A/HRC/38/51 publishing entity might be closed down without a court order, and the decision would not be appealable. 30. The bill on amendments to the mass media law would also oblige online media outlet owners to introduce pre-moderation for all online discussion platforms. Especially egregious is the planned mandatory identification of persons posting materials or comments on such platforms. The amendments would extend the authorities’ control over online discussions by allowing them to require, without any court order, platform owners to provide them with any data related to postings within five working days. 31. Unregistered media outlets and journalists already face difficulties in working, owing to article 22.9 (2) of the Administrative Offences Code, which provides for the administrative liability of anyone working for foreign media without accreditation. The Special Rapporteur has been calling for that provision to be repealed since the beginning of his tenure. The above-mentioned draft amendments would actually increase harassment against independent journalists through the introduction of vague concepts of production and dissemination, and through the granting, to police officers, of the power to prepare reports based thereon. 32. In the Special Rapporteur’s view, those amendments constitute a continuation of the Government’s erroneous response to those courageous journalists, bloggers and social media contributors, including simple users sharing information, who use the Internet to cover or discuss protests, pickets or any sort of unofficial political information, in a media environment where such opportunities have been closed down by decades of abusive policies. The amendments, if adopted, would perfect the systemic curtailing of freedom of expression, and allow the authorities to legally block the only remaining public space for free debate, the Internet. 33. The Internet and web-based media outlets have always been subjected to stringent controls (see A/71/394, paras. 47–57), including during the reporting period. One way of pressuring persons running independent websites is to block the websites temporarily, without having to resort to a court decision. For instance, in December 2017, the Ministry of Information blocked the popular news portal belaruspartisan.org. On 25 January 2018, access to the independent news website charter97.org was restricted in a similar way. 34. Bloggers and their followers are frequently harassed and closely monitored through a heavy-handed and costly system of surveillance. Siarhei Piatrukhin and Aliaksandr Kabanau were tried by Pinsk District Court on 12 March 2018 for having allegedly manufactured illicit media content that they had broadcast on YouTube. Interestingly, that was the first time that YouTube had been identified as a foreign media outlet. In February 2018, the apartment where popular 19-year-old blogger Stsipan Sviatlou lives with his parents was raided by the police, and his computer equipment was seized. Mr. Sviatlou had been posting videos on YouTube containing criticism relating to socioeconomic issues. 7 35. The arbitrary detention of dozens of individuals, human rights defenders, political activists and journalists, even for short periods of time, prior to and during the 25 March 2018 rallies, illustrates what the Special Rapporteur described as a cyclical system of repression against those who hold and express views diverging from the official line. 36. The events of March 2018, during which at least seven journalists were arrested by the police, follow the same logic as those of March 2017, one of the worst years for independent journalism in Belarus since 2011 and the aftermath of the 2010 presidential election.8 While, in 2016, the Belarusian Association of Journalists recorded 13 cases of short-term detention of journalists performing their professional duties, in 2017, that number rose to 101. In 12 of those cases, the journalists were arrested for 10–15 days: the maximum period of administrative detention. The bulk of those cases of detention occurred in March 2017, at the time of the mass protests in Belarus. 9 7 8 9 6 See https://charter97.org/en/news/2018/2/23/280618/. See https://baj.by/en/analytics/violations-journalists-rights-infographic-2009-2017. See https://baj.by/en/analytics/repressions-against-journalists-belarus-2017-shart.