Affiliated media: Blizko.by, News website

Incident date: September 21, 2022

Attack type:

• Shutting down a media outlet / blocking an Internet site/ seizure of an entire print run

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Belarusian Association of Journalists

Location: Belarus, Minsk

Additional information:

The news website Blizko.by was blocked in Belarus and is not available from abroad either. When trying to access the website, users see a dummy page that says «access to the resource is restricted according to the decision of the Ministry of Information of the Republic of Belarus, adopted on the basis of the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Mass Media"». Blizko.by is one of the largest non-governmental online resources, which writes primarily about the news of Minsk. The website also tells about events in Belarus after August 2020 and covers the war in Ukraine. On October 22, the Ministry of Information unblocked access to blizko.by. Journalists noticed that it had no archived or up-to-date news about politics.