German broadcaster DW's online service blocked in Belarus

BERLIN — German broadcaster Deutsche Welle said Friday that its online work and respective different quality portals person been blocked by Belarus.

DW, which is funded by the German government, said it was archetypal alerted Thursday by immoderate societal media users successful Belarus that it couldn’t beryllium viewed anymore connected definite net work providers. This was aboriginal extended to each providers successful Belarus.

The broadcaster said Belarus authorities stated connected the website of the country’s Ministry of Information that entree to respective quality portals had been regularisation due to the fact that they allegedly linked to websites spreading extremist material.

The caput of DW, Peter Limbourg, protested against the determination and called the allegation against the broadcaster “absolutely ridiculous.”

President Alexander Lukashenko “has shown that helium volition halt astatine thing to support his clasp connected powerfulness successful his conflict against his ain people,” said Limbourg. “The dense usage of autarkic quality outlets intelligibly shows that radical successful Belarus nary longer spot the government-controlled media.”

A spokeswoman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s ambassador successful Belarus had asked authorities determination for an mentation and demanded that entree to DW’s website beryllium restored.

Deutsche Welle provides quality successful 32 languages. It expanded its work successful Belarus respective months ago.