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

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Alexander Lukashenko turns up to cast his vote in Belarus’s parliamentary election, accompanied by his son Nikolay

Last Sunday the people of Belarus learnt the new composition of the lower chamber of its parliament. But you can’t really say that members of the parliament were elected. Most observers say that there are no genuine elections in Belarus, and that the parliament is insignificant because the power of the president is almost complete. A large part of the population shares that view.

The Belarus authorities claim that elections in Belarus are transparent. Journalists joke that they are so transparent that they are almost invisible. Although the Central Election Commission claimed that 72.3 per cent of voters went to the polling stations, independent observers say that turnout was no more than 35-40 per cent. The authorities falsified the turnout to give the elections the veneer of legitimacy.

There are no surprises in the composition of the new parliament. Most of the democratic opposition boycotted the election in different ways. Some parties — European Belarus, the Christian Democrats and the Belarusian Movement — announced from the start that they were not participating in the farce. Others, including the United Civil Party and the Belarus National Front, decided to get candidates registered to give themselves a platform but later withdrew,  denouncing the election as a fraud. Some opposition parties ran candidates all the way through to election day — but predictably without any success.

The lack of unity of approach among the opposition was criticised by civil society groups. “All of the opposition was really in favour of a boycott,” said Uladzimir Matskevich, chair of the coordination committee of the National Civil Society Forum.  “Even those people who called for participating in the campaign until the bitter end did so only in order to use the opportunity for publicity. So why not agree about a common strategy from the very beginning?”

The disunity of the opposition meant that it failed to send a clear message to voters. If ordinary people boycotted the election it had little to do with activities of oppositional groups and a lot to do with a general sense that the National Assembly has no real influence because of the overwhelming power of the president.

“We don’t have public politics in Belarus,” said Zhanna Litivina, chair of the Belarus Association of Journalists (BAJ). “Even when we had election debates on TV, it was obvious the candidates themselves did not really care about them.”

A BAJ analysis of election media coverage shows that the state media, which are dominant in the country, misrepresented the campaign, focusing on the Central Election Commission rather than candidates or their programmes. There were cases of direct censorship as state TV refused to broadcast candidates’ statements. Debates were never live but always pre-recorded. No appeal for a boycott of the elections ever appeared in the state media.

The official explanation from Lidzija Yarmoshyna, the CEC chair, was that airtime was dedicated “to campaigning, not boycotting”. According to the chair of the United Civil Party, Anatol Labiedzka, 32 addresses by the party’s candidates were not broadcast and state-owned papers refused to print 11 of its candidates programmes.

“The purpose of the bleak campaign coverage and the censorship of the candidates’ media appearances was to undermine electoral competition and depoliticise the elections,” the BAJ report (pdf) states.

There were several instances of physical attacks and detentions of journalists. The worst was on 18 September, when seven journalists (Aliaksandr Barazenka, Sergei Grits, Vasil Fiadosenka, Tatsiana Ziankovich, Vasil Padabed, Dzmitry Rudakou and Aliaxey Akulau) who covered a peaceful street performance of opposition in Minsk were seized; Grits, an Associated Press photographer, received a serious facial injury during the attack. This was a clear and gross violation of journalists’ rights, in direct contravention of the law that makes it a criminal offence to interfere with journalistic activities. But few expect that officials will investigate the case and call those responsible for the attack to legal account.

Opposition websites reported that they were temporarily blocked during election day, and foreign journalists were denied visas to cover the elections — among them Swedish reporters Stefan Borg, Erik Von Platen and Gustaf Andersson and German reporters Anne Gelinek and Gesine Dornblüth. [Editors note: Von Platen and Andersson were eventually granted visas after initially being refused]

Many of the formal procedures for democratic elections are in place in Belarus — but genuinely free elections are not simply about formal procedures: they are about discussion of different political programmes. In democracies, free media provide a public platform for debate. In an authoritarian state like Belarus, where media freedom is severely restricted, elections can never be free. The electoral code can be amended, observers can be allowed to see the vote count, the ballot boxes can be transparent – but if there is no freedom of the media, none of this counts for anything.

 Andrei Aliaksandrau is the Belarus and OSCE Programme Officer at Index on Censorship

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