General Prosecutor’s Office takes offence at visitors of Charter’97 site

Website’s visitors made comments often containing remarks “denigrating honour and dignity of other citizens, including civil servants”.

“The General Prosecutor’s Office does not pursue the aim of restricting freedom of speech. These are sanctions against the media that abuse the freedom of press,” Pavel Radzionau, the head of the department on legislative execution and legislative acts legality of prosecution agencies, said at a briefing in the General Prosecutor’s Office commenting on blocking the websites of Charter’97 and “Belorusski Partizan”. He also noted that restrictions did not affect ordinary users.

According to Radzionau, the decision to put these websites on the list of restricted access was taken on March 23 to fulfill presidential decree #60. The department head reminded that the decree reads that the Internet resources promoting cruelty, pornography, weapon sales, calls to violation of the law must be included on the list of restricted access. As he specified, 20 Internet resources were put on the list last year, and 2 have been included this year.

As for exact reasons for restricting access to “Belorusski Partizan” and Charter’97, the representative of the General Prosecutor’s Office noted that “the mentioned websites contained information conflicting with the law, in particular, calls to take part in unauthorized events”. Besides, Radzionau noted that visitors of the websites often made remarks “denigrating honour and dignity of other citizens, including civil servants”.

Radzionau added that only governmental bodies, educational and cultural institutions faced restricted access. The agencies dealing with special and preliminary investigation, prosecution and taxation bodies, State Control Committee, courts and other competent agencies are able to visit sites.

“This decision was caused exclusively by demand of the law and common sense,” Radzinau said. He also noted that “the state must not finance the sites that confront with the legislation”.

He added that restrictions would not affect Internet cafes and individual users.

Asked about technical performance of the decision, in particular, whether modems will be blocked owned by governmental agencies, Radzionau noted that prosecution agencies answered just for legal aspect of the matter and the Belarusian State Telecommunication Inspection was responsible for the technical performance.

Radzionau also stressed that there were no plans to take a similar decision concerning other Internet media. “At the moment, the General Prosecutor’s Office does not have any materials proving violation of the law by other media,” he said.

According to a poll, carried out by an Interfax-Zapad correspondent today, access to the website was forbidden in most Belarusian universities, Academy of Science, a number of ministries and governmental agencies, including KGB. At the same time, some cultural institutions, for example, the Ministry of Culture, were able to visit the websites. The General Prosecutor’s Office assured it had access to Charter’97 and “Belorusski Partizan”.