29 March 2024, Friday, 7:47
Support
the website
Sim Sim,
Charter 97!
Categories

Attempt At Internet

Attempt At Internet

The state lost its monopoly on information and lost to the independent media.

What do you think is the most important problem, which worries the authorities to the utmost now, and which should be resolved in an urgent, priority order? This is not economy, not prices, salaries and pensions, not a sowing campaign in agriculture or even ice hockey either. All this will wait. On April 19, the "House of Representatives" hastily approved the amendments to the law on the media in the first reading.

It's hilarious that recently Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei, in an interview with Euronews, stated that "we launched a dialogue with the civil society ... today the government has reached out its hand to its opponents for the first time."

And as if disavowing this message to the outside world, Aliaksandr Lukashenka met on April 10 with the representatives of the media. However, this message was attended only by editors and journalists of the state-run media.

Representatives of independent media were not invited to the meeting. The main topic of the event was the question of how to restore public confidence in the government with the help of state-owned media. Lukashenka defined their main task as follows: "It's impossible to continue working in the old way ... It is your task to keep interest, to keep readers and viewers". Since independent media resources are considered adversaries, it would be illogical to discuss this question in their presence.

It is also not accidental that all proposals of the non-state segment of the media community were rejected during the adoption of the media law. Here comes the "dialogue with civil society".

The reason for the adoption of this law so hastily is that the state lost its monopoly on information, lost the information war to two opponents: the Belarusian independent media that dominate the Internet and the Russian TV channels. And this threatens the most important thing for Lukashenka: his power. Therefore, he sets a task to restore the control of the state media over the information space of Belarus, over the Internet, to win the lost war.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk at the official level about the fact that Belarus is becoming an IT country, the state has taken a course towards the application of the latest technologies and innovations, at the end of last year Lukashenka’s decree „On the Development of the Digital Economy“ was adopted.

Against this background, the blocking of unwanted Internet resources (Charter97.org), the desire of the state to control and limit Internet use sharply disconcerts with the course on the digital economy.

The image of an IT country and the image of Belarus as an "enemy of the Internet" (as international human rights organizations assess us) are mutually exclusive representations. But the authorities see for themselves a much greater danger that the society is getting out of its control. Compared with this, the fact that new investors will not come to the High Technology Park seems like a lesser evil.

In democratic countries, no registration of the media is needed. This is the essence of freedom of speech. The Belarusian authorities insistently suggest registering Internet resources as media. But the registration procedure is complicated by such difficulties (the need to create a legal entity, to have an office, special requirements for the qualification of the editor-in-chief), which becomes it hard to fulfill. It is no coincidence that in the recent years, not a single socio-political media has been able to obtain registration.

The new law confirms the right of the Ministry of Information to close and block any media without trial for publishing "information that is contrary to state and public interests". This flexible formulation gives the authorities the opportunity to commit complete arbitrariness. For example, you'll criticize the janitor for the poor cleaning of the street, and this will be regarded by the Ministry of Information as a threat to the state interests with the corresponding consequences.

The most important innovation is the requirement to introduce the identification of commentators on websites, to deprive them of anonymity. Moreover, the noble motives of this innovation are put forward in the state media. Say, by this we will fight crime, child pornography and other bad things. But all this is cheap demagogy. And until now the law has forbidden the use of the media, the Internet for criminal purposes. The law enforcement agencies have the ability to calculate and punish any user on the network already now. And this happened many times.

In fact, the reasons for these changes in the law on the media are different. Since most of the comments are critical of the authorities, the plan is understandable. People, frightened by their names being revealed, will be silent. Indeed, practice shows that the rejection of anonymity reduces the number of comments and the audience on the websites by several times.

International organizations in their official documents state that the right to anonymity is part of human rights, an element of freedom of speech and protection of private life. In particular, the Council of Europe adopted a declaration on freedom of communication, which states that it is necessary to respect the desire of users not to disclose their identity. Similar provisions remain in the UN documents.

The key argument of opponents of this innovation in the law on mass media is that because of the ban on the anonymity of commentators, the audience of the Internet media in the country will decrease, readers, users will go to Russian resources or to social networks that are not controlled by the Belarusian state.

This problem is realized by the political leadership of Belarus. The Russian media, primarily Russian television, exert a much greater influence on Belarusians than their state television channels, as evidenced by numerous opinion polls. In other words, the authorities of the neighboring country are increasingly manipulating the consciousness of the Belarusian society. In 2016, the then deputy head of the administration of Lukashenka, Ihar Buzouski, stated that the share of the Russian content in the Belarusian media reaches 65%. For example, regarding the ONT channel, this share is 54% of the air.

Therefore, our authorities are taking countermeasures. A new law on the media provides that at least 30% of TV programs should be produced in Belarus. And this will require additional financial resources.

However, everything shows that our political leadership remains less frightened by the threat of strengthening the influence of Russia than of the danger that Belarusians in various forums can freely and massively say what they think about our power. Therefore, the website Charter97.org is blocked, but there are no obstacles to the spread of odious Russian chauvinistic resources in Belarus.

By the way, simultaneously with the adoption of the new media law in Belarus, the Russian authorities also launched an attack on the Internet. Roskomnadzor is blocking the popular Telegram messenger.

In reality, it turned into a carpet bombing Runet. Partial blocking of Amazon, Google and Microsoft has already begun, which hinders the normal operation of even the websites of the Russian authorities. Disruptions in the work of the social network "Odnoklassniki" began. To completely block Telegram, the authorities will have to disconnect all major international services on the territory of the country, in other words, cut themselves off from the global Internet. Russia is slipping into the Chinese way of fighting the Internet. In the policy of isolation from the globalizing world, the authorities of Belarus and Russia turned out to be real allies.

Valer Karbalevich, Free News

Write your comment

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts