Defence of the Charter - Protection of the Independence of Belarus

Belarus is being fully submitted to control of the Russian propaganda.

Editor of the Belarusian service informnapalm.org Dzyanis Ivashyn stated that when commenting on the blocking Charter97.org in Belarus:

- Before the blocking of Charter97.org Russian information sources used to control a little over 50% of the bynet, that is, a half of Belarusians was already under information control of Russia.

It has been determined by the activity of Lukashenka over recent decades. As for the regime online media, it falls behind others and is almost invisible. For example, the total number of views of СТВ, БТ and SB Belarus Segodnya taken together is lagging behind the Russian news agency ria.ru.

Against this backdrop, the ban of the Charter -one of the most popular information Belarusian resources - looks like an attempt to clean up the Belarusian information field to submit it to the full control of the Russian Federation. They have blocked the resource with more than 2 million unique visitors per month.

It is noteworthy that in early November 2017 Russia adopted the federal law providing for resistance to means of bypassing the blocking of sites prohibited at the legislative level. This law was personally lobbied and promoted by the director of FSB Alexander Bortnikov. It's about the use of DPI filtering, which ensures a thorough analysis of the traffic to detect and consequent blocking of anonimizers, VPN, Tor, proxy-servers used to bypass the blocking of sites banned.

There is information that Belarus has also started to partially restrict the use of VPN, among other things, to block the access to the Charter. It proves that the activity of Lukashenka and Putin regimes are coordinated; there are attempts to clean up the informartion space from opposition resources and to fully control runet, bynet, and even social networks. During inevitable mass protests the access to social networks will be blocked. This is the ground for communication and rapid information sharing between public activists. For example, on 25 January 2017 Russia blocked access to Facebook for several hours. I admit that it experienced a new blocking system.

- Will it cause an increased influence of Russian and pro-Russian media?

- Yes, it will. Here is a paradox: the regime has blocked one of the most powerful pro-Belarusian portals, which efficiently resists Russian aggressive propaganda, and, meanwhile, we have a bunch of resources, which expands anti-Belarusian propaganda and considers Belarus as a non-state, and Belarusians as a subdivision of the Russian ethnic group.

It all aims at domination of Russian TV channels and radio stations over Belarusian ones, to make Belarus find itself under a destructive influence of the Russian aggressive propaganda.

It addition, the blocking of the Charter aims at cessation of information dissemination about Russian aggression against Ukraine, about involvement of Russian military units in occupation of the Ukrainian land, about heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people.

Russia is striving to freely exercise both information and psychological influence on the Belarusian civil society and the military. It is done to completely fix Belarus on the axis of Russian strategic interests and to use Belarusian human resources for military purposes. Belarus is already drawn into information resistance between Russia and the West, which completely falls within the military doctrine of the Chief of General Staff of Russian Armed Forces V. Gerasimov.

In these conditions, our task is to protect our information space, to promote information dissemination about ways to bypass blocking, to help people to install bypass systems. To show solidarity and to perform proper resistance to all attempts of the reviving of the totalitarian regime.