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| The opposition Charter 97 website was disabled by hackers last month |
A new law
in Belarus will restrict access to foreign websites and force internet clubs
and cafes to report users visiting sites registered abroad.
The law,
which takes effect on Friday, says anyone selling goods or services to Belarus
citizens on the web must use the .by Belarusian domain name.
That would
make it illegal for firms like Amazon or eBay to sell goods to customers in
Belarus.
Fines for
breaking the law range as high as 1m Belarus rubles (£77; $120).
The law
says people offering internet services to the public - whether at a cafe, club
or in their own home - will face fines if their customers visit foreign
websites and such visits are not properly recorded and reported.
Anyone
found accessing "extremist" or "pornographic" websites will
also be fined, the law says.
President
Alexander Lukashenko has been in power in the ex-Soviet republic since 1994.
His
muzzling of the opposition has been condemned by the EU and US, who have
imposed travel bans and asset freezes on him and dozens of his associates.
At the end
of December the Belarus opposition website Charter 97, run from outside
Belarus, was disabled by a cyber attack.
The site's
chief editor Natalya Radzina told the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists
that the attackers had deleted archives and posted a false news story about
opposition presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov.
Last May Mr
Sannikov, co-founder of Charter 97, was jailed for five years for organising
mass protests during the December 2010 presidential election.
Ms Radzina,
who works in exile in neighbouring Lithuania, said the hackers got into the
website by using a password, probably by sending malware to an editor's
computer.
In December
2010 the authorities cracked down on protests against alleged vote-rigging in
the presidential election.
More than
600 people were detained, including seven of the election candidates.
International
monitors said the contest, in which Mr Lukashenko officially won 80% of the
vote, was deeply flawed.
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