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How Lukashenka declared war on Belarusian journalists
By:   []
Date: None

Independent media outlets in Belarus have been through a lot during the past 27 years of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s dictatorship. Newspapers have been closed down and websites blocked, while journalists have faced civil and criminal prosecution, beatings. Several have even been murdered.

Yet Lukashenka’s relationship with the country’s media has varied over time. Frosty periods have been followed by short-term thaws, and vice versa. Before August 2020 – when thousands of people came out in protest at falsified elections and the police violence that followed – 2011 was one of the most difficult periods. That year, amid anti-government protests, there were several criminal investigations of journalists, 167 instances of short-term detention and seven cases of physical violence. By contrast, in 2015 – another election year in Belarus – there were almost nine times fewer short-term detentions and no cases of criminal prosecution or physical violence against journalists.

These kinds of fluctuations are far from accidental. The level of repression wielded against the free press is directly proportional to the level of protest activity in society. In 2015, against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, president Lukashenka had a high approval rating, his opponents could not even dream of mass protests, and so the authorities could afford a short-term thaw. Lukashenka even agreed to give an exclusive interview to three outlets: TUT.by, Euroradio and the US-funded Radio Liberty. This was an important political gesture, one which suggested that Lukashenka did not perceive independent media as a threat.

Some four years later, the Belarusian regime faced an electoral revolt, with unprecedented protests across the country that are still ongoing. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Belarusian authorities have decided that journalists are the instigators of this “uprising”.

A declaration of war

“At first I didn’t even feel the blow. I just realised that my hands were already handcuffed behind my back, and blood was pouring out of my nose. I was pushed into a minivan with a shout: ‘On your knees!’”

This is how Anton Trafimovich, a correspondent for Radio Liberty, described being attacked by Belarusian law enforcement in Minsk on 15 July 2020 – three weeks before the presidential election on 9 August.

This kind of attack, a demonstration of intent, was not accidental. A few weeks earlier, the then-minister of internal affairs Yuri Karaev had stated that recent protests in Belarus were “well organised”, managed in part by a Radio Liberty livestream. Karaev suggested that journalists, by covering a protest, were in fact responsible for organising it. Soon after, the Belarusian authorities began equating protests and “mass riots”, which journalists were again accused of inciting.

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