Belarus: Police Target Journalists Covering The Protests And Silences Online Media, At Least 78 Journalists Are Attacked Since August 9
Location: Belarus, Minsk
Date: August 14, 2020
The Coalition For Women In Journalism stands with the right to peaceful assembly and right to information of Belarussian citizens. The protests that sparked after the rigged election which Alexander Lukashenko announced his victory before the polls were closed is in it’s fifth day.Clare Rewcastle-Brown, editor of Sarawak Report, fears arrest by Interpol on behalf of the Malaysian government. The journalist, known for exposing high-level corruption, shared her concerns with the UK media. On September 23, the Malaysian government issued a warrant for Clare’s arrest, pertaining to her 2018 book about the 1MDB scandal. Clare intends to travel to Spain to tend to visit her elderly father but is at risk of arrest under the Interpol’s Red Notice system.
Belarus, a European country situated between Russia and Poland, and almost the size of Britain. For the past 26 years, the dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko has been its President. Over the course of his presidency, he suppressed the opposition by putting them in prison, forcing them to exile, and making some people disappear forever without a trace.
Belarussian laws, in contrast with the fundamental rights and freedoms prescribed by the EU makes it impossible for the citizens to exercise their right to assembly.
Since August 9, residents also reported a complete to partial internet blackout affecting both landline and mobile services within and outside the country. State authorities also blocked social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vkontakte – a major Russian online social media and social networking service. To add insult to injury, dozens of websites, including some independent media, such as Nasha Niva, Mediazona, and a popular blogging platform were blocked.
The night after the election, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets all around the country for peaceful demonstrations. The police and Special Forces reacted violently, using stun grenades, rubber bullets, and batons against unarmed citizens, whom they are supposed to protect. 3000 people have been arrested on the first day alone, thousands were beaten, journalists were not allowed to cover the events, and some of them have been imprisoned.
Some of the released have shared photos of their bruised bodies via the messaging app Nexta and talked about “torture chambers”. The detainees were forced to undress, crawl on concrete and were threatened with rape.
While one of these people was showing the marks on his body, he told the BBC Türkçe, "They brutally beat people. They detain whoever they want. They kept us standing in the courtyard all night. We heard the screams of the women inside. What cruelty, I don't understand."
In a sound recording also delivered by the BBC, screams are heard at the Okrestina surveillance center in the capital Minsk.
A group of five UN human rights experts also stated that security forces reacted harshly to peaceful demonstrations, using excessive, unnecessary and disproportionate force. "The authorities want to disperse the protesters quickly and detain as many people as possible," the group said in a written statement.
Journalists in Belarus took the brunt of police violence with many injured and facing persecution for performing their professional duties. The silencing of the internet made it hard for the international community to access information about the severity of the pressure upon Belarussian journalists.
At least 78 journalists who followed the protests have been subjected to violence, detained and deported since Sunday (9 August). They were impeded at work, equipment damaged and personal and professional property forcefully confiscated. To protest the brutality their colleagues face, several popular anchors at Belarus' state TV stations have quit.
In particular, we call on the European Union, the Council of Europe and the OSCE to take urgent measures to stop violence against journalists and citizens who are peacefully demonstrating.
Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which is monitoring the press freedom violations in the country, calls upon all the international actors to make the voices of Belarussian Journalists heard. According to the database of the Belarusian Journalists Association (BAJ), 78 attacks against journalists took place since August 9. BAJ also announced with Telegram channels that at least 10 criminal cases have been filed against popular bloggers and managers. 15 of these violations were against women journalists and are as follows:
On August 9, five women journalists were detained and one was wounded. Ekaterina Tkachenko from the news agency Belsat was detained by riot police while she was exiting her apartment. She was kept in the police department for three hours, had her phone confiscated and was later released without any official report. Another reporter for Belsat, Irina Slavnikova around the same hours in Minsk was also detained and was later released with no report. Meanwhile in Mahilou, TUT.BY journalists Angelica Vasilevskaya and Olga Kamyagina were detained in Mahilou and were not released until the following day. Dar'ya Chultsova, freelance journalist was taken to the police station while she was covering the protests in Mahilou and was charged with violation of article 22.9 of the Administrative Code. The law stipulates that a foreign journalists are only able to perform journalism if they are part of a mass news outlet and obtain accreditation from the Republic of Belarus, which makes it impossible for independent journalists to perform their job without fear of detention and in worse cases deportation. Dar’ya was interrogated for 12 hours and was released on bail. NRC correspondent Emilie van Outeren was injured in Minsk the same day. She was hit in the thigh by a still unknown projectile when security forces fired at protesters. Emilie is now back in the Netherlands and given the circumstances she is not planning on going back to Belarus.
August 10, was an even more brutal day for both the protesters and journalists on the ground, military forces shot a young man dead in the center of Minsk. The police brutality injured two women journalists and three women journalists were detained on charges of violating Article 23.34 of the Administrative Code. Article 23.34 prescribes that any mass event in city centers is bound by a procedure of permission from the city, which is absurdly in contrast to the freedom of peaceful association. Belsat’s reporters Mariana Mauchanova, Elena Shcherbinskaya and Tatiana Belashova were all detained on the basis of violating Article 23.34 and were not released until yesterday, August 13. Their release came just a day before the ministers from EU were coming for a visit in capital Minsk, to discuss the sanctions against the Lukashenko government. Due to internet censorship much of the public and international community weren’t aware of the severity of attacks against journalists until the next day, when it made the headlines that Natalia Lubnevskaya, a journalist of the Nasha Niva newspaper, was wounded in the leg and rushed to the emergency room. It is worth noting that the journalists were standing in a group, they were wearing vests with the inscription ‘Press’ and all of them had journalist IDs. Belsat’s Minsk correspondent Tatiana Kapitonova was also injured around the same time while she was covering the police brutality near a metro station she was stunned by a light-noise grenade.
On August 11, CivilForum.By photographer Nadezhda Buzhan was stopped by the police and forced to turn in her memory card full of pictures with protestors. Another journalist detained the same day who didn’t succumb to the pressure, Alina Skarabunova is still under arrest and is facing five more days in detention according to the country’s arbitrary criminal procedural law. Radio Racyja correspondent Tamara Shchepetkina was also detained on the same grounds and is awaiting trial in a hospital due to her illness that sources suspect caused by the violence she endured during her detention.
The Coalition For Women In Journalism reiterates the call to the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on the freedoms of opinion and expression, assembly and association, and human rights, to urgently investigate these incidents in Belarus. Further, we call on the government of Belarus to put an end to the arbitrary interference of people’s rights. Belarus authorities must stop attacking journalists and persecute the perpetrators of unjust detention and violence. Journalists must be able to perform their duties to inform the public in these historic days without fear of retaliation.
The CFWIJ strongly condemns the police brutality against journalists. We demand the immediate return of the press cards seized from the security forces. Policies to intimidate journalists should be abandoned, and journalism should be practiced under the criteria of freedom of the press.
If you have been harassed or abused in any way, and please report the incident by using the following form.