MINSK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Belarus will restrict access to a range of foreign and domestic websites deemed "extremist" in what appears to be a move by authorities to further curb the opposition's activities.
The new law, which will come into force on Friday, will also ban Belarussian firms from advertising goods and services on any website that is not registered in the ex-Soviet republic.
President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has taken an increasingly hard line against the opposition whose activities he has often said are funded and promoted from abroad.
Opponents of the 57-year-old authoritarian leader used social network sites to coordinate a wave of "silent" protests against him last summer, in which groups of people gathered and clapped in public.
Since his re-election in December 2010, and mass street protests that followed, Belarussian courts have jailed many political opponents. Two opposition politicians who ran against him remain in prison.
The draft law did not identify which sites would be on the "extremist" black list. But independent Belarussian websites said they expected the human rights site Charter-97 to figure on it.
"It is quite possible for the list to be broadened at any moment. It is not clear what a site owner can do to dispute it if he is black-listed," said independent Belarussian analyst Alexander Klaskovsky.
The official Belarussian news agency BelTA said the new restrictions on Internet access, which will also apply to pornographic sites, would be enforced in all state institutions and educational establishments.
Internet service providers will be made responsible for enforcing the new legislation. Fines for breaking it could be as much as 1 million Belarussian roubles ($120).
Analysts said restrictions on Internet advertising would hit businesses that use foreign websites particularly badly.
"Agencies which advertise only on foreign websites will simply have to leave the market and firms which have used such services will be less able to promote their goods," said former Internet cafe owner Mark Bernshtein.
A presidential advisory body, quoted by BelTA, denied foreign news reports that the new legislation would shut citizens off from access to foreign websites. "These reports … do not reflect the reality," it said. (Writing By Richard Balmforth; Editing by Ben Harding)
