H.E. Aleksandr Lukashenko
President
Office of the President
Minsk
Republic of Belarus

Vienna, 29 June 2002

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, strongly condemns the sentencing of independent journalists Mikola Markevich and Paval Mazheika to two-and-a-half and two years, respectively, of hard labour.

On 24 June, the Leninsky District Court in the city of Hrodno, western Belarus, found Markevich, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly newspaper Pahonya, and Mazheika, a reporter for the same newspaper, guilty of libelling Your Excellency.

The convictions, which stem from two September 2001 articles in Pahonya that criticized the president ahead of the 9 September 2001 presidential elections, represent the first use of criminal libel laws, passed in 1999, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

IPI maintains that journalists should be judged by civil libel legislation and not by criminal statutes, which prevent the media from criticising government action and contradict internationally accepted standards, including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Public officials deserve less – not more – protection from reporting and commentary than ordinary citizens. Having sought public office, they are the servants of the public, not its masters.

We therefore urge Your Excellency to ensure that the charges against Markevich and Paval Mazheika are immediately and unconditionally dropped and that you initiate meaningful efforts to abolish laws which set prison terms for libel or defamation.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director