propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/rsf/belarus
http://propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/rsf/belarus/
Reporters Without Borders
Belarus
Source: http://rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=7123
Or: http://rsf.fr/print.php3?id_article=7123
19.06.2003
Although President Alexander Lukashenko is keen to encourage digital technology, his regime closely monitors the Internet. Local users suspect this is done through the obligatory "certification" of all modems by the communications ministry, which takes at least a week to "verify" them. The state has a telecommunications monopoly through Beltelekom. Smaller privately-owned ISPs have sprung up, such as Global One (a subsidiary of the American firm Sprint) and Open Contact, but their traffic is handled by Beltelekom's Internet division, Belpak. Operating licences are only issued in exchange for signing up with Beltelekom, agreeing to surprise "technical inspections" by communications ministry officials and providing an annual list of subscribers. ISPs must also promise not to exchange traffic with each other. Independent websites are not censored, perhaps because Internet users are still few.
Parliament rejected a proposed "data security" law on 22 May 2002 which had been condemned by the Belarus Association of Journalists (BAJ) as tightening government control over the content and flow of information.
On 5 November 2002, police interrogated Iulia Doroshevich and Andrei Pachobut, two journalists on the daily paper Pagonya, which was banned in 2001, about the online version of the paper, which was still appearing. Pagonya's editor and one of its journalists were imprisoned at hard labour from September 2002 to March 2003 for "insulting" President Alexander Lukashenko in an article.
LINKS :
* Belarus Association of Journalists (BAJ): http://baj.ru/indexe.htm
* Survey of laws concerning freedom of expression, done by the organisation Article 19: http://www.article19.by/publications/instrumentscontrol/index.html
Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without borders has nine national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.
© Reporters Without Borders 2002
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)