E‑newsletter: MASS MEDIA IN BELARUS No.1 (79) 2025

Sit­u­a­tion in Belarus mass media field: jan­u­ary-march 2025. Review. Down­load PDF.

Pho­to: BAJ

The pre­vi­ous­ly observed trends in the treat­ment of inde­pen­dent press con­tin­ued in Belarus at the begin­ning of 2025. They were aggra­vat­ed by the ‘elec­tion’ of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka that took place on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

Among oth­er, the fol­low­ing devel­op­ments were fur­ther observed in the Belaru­sian media field in Jan­u­ary – March 2025:

• large-scale crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists both inside the coun­try and in exile,
• pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and blog­gers in Belarus by means of search­es and deten­tions,
• sys­tem­at­ic label­ing of all unwant­ed con­tent as ‘extrem­ist’.

Cen­sor­ship went beyond the tra­di­tion­al ‘fight against extrem­ism’ in the peri­od under review. Thus, the nation­al domain zone admin­is­tra­tor was grant­ed the author­i­ty to delete domain names, which ‘could harm the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus.’

Dur­ing the so-called ‘elec­tion,’ the author­i­ties applied tech­ni­cal means to block access to web­sites in the Belaru­sian nation­al domain zone from abroad and to lim­it the Belaru­sian Inter­net users’ abil­i­ty to use VPN ser­vices. The access to infor­ma­tion was restrict­ed by oth­er means, too.

Criminal prosecution of journalists

40 jour­nal­ists were kept behind bars sub­ject to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in the first quar­ter of 2025.

Report­ed­ly, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was trans­ferred to prison for using Belaru­sian in Mahilou Cor­rec­tion­al Colony No. 15 in June 2023. He had been sen­tenced to 13 years of impris­on­ment on charges of ‘trea­son.’

The admin­is­tra­tion of Navap­o­latsk Cor­rec­tion­al Colony No.1 extend­ed the pun­ish­ment of polit­i­cal pris­on­er and jour­nal­ist Andrzej Pac­zobut in the form of deten­tion in a cell-type facil­i­ty for anoth­er six months. 

A free­lance jour­nal­ist of ‘Radio Lib­er­ty’ Andrei Kuzniechyk was released from prison due to the diplo­mat­ic efforts of the US gov­ern­ment on Feb­ru­ary 12, 2025. He had been sen­tenced to 6 years of impris­on­ment in June 2022.

 Court pro­ceed­ings against jour­nal­ists and blog­gers con­tin­ued in Belarus in the first quar­ter of 2025.

A jour­nal­ist Ihar Ilyash was put on tri­al in Min­sk on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2025. (He is the hus­band of polit­i­cal pris­on­er and jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Andreye­va.) Ihar Ilyash was accused of dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus and pro­mot­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties. He faces up to 6 years in prison.

A jour­nal­ist Pali­na Pitke­vich was sen­tenced to three years of impris­on­ment in Min­sk on March 7, 2025. She was accused of par­tic­i­pa­tion in an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion”, name­ly the ‘Media IQ’ online pub­li­ca­tion: 

Ihar Shke­tau, the admin­is­tra­tor of ‘Pad­slukhana Hly­bokaye’ local pub­lic forum was sen­tenced to two years of restric­tion of lib­er­ty under the com­mon­ly applied Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘arrange­ment of group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them’) in the town­ship of Hly­bokaye, Vit­sieb­sk region. 

Pali­na Zyl, a blog­ger from Mazyr, Homiel region was arrest­ed and tak­en to cus­tody in the first quar­ter of 2025.

The apart­ment of blog­ger Vadi­mati (Vadim Yer­mashuk) was searched and arrest­ed in Hrod­na in con­nec­tion with the ini­ti­a­tion of a new crim­i­nal case in the peri­od under review. The for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er fled Belarus after serv­ing a prison term.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, at least 5 crim­i­nal cas­es were filed against jour­nal­ists in exile in the first quar­ter of 2025.

Report­ed­ly, crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings were ini­ti­at­ed in rela­tion to the authors and par­tic­i­pants of ‘Plan B’ TV show on Bel­sat with­in the peri­od under review.

Among oth­ers, a Russ­ian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Ilya Davly­atchin was accused of facil­i­tat­ing ‘extrem­ist’ activ­i­ties and declared ‘want­ed’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. 

Searches, detentions, and other kinds of pressure

Accord­ing to the BAJ records, three jour­nal­ists were detained, three more media work­ers got sen­tenced to var­i­ous terms of admin­is­tra­tive arrest and 9 crim­i­nal police search­es took place in jour­nal­ists’ apart­ments in Belarus in the first quar­ter of 2025. 

 Numer­ous jour­nal­ists work­ing for inde­pen­dent media in exile were declared ‘want­ed’ by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties in con­nec­tion with their crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, includ­ing Deputy Chair­per­sons of BAJ Barys Haret­s­ki and Aleh Aheyeu.

The rel­a­tives of exiled inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus faced var­i­ous kinds of pres­sure includ­ing search­es of their apart­ments and inter­ro­ga­tions by the police.

The pri­vate prop­er­ty of 4 media work­ers was seized as part of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties fur­ther extend­ed the list of media resources, labeled as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions.’ The ‘Medi­a­zone. Belarus’ online pub­li­ca­tion, ‘About Viteb­sk’ media project, the media ini­tia­tives of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Media Insti­tute and Nastaunik.info were includ­ed in this list fol­low­ing the respec­tive deci­sions tak­en by the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs or the KGB.

Var­i­ous accounts of Web resources as well as per­son­al pages of jour­nal­ists and blog­gers on social media were fur­ther rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist mate­ri­als’, and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent from these pages entailed admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion.

The con­tent of ‘Abazhur’ mag­a­zine No. 3 (124), 2018 was labeled as ‘extrem­ist media prod­uct’ in the first quar­ter of 2025. It was pub­lished by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists before its liq­ui­da­tion by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. Most of the pub­li­ca­tions in this issue cov­ered the top­ic of per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media work­ers for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties.

In addi­tion to the Belaru­sian online resources, a num­ber of Telegram chan­nels broad­cast­ing news from Ukraine as well as all accounts of Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist Dmit­ry Gor­don and Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Nev­zorov were banned for dis­tri­b­u­tion. 

A free­lance jour­nal­ist Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va and the admin­is­tra­tor of ‘Pad­slukhana Hly­bokaye’ local pub­lic forum Ihar Shke­tau were includ­ed in the ‘List of cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, for­eign cit­i­zens or state­less indi­vid­u­als involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties.’ Both media work­ers are serv­ing prison terms on crim­i­nal charges.  

Addi­tion­al cen­sor­ship restric­tions were applied on the eve of the elec­tion day on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025.

Thus, the web­sites of ‘Mahilouskiya Vedamast­si’ region­al media hold­ing as well as a num­ber of state-owned dis­trict news­pa­pers in the Mahilou region either delet­ed pub­li­ca­tions about train­ing ses­sions for mem­bers of dis­trict elec­tion com­mis­sions or removed pho­tos from the arti­cles.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties intro­duced changes to the Guide­lines ‘On Reg­is­tra­tion of Domain Names in the Nation­al Domain Zone of Belarus’ on Jan­u­ary 17, 2025. The inno­va­tions allow the admin­is­tra­tor of the nation­al domain zone to can­cel domains “capa­ble of harm­ing the nation­al inter­ests of the Repub­lic of Belarus”, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enter­ing them into a spe­cial ban list. The notion of caus­ing harm to nation­al inter­ests was not spec­i­fied any­where at that.

Dur­ing the ‘pres­i­den­tial elec­tion’ on Jan­u­ary 26, there was reg­is­tered block­ing of access to web­sites in the Belaru­sian nation­al domain zone from abroad. Also, Belaru­sian Inter­net users’ abil­i­ty to make use of VPN ser­vices was lim­it­ed.  

 The com­pa­ny hoster.by is the largest domain reg­is­trar in Belarus, an IT infra­struc­ture provider, host­ing more than 90% of Belaru­sian web­sites. The com­pa­ny announced in advance that it would restrict access to the host­ed web­sites from abroad from 10:00 a.m. on Jan­u­ary 25, 2025 to 11:59 p.m. on Jan­u­ary 27, 2025. This peri­od coin­cid­ed with the elec­tion of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. The host­ing ser­vice provider explained these mea­sures by the alleged ‘threats to the media infra­struc­ture facil­i­ties and the infor­ma­tion, which is processed with their use.’

Web-users from Belarus encoun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties with the use of VPN ser­vices (in par­tic­u­lar, Pro­ton VPN, Nord­VPN, Tun­nel­Bear, VPN — Super Unlim­it­ed Proxy, X‑VPN, Plan­et VPN) and faced prob­lems with access to cer­tain for­eign web­sites on the morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 25, 2025.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties sent a let­ter of com­plaint to Google after the vot­ing day on Jan­u­ary 26, 2025. They accused the com­pa­ny of the alleged ‘inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion.’ Accord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Marat Markau, the com­plaints con­cerned ‘the com­plic­i­ty of Google in infor­ma­tion­al provo­ca­tions against Belarus and the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the coun­try with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of for­ma­tions that were rec­og­nized by the court as extrem­ist in the Repub­lic of Belarus.’ (The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion was inac­cu­rate in his state­ment, since orga­ni­za­tions are rec­og­nized as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ extra­ju­di­cial­ly in Belarus. The deci­sions are tak­en either by the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs or the KGB.)  He also stat­ed the need to cre­ate a repli­ca of Roskom­nad­zor in Belarus. (Among oth­er things, the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion in the Field of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nolo­gies and Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­lates media activ­i­ties.)