The authorities in Belarus have blocked the Deutsche Welle (DW) website. The online offers in all 32 broadcast languages are no longer available, the broadcaster announced on Friday in Bonn. The Ministry of Information in Minsk justified the move, according to the state agency Belta, with the fact that DW was linking to material that had been classified as extremist according to court orders.
DW director Peter Limbourg spoke in a statement of “an act of desperation” for the tour in Belarus. “The accusation is absolutely ridiculous. We protest against the blocking of our offers because the people have a right to objective information about the situation in their country.”
It was not until the spring that DW said it had “significantly expanded” its services in Belarus in order to “accompany the civil society awakening”. “The heavy use of independent media offers clearly shows that people in Belarus no longer trust the state-controlled media,” said Limbourg.
The Federal Foreign Office is calling for the ban to be lifted
A spokeswoman for the Federal Foreign Office said the German ambassador in Minsk had asked the foreign ministry there for an explanation of the incident and demanded that access to the DW website be re-enabled immediately.
In addition to DW, other news portals in Belarus are affected by the lock. The US embassy has to close its press office. Since the mass protests in the summer and autumn of last year, ruler Alexander Lukashenko has been taking massive action against independent media, human rights organizations and those who think differently. The EU and the US have already imposed sanctions.