and they did not resist their detention.

Both reporters were released on Monday evening.

“I think the reason for our detention were pictures we made. Our cameras were confiscated, and given back to us with all the photos deleted,” Henadz Barbarych told Radio Liberty.

Detentions and physical violence of the police against journalists during street rallies have become quite common in Belarus.

Several civil activists were also detained on 26 April. Short-term detentions were aimed at preventing activists of a Belarusian ecological and anti-nuclear movement from participating in the rally. Three more activists were detained after The Chernobyl Way; one of them, Ihar Truhanovich, was  beaten by the police. Iryna Arahouskaya and Aksana Rudovich, journalists of the Nasha Niva newspaper, who were filming the beating of Truhanovich, were also detained for about an hour, but later released.

“The authorities of Belarus keep demonstrating its brutality. They act with impunity for citizens of Belarus to keep living in fear. Such illogical and unnecessary violence serves as a signal to the society that even if the government sanctions events, they don’t endorse them, and people should be afraid to participate in any oppositional street actions,” says Uladzimir Matskevich, the Chair of the Coordination Committee of the Belarus National Civil Society Platform.

The post Belarusian journalists draw sentences for covering opposition rally appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Twenty-seven years after the Chernobyl disaster a whole generation of Belarusians has grown with no memories of the incident of 26 April 1986, when a nuclear reactor exploded in north-east Ukraine, just on the border with Belarus. Settlements that had been abandoned after the disaster almost disappeared: some of them were razed to the ground, others were inhabited again. The Belarusian media usually remind us of Chernobyl and its aftermath once a year, on the anniversary of the explosion.

Activists participated in last year’s annual Chernobyl Way remembrance rally in Minsk. Photo: Alexander Mazurkevich/Demotix

There are almost no significant memorials of the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus; just a small church in Friendship of Nations Park in Minsk and tiny monuments in southern districts of the country that were affected by radiation. This is why it is quite difficult to communicate the feelings about that “invisible catastrophe” to people who don’t remember.

“The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is now perceived by people as some kind of shared heritage or even national achievement. Just as ‘We survived the war’ Belarusians think ‘We survived Chernobyl’, says Yahor Lebiadok, a deputy of a local council from Smaliavichy. “It feels like a part of a national message of pride: nothing or nobody can take us bare-handed, we can survive anything. So, Chernobyl nowadays is perceived as just a cliché of a threat.”

The authorities are quite good at using state media and propaganda to change the focus of public attention.

“It is not in their interest to put this focus on the issue of Chernobyl, because in this case they would have had to change their policy. If the government admits the problem of the Chernobyl aftermaths still exists, they would have put additional efforts into solving it, and spend additional funds,” says Piotr Kuzniatsou, a blogger and a human rights activist.“This means state media are allowed to mention Chernobyl only once a year, and are silent about the issues of radiation pollution and the affected areas,” Nastassia Zianko, a Belarusian journalist, admits. “Chernobyl media coverage is rarely investigative and deep — usually it is just reportage from the area, local villages or small towns. But the issue as a whole is very complicated; to do a good story one has to spend months researching and looking for information.”

As a result public opinion sees the topic of Chernobyl as less and less important; current social and economic issues push it into the media background. To avoid spending money on the elimination of outcomes of the disaster and rehabilitation of affected areas, the authorities try to persuade the Belarusians not to think of Chernobyl as something dangerous.

This strategy seems to work — despite cases when practical interests of particular people are at stake. For instance, inhabitants of several areas whose status had been changed from “polluted” to “clean” were unhappy to lose state benefits they received as compensation for living in districts affected by radiation.

“Chernobyl-affected regions have cheap labour forces, so it is profitable to run enterprises there. For instance, Belarusian agriculture inherited Soviet ‘extensive approach’; it means increasing production by mere expansion of cultivation areas instead of increasing the quality, breeding new varieties of products or crops or adopting new technologies. So, nowadays previously abandoned fields in polluted areas are being cultivated, and agricultural products from affected districts are being distributed around the country,” Piotr Kuzniatsou says.

Research done by Yury Bandazheuski, PhD, in Homiel Medical University proved that radionuclides affect organs of the human body when they penetrate an organism with polluted food. They cause so-called “inner radioactive irradiation”, which is more harmful than background exposure, but this is not included into estimates of influence of radiation on people.

Every year Belarusian sanitary and health services register the facts of radioactive pollution of food people bring from their farms to markets or in mushrooms they pick in forests. There is a question why such a vivid threat Chernobyl still poses to the country and its population doesn’t make it into a burning topic for Belarusians.

Time makes people forget, Natallia Alifirovich, a psychologist, says: “Psychological mechanisms of suppression and denial are quite powerful. Suppression means memories of an unpleasant event are placed in parts of the brain where they are inaccessible for a mind; denial helps people believe an unpleasant event won’t happen for the second time.”

But the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011 showed catastrophes happen again and again — despite any level of safety.

Another important reason for the authorities not to talk about Chernobyl is their plans to build a nuclear power station in Belarus.

Civil society groups remain alarmed by the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the prospects of building a nuclear power plant in Belarus. The issue is addressed by ecological and humanitarian NGOs, but due to the political situation they lack effective mechanisms of raising it to the level of decision-making.

“People who live in polluted areas know radiation is dangerous, but in practice they don’t do much to protect themselves. There is no special policy on health care for people who live in the polluted areas. Although some activities aimed at decreasing the impact of the catastrophe have been carried out, the state refuses to admit the real extent of the problem and finance recovery and rehabilitation from the Chernobyl aftermaths,” Andrei Yahorau says.

As the authorities push for building of a new nuclear plant in Belarus, they should be responsible for informing people about nuclear safety and behaviour in case of an emergency situation. But the government of Belarus can actually build the station without telling people about safety, Yahorau admits.

“This is exactly what is happening right now. The nuclear plant is being built near Astravets, close to the Lithuanian border; the local population has no information about the real threats a new plant can contain. The state propaganda machine works to convey a message that the plant is absolutely safe, that new technologies are used while building it, and that nothing can go wrong,” the expert says.

According to Yahor Lebiadok, the topic of Chernobyl in Belarus has always been political, as “both the authorities and the opposition have used it in their own interests”: “It is quite difficult for people who are not experts to actually differentiate between a real threat and mere politicking.”

In the case of nuclear power, access to information can become a question of life and death – or at least a question of personal safety and health.

Aliaksandr Zianchuk is a Belarusian journalist

The post Chernobyl disaster is invisible to many Belarusians appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The reason for that is a traditional perception of media in post-Soviet society: everything said in an “official” paper or on TV is considered to be trustworthy.

“Belarus has a post-Soviet society that is characterised by non-critical attitude towards everything,” says Ales Antsipenka, a Belarusian philosopher and a media expert. “A bearer of ideological dogmas is required to be loyal to the authorities and totally take for granted messages mainstream ‘official’ media deliver, transmitting only one point of view — that of the regime.”

The “vertical model of communication” remains very strong in Belarusian society, where “top-down” information flows from the authorities to the population. In this model, the authorities that stay on top of the “information pyramid” and broadcast ideas that are supposed to be accepted as universal truth.

“This model is sustained through budget subsidies to state media, through ideological choice of people who manage those media outlets, through censorship and creation of ideological filters between sources of information and audience. On the other hand, there are independent media that are allowed to practise a critical attitude to reality”, Antsipenka says.

Increasing media literacy for Belarusians would help to improve the situation. The basis for media literacy should be a possibility to question, to analyse news reports in media, and to differentiate between propaganda, censorship and manipulation technologies. In this case, the media audience should become a competent member of the media process. But the Belarusian state does not want this to happen.

“The authorities of the country, on the contrary, rely on decreasing of cultural and educational levels, and a low level of media literacy is one of the main conditions of ideological and propaganda work among population,” say Ales Antsipenka.

The question is whether Belarusian media themselves are interested in their audience being able to differentiate a quality journalistic product from a poor one. According to Aliaksandr Klaskouski, a well-known Belarusian journalist and media expert, it is the media that aim to bring quality reporting to the public that are most interested in better media literacy of the audience.

“It is more useful for tabloids or ‘barricade media’ to have an indiscriminate reader. That is why, unfortunately, not many media outlets in Belarus are really interested in increase of the media literacy level of the audience,” Klaskouski admits.

“But propaganda media outlets, both state and oppositional, should be left aside when we speak of journalism and mass media,” Eduard Melnikau, a professor of European Humanities University, argues. “Otherwise, every ‘real’ media outlet should be interested in its audience having a good level of media literacy, because an educated reader can increase the effectiveness of media themselves as they become partners and co-authors.”

This can only be achieved if the society understands how valuable quality journalism is. But this, in turn, is impossible without changing of the system of values — a process that can take years.

“It is quite easy to change public opinion; it does not take too long. But changing the system of values in society is a much more complicated and long process. If we speak of a quality journalism, it is a product that is needed by people whose set of values changed from old Soviet to a new, European ones,” says Ales Antsipenka.

At the same time, professor Melnikau is sure it is impossible just to wait for the rest of the society to change their values system.

“Media literacy is needed today, and it is needed to everybody, from politicians to street cleaners, because media is the instrument of pushing the society towards humanitarian values; without these values no developments of economy, science, culture are possible,” argues Eduard Melnikau.

But it is clear the Belarusian state is not interested in media literacy of its citizens, and the society itself does not value quality journalism. So, the question is who should take the responsibility for media education of the audience? The obvious answer is media outlets themselves. But nowadays many of them are quite marginalised or operate in semi-clandestine conditions, and rarely work effectively with their audiences. Non-governmental organisations often fail to work with the society as well, as many of them concentrate on holding on to their structures and actual “survival” in difficult authoritarian conditions.

Journalistic organisations  such as the Belarusian Association of Journalists should be working in the field of media literacy. But the question is whether they will be allowed to access schoolchildren and students, who should become the main target audience for such programmes. The state holds the line of defence and substitute classes in media literacy with lessons in “political information”.

Yanina Melnikava is the editor of Mediakritika.by website from Belarus, dedicated to media analysis

The post Belarus: Media literacy vs propaganda appeared first on Index on Censorship.

This grim reading is made worse when one looks at the facts. According to official statistics, women in Belarus have higher levels of education (49 per cent of Belarusian females graduated from universities — in comparison to 42 per cent of men) and are better at foreign languages (59 per cent of Belarusians who speak English are women, whilst 63 per cent of German-speaking Belarusians are female). At the same time, men are much better represented at top managerial positions.

Alexander Lukashenko is often seen in public with his son, but Nikolay’s mother or the President’s own wife never make an appearance

According to Iryna Sidorskaya, Head of the journalism institute’s department of communication technologies at Institute at the Belarusian State University, men don’t like losing to women; men are afraid of looking weak against strong and intelligent women.

“Men are unlikely to hear out women. There is a strong stereotype in our society about women being talkative and just capable of blabbing; and talking is not ‘real work’, but just a waste of time. One can notice during any working meeting in a company or an organisation that men often don’t listen to women talking; even if the latter make the right point, the former perceive their interventions as ‘too much talking’,” says Sidorskaya.

Such attitudes are present in many fields of activity; thus it works as a “natural” acceptance of a restriction of women’s freedom of expression on many levels.

“Women are just not regarded as equal to men, even if they have the same job positions; they are regarded to be inferior to male colleagues. One can see the same trend in business as well as in politics,” Sidorskaya admits.

No change without gender education

Belarus has gender-neutral laws; there are no designated state programmes or strategies aimed at enhancing women’s participation in decision making processes at any levels.

“Women in Belarus face discrimination; not only do they have less access to high managerial levels of decision-making, their freedom of expression is restricted in comparison with men,” says Elena Eskova, former leader of the Belarusian Women’s party Nadzeya (Hope), which was liquidated by the authorities in 2007.

According to Eskova, the issue goes back to the leader of the country itself. Authoritarian politicians and diffident managers tend to surround themselves with dull people in order to stand out against their “grey” background:

“The Belarusian president does not like talented and bright people with striking personalities, especially women. That is exactly why there are almost no women in government or other bodies of power, as they just don’t fit into his authoritarian and masculine style of management. There are 29 female MPs (out of total of 110 in the lower chamber of the national parliament), but none of them are really influential or well-known,” says Eskova.

The role of women is underestimated — and not just by the authorities; women are misrepresented among the opposition leaders, too. It can be explained by long-lasting patriarchal history that suggested men are in charge. Nothing is going to change unless gender education is introduced starting from entry school level.

Borscht vs politics

The hallmark of an “official” attitude to women’s participation in political life was a comment by Lidziya Yarmoshyna, the Chair of the Central Election Commission, made on 20 December 2010, after a brutal dispersal of protests against fraudulent presidential elections. During a press conference she replied to a remark from a journalist about police using force against peaceful demonstrators, including women:

“You know, such ‘women’ have nothing else to do. They’d better stay home and cook borscht instead of hanging around at squares… It is a shame for a woman to participate in such actions… If a grown woman joins protests, it just shows there is something wrong with her intellect.”

People who have access to the top governmental bodies in Belarus say there are just two official receptions or celebrations where officials are invited together with their wives; those for New Year’s Eve, and for Defender of the Fatherland Day on 23 February, which is essentially “Men’s Day”.

Other parties and receptions exclude wives from celebrations. Lukashenko himself has never been seen in public with his wife. He tries to position himself as a strong politician, who is a good father for both his nation (often being referred to as “batska”, which means “a father” in Belarusian) — and his youngest son Nikolay.

“The fact that he takes his younger son everywhere with him, but has never been accompanied by the boy’s mother or any other ‘first lady’ rouses the indignation of every woman I know, regardless of their political views. It appears that the president’s women are the most discriminated in the whole country. Halina Lukashenko, the president’s wife, in fact lives under house arrest; and Nikolay’s mother has never even been named at all (she most likely to be Iryna Abelskaya, Lukashenko’s former doctor). What kind of a country do we live in, if we don’t have a first lady, but have a president with a child?” Elena Eskova asks.

Is there a new trend?

The attitude towards women may partly come from the leader of the country, but it is also well-built in the culture of the society.

“This statement can be proved by the results of our opinion polls,” says Dr. Aleh Manaeu, Head of the Independent Institute of Social, Political and Economic Studies (IISEPS).

According to IISEPS, 45.5 per cent of Belarusians consider men to be better political leaders than women; 44.6 per cent think they are equal, and only about 8 per cent of the country say women can lead in politics better than men do.

Sixty per cent of Belarusians also believe men have more possibilities in politics, business and other areas of activities.

“It goes back to our history and culture. And still, we can see some positive dynamics in these responses in comparison to what we used to have 15 or 20 years ago, when the public opinion was even more ‘masculine-centred’,” Dr. Manaev says.

Interestingly, women occupy more and more senior roles in independent media. The question is whether the rest of the Belarusian society will follow this trend.

Maryna Koktysh is an award-winning Belarusian journalist

The post Dictatorship: it’s a man’s game appeared first on Index on Censorship.

“We have a peaceful and quiet life here. I cannot remember a single skirmish on religious grounds in Belarus, not even an argument,” Lukashenko told representatives of Vatican and Belarusian Orthodox Church at a joint meeting in Minsk in November 2012.

But the absence of  religious fights does not mean freedom of conscience is not challenged in Belarus.

According to official statistics, there are 3,374 religious organisations that represent 25 different denominations officially registered in Belarus. Almost half of the religious communities are Christian Orthodox; the Catholic Church is the second most popular (479 communities or about 15 per cent of the total registered in the country). Both Orthodox and Catholic Christmas and Easter are official state holidays. The Orthodox Church is considered to be an “official” one — its leaders are quite close to the authorities, and there is even a special Agreement on Cooperation between the Belarus Orthodox Church and the country’s government, signed in 2003.

The agreement formally pursues “noble” objectives of “spiritual development of the nation” — but in reality forms of cooperation between the state and the church can be quite oppressive. For instance, the practice of compulsory church donations by employees of state-run companies is notorious.

Aleh is from Salihorsk, a city of Belarusian miners, and he works for Belaruskaliy, one of the biggest exporting companies in the country that mines potassium. He says 100,000 roubles, equivalent to about £7, is deducted from each worker’s salary several times a year as a “compulsory voluntary donation” towards building of a new Orthodox church in the city. Most of the workers are not happy about that, but none of them dare to protest openly, says Aleh:

“The sum deducted is not significant enough to risk losing a job. The thing is we are all on short-term contracts. If you protest against these ‘donations’ or make any kind of trouble for your employer, they won’t renew your contract once it expires — they have this right according to Belarusian laws. That’s why everybody silently agrees; Catholics, and even Muslims and Jews all donate to building of an Orthodox church.”

New Life and old methods

Facts like this don’t really add supporters to the “official” church. Members of the New Life Protestant church in Minsk disagree that the Orthodox Church is the real leader in terms of the number of believers.

“Even official figures say there are only about 300,000 people who visit Orthodox churches around the country during major holidays, like Christmas and Easter. Their usual congregation is hardly higher than 50,000 people. So, the official statistics that say 80 per cent of the Belarusian population is Orthodox is far from the real state of things,” sources in New Life told Index.

New Life is a religious community that feels direct pressure from the authorities. Twenty years ago they built their Protestant church on the site of an abandoned cowshed on the outskirts of Minsk. In 2005 the authorities revoked the license for the land the community used. Its members were on a hunger strike for one month before the officials stepped back. But in 2009 the authorities re-initiated the case and deprived New Life of the propriety right for the church building. The case was again put on hold during the period of the so-called “liberalisation”, but in 2012 it was re-initiated. On 5 December 2012 New Life was supposed to leave the premises — but at the last moment the Minsk Economic Court suddenly closed the eviction case.

There are 25 different religious denominations officially registered in Belarus — almost half of which are Christian Orthodox

Uladzimir Matskevich, a Belarusian philosopher and civil society leader, says the case of New Life shows a model strategy of the ruling regime — and sets an example of a strategy for civil society:

“This community demonstrates its unity and determination to do whatever it takes to fight for their rights and not to give up whatever the actions of the regime are. That is why the community wins local conflicts with the regime. The regime accepts those local defeats, but keeps to its strategic goals. It keeps pressing the church, but never goes till the end. Why? Because the authorities do not really want to destroy the community, but just to see how it prevails, and watches if it can become a core for consolidation of other forces in civil society. So, the regime leaves the New Life community alone for some time — until it needs to check the state of protest readiness of the civil society again.”

The law with no freedom and no conscience

According to Aliaksei Shein, a coordinator of a civic initiative called Christian Movement, the right to freedom of conscience and religion is violated in Belarus, as well as other human rights.

“In 2002 Belarus adopted the Law ‘on freedom of conscience and religious organisations’ that is the most repressive in Europe. Despite its name, the law has no freedom and no conscience. It makes registering new religious organisations almost impossible; it critically complicates creation of new religious communities; it deprives believers of the right to spread their beliefs outside the walls of their churches,” Shein claims.

For instance, the law only provides three places where people can pray without special permission — inside officially registered religious buildings, as well as at cemeteries and crematoria. There have been numerous cases of people getting fines or administrative arrests for breaking these rules.

The reason for the oppression is that active religious organisations are a part of civil society, which the authorities of the country try to put under tough control.

“It is the most active and independent who get the most trouble, Protestants first of all. But sometimes the Orthodox and the Catholics feel oppression too, as well as representatives of other, non-Christian confessions,” Shein says.

Natallia Vasilevich, a political scientist and the editor of a Belarusian online portal Churchby.info, agrees the oppressive law provides the main tension in the legal field of the religious freedom. Besides, she says, problems lay in the absence of clear mechanisms to implement the law, allowing local authorities to apply it arbitrarily.

Religion as a tool to fight dissent – and please partners

The authorities of Belarus also use the issue of religion in other ways to curtail free speech. In January 2008 Aliaksandr Zdvizhkou, deputy editor of Zhoda independent newspaper, was sentenced to three years in prison by the court of Minsk for “inciting religious enmity”. The newspaper had covered the story of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed — re-publishing some of the cartoons. It is worth mentioning that the cartoons were re-printed in 143 newspapers in 56 countries of the world, including Islamic states – but secular Belarus, with its “Orthodox atheist” leader was the only one that actually put a journalist in prison as a result.

Zdvizhkou received a wide international attention following the sentence, and he was released in February 2008. It was obvious the trial was entirely politically-motivated — Ismail Varanovich, the chairman of Spiritual Department of Muslims of Belarus, called the sentence to Zdvizhkou “too harsh.”

“He just published information about what the Danish newspaper printed. There could not be any response from the Belarusian society, no incitement of any violence,” the Belarusian Muslim leader said at that time.

It looked like the Zdvizhkou case was an attempt of the Lukashenko’s regime to “make friends” with the Islamic world. At that time the authorities of Belarus were thinking of large-scale joint projects with several Muslim countries. Lukashenko himself visited United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, and also hosted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Minsk.

Believers are opposition?

The state in Belarus tries to control all spheres of life, and religion is not an exception. Natallia Vasilevich believes:

“There are no prerequisites [suggesting] that Belarus can change from a secular state into a clerical one. But the influence of church and religion in Belarusian society can increase as the result of activities of religious organisations if they are able to gain trust of the population and provide them with necessary and convincing answers to actual vital questions.”

But the government is unlikely to allow this to happen, as state ideologists want to preserve their monopoly control over people’s minds. They are ready to battle fiercely for this control.

According to Aliaksei Shein, a new oppressive trend has become vivid over the last two years, as the regime started using one of the most popular “political” articles of the criminal code — Article 193.1 — against members and activists of religious organisations. This article results in criminal liability for activities on behalf of unregistered organisations. The KGB (the State Security Committee) issues official warnings to non-registered Christian communities – and there are around a hundred of them in Belarus.

“After ‘cleaning out’ the political and business fields, the authorities of the country started cleaning out the next sphere, and that is religion and culture,” Shein concludes.

Zmitser Yanenka is the editor of Camarade.biz news website from Belarus

The post Religion in Belarus: no conscience, no freedom appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Opposition protesters in Minsk in 2010. Kseniya Avimova | Demotix

Europe’s last dictatorship plans even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world, Index shows in a new report

Belarus has one of the most hostile media environments in the world and one of the worst records on freedom of expression. New digital technologies, in particular the internet, have provided new opportunities for freedom of expression but have also given the authoritarian regime new tools to silence free voices and track down dissent. As the internet has become an increasingly important source of information, the Belarus authorities have used a variety of different means to control it. Keeping a tight rein on information remains at the core of their policy of self-preservation.

This report explores the main challenges to digital free speech in Belarus, concentrating in particular on the ways the state authorities restrict freedom of expression online.

Firstly, it is done by applying a repressive legal framework, including draconian laws such as criminal libel, legal prosecution and the misapplication of the administrative code. Secondly, free speech is restricted by the use of new techniques, such as online surveillance, website blocking and filtering, and cyber-attacks against independent websites and content manipulation.

Our research indicates that the authorities now plan even tighter controls over citizens’ access to the digital world.

New legislation gives the authorities wide powers to censor online content, in particular on the catch-all grounds of “distribution of illegal information”, and to implement mass surveillance of citizens’ activities online. The government is spending heavily on the development of software that will allow the tracking of nearly all the activities of every internet user in the country. Western firms have been instrumental in providing equipment that has facilitated state surveillance. Since the growth in use of social networks, there have been several waves of arrests of moderators of popular online opposition groups and communities. Journalists and activists who express their opinions online have found themselves subject to criminal prosecutions for libel. Denial of service attacks have been used frequently against independent online media and opposition websites, especially on the occasion of elections and other major political events.

Protesters at the Revolution through Social Networks demonstration in Minsk, summer 2011. Photo by Siarhei Balai.

Index on Censorship calls on the government of Belarus to stop all disproportionate and unnecessary legal and extrajudicial practices, online and offline, that compromise freedom of expression. We call for immediate reforms to be launched to ensure free speech, as outlined in the conclusions and recommendations chapter of the report.

The European Union (EU), its member states and other European bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), should further push the Belarus government to respect human rights in general and freedom of expression in particular and call for immediate reforms to facilitate the development of Belarus as a democratic state.

You can read the report in full in English here.

Доклад о цензуре интернета в Беларуси можно прочитать здесь.

Даклад аб цэнзуры інтэрнэта ў Беларусі магчыма прачытаць тут

More on this story:

Press Release - Internet explosion backfires for Europe’s last dictator

The post Belarus: Pulling the plug appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Belarusian photographer Sergei Grits, after being attacked by plain-clothes police officers while covering a protest

Sviardlou was detained and served a 15 day arrest in June 2012 — when he was grabbed from the street and forced into a minibus by police officers while he was on his way to the editorial office from home. The journalist, also a teacher of cultural studies, was accused of swearing in a public place; two police officers’ testimonies, though contradictory, were used as evidence, and the sentence was pronounced before his lawyer was even able to get to the court. Six months later this piece of Belarusian judiciary practice was used to refuse the journalist’s press accreditation.

Sviardlou’s story highlights the challenges independent reporters face in Belarus. Accreditation is just one side of it; physical violence and the absence of independent courts are even more serious problems.

The difficulties intensify during major political campaigns. Dozens of journalists were beaten by the police and detained on 19 December 2010 during the brutal dispersal of protest against alleged presidential election fraud.

In September 2012 seven journalists who covered a peaceful street performance of opposition in Minsk were seized by plain-clothed police officers; Sergei Grits, an Associated Press photographer, suffered a serious facial injury during the attack. When Grits made a complaint, the police replied that they had had nothing to do with the attack and had been unable to “identify the attackers” — despite numerous photos and videos of the incident being available.

“In the end, it does not matter whether you work for a Belarusian or foreign media outlet,” Vital Zybliuk, the editor of European Radio for Belarus in Minsk, says. “We all have Belarusian passports. The only difference is the Ministry of Information being in charge of regulation of the activities of the former, and the Foreign Ministry ‘taking care’ of the latter. But none of the ministries has ever really stood up for a journalist who suffered from violence from the police or persecution by the KGB.”

Use and abuse of media law
Belarus’s media law came into force in February 2009. The Belarusian Association of Journalists, a leading national press freedom organisation, has been campaigning to change the most repressive provisions of the law: restrictions in registration of media outlets and a narrow definition of “a journalist of a mass medium” (it does not allow legal grounds for freelance journalism).

According to BAJ, the present regulations turn press credentials into permission to seek and impart information, with these rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the country’s international commitments. In fact, even the present laws written by the authorities are often ignored, as law enforcement interferes with the activities of journalists.

“Ten years ago we taught our members how to avoid law suits for libel and defamation while writing articles. Now at our seminars we explain to journalists how to behave during detention, interrogation or a search,” Andrei Bastunets, BAJ Vice Chairman and a major Belarusian media lawyer, admits.

Yet, libel is still an issue. “Discredit of the country”, and insulting a state official or, especially, the president are crimes in Belarus. In 2002, several journalists served terms of compulsory labour for openly criticising the country’s authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko. Andrzej Poczobut, a correspondent for the Polish national daily Gazeta Wyborcza in Belarus, received a suspended imprisonment sentence for the same “crime” in 2011 — and still faces another round of similar charges at the moment. If found guilty of insulting the president again, the journalist could go to jail for up to five years.

Economic pressure
Not all repression of media in Belarus is so straightforward; some is less brutal and vivid, but no less dangerous for media freedom.

Independent media face economic discrimination. Non-state printed news media have to pay more for paper than state-owned ones. They also face problems with printing houses — there are few private ones, and state-owned printing presses collude with censorship. There have been instances when state printing houses demanded an independent newspaper cut a critical article, or refused to publish the paper altogether.

Members of BAJ submitting suggestions for reform to parliament last month

Another way of putting pressure on independent media was introduced before the presidential elections of 2006, when state systems of press distribution terminated their contracts with dozens of non-state newspapers. Not all of them had their own distribution networks; some of them had to close down or move completely online. Eleven independent publications are still kept out of the state-controlled system of retail press distribution and subscription catalogues. This means they are limited in the ways they can earn money and sustain their news operations.

About 75 per cent of the Belarusian economy is state-owned; the remaining 25 per cent can be — and actually is — controlled by the state. It is done through regulations and laws, but also by “insistent recommendations” from the authorities. For instance, in 2010 they “recommended” both state-owned enterprises and commercial banks avoid advertising in independent newspapers. That move led to further cuts of non-state media budgets.

“They could suppress us all completely, but prefer to keep us alive, but struggling,” Uladzimir Yanukevich, the CEO of Intex Press independent publishing company from Baranavichy, says. “They have the whole arsenal of restrictions in store for us: they limit access to information for our journalists, they charge us more for paper and printing, they limit our distribution and advertising. But the authorities are not really interested in strangling free press completely. Their policy is to swing like a pendulum between Russia and Europe; they want to show to the latter that there are independent media in the country.”

But it is not the good will of the authorities that really keeps free press in Belarus alive.

“Independent journalists and media managers work extra hours, study, develop, they learn how to master new technologies, how to do good journalism, and try to earn from doing so, while being able to avoid all traps,” Yanukevich says.

Most independent newspapers that have survived in Belarus were established in 1990s — but now it is next to impossible to register a new media outlet covering political news and social issues. It is not only about finding a team of dedicated people and initial capital, but also meeting all the formal restrictions the law imposes. For instance, the editor-in-chief of a newspaper must at least five years of senior editorial experience in order to be registered by the Ministry of Information, a requirement not easy to meet in the country where the media market is so restricted.

There are also numerous ways the authorities of Belarus curtail free voices online. To learn more on digital challenges to freedom of expression in Belarus, read Belarus: Pulling the Plug policy paper by Index

Yanina Melnikava is the editor of Mediakritika.by website

The post Belarus media law offers no defence appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Today marks the second anniversary of rigged presidential elections in Belarus, which resulted in a severe clampdown on civil society, independent media and political opposition.

Two years ago, tens of thousands of Belarusians gathered in the centre of Minsk to protest against election fraud that helped the country’s authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko — in power since 1994 — become the president for the fourth consecutive time. The peaceful demonstration was brutally dispersed by the police. More than 700 Belarusian citizens were detained and served administrative arrests; hundreds of protesters, journalists and even accidental passers-by were beaten up by the police.

Seven opposition presidential candidates (out of nine running) were later charged with organising of mass riots; most of them received sentences of imprisonment. One of them, Mikola Statkevich, is still in prison as well as the political activists Paval Seviarynets and Vasil Parfiankou. Two more activists, Zmitser Dashkevich and Eduard Lobau, were arrested in Minsk on the eve of 19 December 2010, and are in prison as well. So is Ales Bialiatski, a prominent human rights defender, whose organisation, Human Rights Centre Viasna, has been one of a key civil society groups that helped victims of repressions after the clampdown.

For the past two years Index has been campaigning for releasing the jailed political prisoners in Belarus. Through targeted social media, news articles, blogs, protests and events, Index together with its partners — such as Belarus Free Theatre and Free Belarus Now campaign — brought the situation faced by ordinary Belarusians to the attention of the international community. Luminaries signed petitions; banks operating within Belarus were targeted to stop selling government bonds. As a result of this pressure, several political prisoners, including high-profile opposition leader, Andrei Sannikov, were released in April 2012.

Kirsty Hughes, CEO of Index on Censorship said:

On the second anniversary of Belarus’ rigged presidential elections, Index calls on the Belarus government to release all political prisoners and to respect its citizens’ fundamental rights. The European Union including all its member states must increase their pressure on the Belarus government to respect fully human rights within Belarus.

Andrei Aliaksandrau is the Belarus and OSCE Programme Officer at Index

photo by photo.bymedia.net

The post Nothing to celebrate on second anniversary of Belarus protests appeared first on Index on Censorship.

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