Young people hooked on ICT in Belarus. Photo: Palasatka/Belarus

From 1 July in Belarus, all online information sources, networks and Internet systems hosted inside the country will be forced to register. Will the new law decapitate growing online media and civil society in the country? Iryna Vidanava, Belarusian journalist, looks at the possible repercussions of the new law  

By Iryna Vidanava, editor of 34mag, Minsk

The sword of Damocles has been hanging over the Belarusian Internet for several years. As the number of regular users accelerated in recent years, it was only a matter of time before “Europe’s last dictatorship” would strike. After much rumor and anticipation, Decree #60 on “the Measures to Improve the Use of the National Segment of the Internet Network” will finally come into force on 1 July.

As the Internet became more popular in Belarus, the regime sought to both benefit from and control it. Unlike in other repressive states, the expansion of the Internet was encouraged even as opposition sites were attacked at key moments, such as election days. In a country where the state controls almost everything, Internet connectivity rose to the highest rate in the former Soviet space. President Alexander Lukashenko became both the “Father of the Belarusian Internet” and an “Enemy of the Internet” at the same time.

The regime’s approach was probably based on its easy subjugation of the traditional print media. As the state closed down papers in 2005, ahead of the last presidential elections, it allowed them to migrate online. To survive in cyberspace, independent editors and journalists had to innovate and adapt. The free market of ideas proved more effective than state agitprop. Today, independent news websites make up the majority of the Top 30 most popular Internet media. Online information sites are one of the few fields in which the opposition has beaten the regime in terms of quality and readership.

Increase in youth activism online

Yet the events that woke the government to the threat of the Net weren’t triggered by online media. After the rigged 2006 election, young activists went online to spread information about and plan demonstrations and flash mobs. The Internet became the safest and most efficient tool for self-organising. Since then, the rise of online social networking in Belarus has been remarkable. And it is driven by young people; 70 percent of Internet users in the country are 15 to 34 years old. More than 62,000 Belarusians have blogs on the popular LiveJournal platform; Belarus is one of the smallest of the Top 15 countries with the most LiveJournal blogs. Each day, there are more than 780,000 unique visitors from Belarus on Vkontakte, the Cyrillic analogue of Facebook.

New Internet law an attempt at control

The new Internet law is therefore a response to a range of perceived online threats. And it is a more systematic attempt at control. Earlier efforts explored “hardware fixes,” such as Internet filters, denial of service attacks and blocking specific websites. The security services also stepped up their activities, including arresting journalists for posting critical articles online, monitoring email and blogs, and infiltrating online communities.  

Can the new law decapitate online civil society? It is too early to tell. The decree contains extremely vague definitions and broad requirements, such as that all Internet systems, information resources and networks hosted in Belarus must register by July 1. The list of information required to obtain official registration is unprecedentedly long. ISPs will be responsible for collecting and reporting information about website clients to the authorities. Internet cafes must verify users’ IDs and log their personal data, time spent online and Internet traffic. Belarusian news sites have to move to the .by domain, bringing them under state jurisdiction. Paragraph #8 requires Internet providers to block access to certain sites at users’ request. It specifically mentions sites promoting extremism, trafficking, pornography “and other acts banned by the law.”

Registration to stifle online activity 

Like many laws on  Belarusian books, the decree’s provisions remain ambiguous. It is still unclear whether Internet content may be filtered by order of the security services. The Presidential Administration is still working out the procedures to limit access to certain Internet resources. But clearly the time, courage and effort needed to register everything from a website to an email account is designed to make it less convenient to venture online, more risky to be a cyber activist, and less likely anyone will find anything worth reading. What is certain is that in Belarus, laws and decrees that are unconstitutional and violate human and civil rights are regularly used against the opposition.

Activists launch online campaign against law

Like with many other legal acts, there were no public debates on the law before it was decreed. But civil society has parried the thrust – online, of course. Without waiting for the final version of the regulations, Internet activists launched an online campaign against the new law, http://ukaz60.net. The electronic petition posted there has already garnered almost 2,000 responses and 84 percent of visitors who took part in an online survey voted against the decree. On June 4, there was an offline public discussion of the decree and other legal acts that seek to control the Internet. Independent media outlets are planning how to best cope with the new regulations. It seems that the decree, which is designed to silence the most active segment of Belarusian society, is actually having the opposite effect. Touché.

Also read Iryna Vidanava's article "A little piece of Europe in Belarus" on the IMS website.