Attempts to Control Internet

A draft law “On information, informatization and information protection” is to be considered in the first reading on December 12 at the regular session of the “chamber of representatives”.

The document has been studied in commissions of the lower chamber of the “parliament” since March this year. The draft law in its author’s version wasn’t adopted initially. There were many remarks by the Belarusian Association of Journalists, European structures and international experts. Deputies promised to consider the remarks in their work on the document. As a result the document was fully reworked; in particular, 14 paragraphs were cancelled.

“The draft law is shortened indeed, the process of its elaboration is underway. But the essence of this document remains the same. Main sections of the law concerning information, work with information and information protection remain more or less unaltered”, the head of the Mass Media Legal Protection Center of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Mikhail Pastukhou said.

He believes that the part of the document on information protection is the most dangerous part of it. “I think the main objective of this draft law was to create a wide scope of measures on information “protection”, which would mean restriction on freedom of information. According to the document, only public information could be found on open access. More and more new prohibitions are introduced for dissemination and use of information, and it causes concern,” the BAJ lawyer notes.

As said by him, it is still early to say that authors of the draft law will leave Internet alone. “It is notable that obligatory registration of state informational resources is introduced. Most of those resources are found on the web too,” Mikhail Pastukhou said.

The lawyer admits that part of proposals of the BAJ representatives has been taken in consideration by the law authors. However the most important remarks haven’t been mentioned.

“Our principled position remains the same. In its present form the amending act limits the constitutional right of citizens for receiving, preserving and dissemination of information, and this document should be declined altogether. This position has been expressed by me several times at the meetings of the working group on elaboration of the draft law, but this proposal hadn’t been accepted,” M. Pastukhou said.