28 March 2024, Thursday, 13:18
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Swedish TeliaSonera helps Lukashenka to block websites

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Swedish TeliaSonera helps Lukashenka to block websites

A subsidiary company of TeliaSonera (Sweden) in Belarus, Best closed joint-stock company, is blocking access to independent websites.

It is written by the leader of Swedish human rights organisation Östgruppen, Martin Uggla in his blog.

Best closed joint stock company, which is Life mobile phone service provider, has blocked access to a number of independent websites to its subscribers. Clients of the company cannot access charter97.org, Belorusskiy partizan, the website of Viasna human rights centre, Martin Uggla writes.

The human rights defender stresses that clients who would try to enter addresses of these websites, receive messages that access to them is impossible under Decree No.60 signed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

Life mobile operator is owned by Best company, which in its turn is controlled by a Turkish firm Turkcell. TeliaSonera owns 38% of shares of the latter. Swedish state owns more than 37% of shares of TeliaSonera.

“In practice it means that the Swedish government and TeliaSonera are indirectly encouraging perpetration of crimes against freedom of expression, committed by Lukashenka’s regime. Such things are happening not for the first time. The former Swedish Minister for Financial Markets Peter Erik Norman once harshly criticized TeliaSonera, demanding the company to show greater respect to human rights in its activities. The question is, how the current government is going to act,” Martin Uggla concluded.

We remind that a few days ago Belarusian Internet providers received a list of websites to be blocked, which is to be applied to all users in the country. The new list is based on the previous blacklist prepared by the State Supervisory Department for Telecommunication, which, among others, includes independent news websites Charter’97 and Belorusskiy Partizan. Earlier, the blacklisted sites were blocked for state-owned organisations, educational and cultural institutions, but now access will be restricted for all Internet users in Belarus.

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