Charter'97 blocked in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan

Russia's backbone operator Rostelecom blocked access to our website yesterday.

Visitors of charter97.org report that the site is blocked in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The inquiry revealed that Russia's backbone communication service provider Rostelecom put the website on the blacklist, the step that blocked access to Charter'97 for all clients of Internet service providers (ISP) that use Rostelecom to connect to the Internet.

Visitors of the site see the page with the notice that the website was included in the unified register of the domain names, website references and network addresses that allow identifying websites containing information circulation of which is forbidden in the Russian Federation.

Roskomnadzor, Russia's media watchdog, put several articles of Charter'97 on the blacklist some days ago, but the website was not blocked completely. The domain charter97.org was not in Roskomnadzor's registry. However, Rostelecom went further and completely blocked access to our site.

Clients of Belarusian ISPs Delovaya Set, Life, Velcom and others faced the blocking this morning. According to the information we have, these ISPs get access to the Internet via the National Traffic Exchange Centre (NTEC) that recently received the right to connect to the international gateway. The NTEC gets access to the Internet via Rostelecom, so the Russian operator automatically blocked access to the website for many Belarusian users.

Siarhei Budzionny, the NTEC's deputy director, said to a charter97.org journalist: “We have nothing to do with the blocking. We don't know about it. We do not block any site.”

If you found our website blocked, please write the name of your ISP, your town and place (work, home, etc) in comments. We also recommend you to contact your ISP's customer service department and complain about the blocked access. It will speed up the process of unblocking access to our website in Belarus.

Our site has been on the so called restricted access list of the State Supervision for Telecommunication since spring 2011. The access to the site is blocked in government agencies, educational and cultural institutions, but ISPs do not have the right to block access to Charter'97 for other users.