Belarus: Browsing Foreign Websites a Misdemeanor

Found on The Library of Congress on Monday, 02 January 2012
Browse Politics

The newly published Law imposes restrictions on visiting and/or using foreign websites by Belarusian citizens and residents. Under this new Law, the violation of these rules is recognized as a misdemeanor and is punished by fines of varied amounts, up to the equivalent of US$125.

It appears that business requests from Belarus cannot be served over the Internet if the service provider is using online services located outside of the country. The tax authorities, together with the police and secret police, are authorized to initiate, investigate, and prosecute such violations.

For example, suppose someone in Belarus buys something from Amazon, which is not a Belarusian company and thus is not registered in Belarus. The transaction is illegal, and so the Belarusian Attorney General would send a note to Amazon informing it that it is violating national law and might be sued.

The big companies simply will not care and either see them in court or just drop all traffic from Belarus. The latter is the best solution because it puts more pressure on Lukashenko who will have the pleasure to explain why Amazon, Google, Facebook, ebay and so on are not reachable anymore and why they are suddenly illegal. On the other hand, other countries aren't all innocent either; Belarus just does not care about hiding its plans.