PACE Points Out Freedom of Media Violations in Belarus :: Charter'97 :: News

Problems persist with media freedom across Europe and further serious violations have taken place since 2001, the Parliamentary Assembly said today, adopting a report by its General Rapporteur on the Media Tytti Isohookana-Asunmaa (Finland, LDR). In a country-by-country analysis, the parliamentarians deplored:

- violence against journalists, including murder, and imprisonment

- legal harassment, such as defamation suits and huge fines

- broadcasting laws which allow direct government interference

- violation of journalists’ right to protect their sources

- threats to media pluralism

They pledged to continue closely monitoring the situation, and called on European governments to investigate crimes against journalists, to enact and enforce appropriate media legislation and to refrain from using the fight against terrorism to restrict information.

Following you may read the section of the report, dedicated to Belarus:

Belarus (government control, journalists in prison, legal and economic harassment)

33. On 24 January, the Committee on Culture, Science and Education held a hearing in Strasbourg on the situation of the media in Belarus, with the participation of Mr Padhayny, Minister of Information of Belarus, representatives of the Belarus Association of Journalists, members of Parliament, representatives of the non-parliamentary opposition, journalists and NGOs (see AS/Cult (2002) 13). The journalists complained that the Opposition had no access to the State mass media, that the non-state media, the only tribune for political opposition, had a restricted circulation and were subject to various forms of harassment and that censorship was openly practised by senior government officials.

34. At the end the hearing, the Minister made an official commitment to send a draft media law to the Council of Europe for examination. In June, the Minister wrote to the Chairman of the Committee, Mr de Puig, to ensure him that the draft would be submitted following parliamentary hearings in the autumn. Almost one year after that commitment was made, the draft has not yet reached the Council of Europe. At a meeting with Belorussian parliamentarians in September the Council of Europe was informed that the draft was still being examined by the presidential administration and had not reached Parliament.

35. In August, the Minsk independent daily Nasha Svoboda was fined some 54,500 euros in a libel suit brought by the head of the State Control Committee.

36. Three journalists received prison sentences. Mikola Markevich and Paval Mazheika, respectively editor-in-chief and reporter at the Hrodno-based independent weekly Pahonya and Viktar Ivashkevich, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Rabochy, were accused of libelling President Aleksandr Lukashenko. According to the latest information Markevich and Mazheika have started their forced-labour terms in a remote area of Belarus, and not in their home Hrodna area.

37. In an appeal to the International Helsinki Federation, Belarus NGOs declared themselves “alarmed with the critical situation of independent media”. They stated that in order to restrict the freedom of the media the government was using criminal prosecution of journalists and other legal measures and had recently stepped up economic harassment of independent outlets. As a result of economic discrimination through state-owned printing and distribution monopolies, through taxation and advertising policy, several newspapers both in Minsk and in the regions have had to suspend publication – Belaruskaya Maladzyozhnaya, Dien, Rabochy, Solidarnosc in Soligorsk, Golas Pruzhany, Kuceina in Krychev, Tydniovik Mahileuski.