29 March 2024, Friday, 12:40
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Belarus claims bottom place in rating of freedom of press

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Adopting of a new law on media in Belarus will lead to lower position of Belarus in the press freedom ranking of the Freedom of the Press human rights organisation. It is ranked 188 out of 195 countries in this list now.

Lawyer Ihar Rynkevich, deputy head of the Belarusian Social Party (Hramada) thinks so. “Adoption of the law will lead to informational totalitarianism in the country. Officials from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan may come to us for training for learning of derogation of freedom of information,” the politician said.

He noted “the coming tightening of media on legislative level is total,” it will cover conditions of media registration, accreditation of journalists, responsibility for spreading information, functioning of Internet resources.

I. Rynkevich also thinks “the government was afraid to trust the deputies regulation of Internet-editions via the law, having reserved this right to itself by means of bylaws to response actions of Internet-community.”

“The deputies are made to adopt the new law on media so quickly that it resembles a force-majeure regime of adopting of draconian norms to the criminal code ahead of the presidential campaign in 2006. The coming law on media will have repressive power: it contains not legal rules, but landmines and bombs, which will explode independent journalists and oppositional politicians during the so called parliamentary elections,” Ihar Rynkevich is sure.

As we have already informed, the new draft law on media was introduced to the “lower chamber” of the Belarusian “parliament” on 10 June and is to be reviewed on 17 June.

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