BAJ Head: According To New Amendments To Children Rights Protection Law, Uncle Tom's Cabin Could Be Banned As Well

On May 17 Lukashenka signed into law a bill on “protection of children from harmful information.”

The amended law on children’s rights, which includes an article on protection of children from information that may damage their health and development, could become for authorities an additional reason for repressive measures against dissenting mass media, believes the head of the public association Belarusian Association of Journalists Andrei Bastunets.

In his comment to BelaPAN the expert said that the regulations for age marking of information, which is distributed by mass media as well, “is rather disputable and it is just to become a new pain in the neck for editors.”

“These amendments seem rather dangerous to me, as it is a tradition of Belarusian law-makers to give rather vague wording, which allow to interpret any action as falling under this article if desired,” – he said.

As an example, Bastunets offered a protection of children from information “discrediting the institution of family and family relations,” guaranteed by the state, and “containing methods or any other materials about the ways of producing and use of items, dangerous to life or health of people.”

“It is hard to say, how these and other vague phrases are to be applied – the head of the BAJ said – We discussed with our colleagues the issue of information, reflecting humiliating treatment of a person or a group of people, or their humiliation connected to their ethnical, race and other origin. Uncle Tom’s Cabin could be interpreted as falling under this wording, and the book could be banned on this reason.”

As said by Bastunets, it is necessary to wait for by-laws, “which could possibly add some clarity, but the practice shows that they had never changed anything for the better.” It is most likely that by-laws are just to solve questions of procedure, he noted.

“If these legal acts would be used in the general system of legislation, based upon the Constitution and international legal documents, including the ones concerning the acceptable limitations of the freedom of speech, as it should be, there would be nothing wrong with that. But our courts do not pay attention to these fundamental documents really, so everything is to depend on approach of concrete people when hearing cases. It is bad that documents that give wide powers and opportunities of interpretation to executors of law, have emerged in our country again,” – he said.

We remind that on May 11 Lukashenka signed an amended law on children’s rights, which has been posted to the National Legal Internet Portal today. The amendments were passed by the “chamber of representatives” on April 4 and approved by the “council of the republic” on April 21. The Law on Children’s Rights has been supplemented in particular by a chapter “Protection of children from harmful information that may damage their health and development.” The law establishes which information is considered harmful, and bans its dissemination. The substantive provisions of the law are to come into force since July 1, 2017.