“Everything was done to paralyze the work of the organization”

“I do not exclude that this story will follow up”

Andrei Bas­tunets, BAJ Chair­per­son

About 7 o’clock in the morn­ing on Feb­ru­ary 16, my Vice-pres­i­dent and BAJ press sec­re­tary Barys Haret­s­ki called me and said that some­body was knock­ing on his door. Imme­di­ate­ly there­after, I con­tact­ed my col­leagues includ­ing Aleh Aheyeu. Aleh didn’t answer, but soon after that I saw a mes­sage that they came to him as well. Every­thing became defin­i­tive­ly clear. I saw through the win­dow that three fig­ures in black were approach­ing my door. Then the door­bell rang. I didn’t open it imme­di­ate­ly as it took me a few min­utes to get dressed, to get ready. I was con­vinced I would­n’t get home. Three men entered the apart­ment, pre­sent­ed them­selves as offi­cers of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs (MIA) and asked to come with them to BAJ office for a search. The apart­ment was not searched. I do not exclude that this sto­ry will fol­low up.

We came to the office. For a few hours, they exam­ined every­thing quite thor­ough­ly, con­fis­cat­ing a cou­ple of lap­tops, cell phones, fold­ers with mem­ber­ship lists, account­ing doc­u­ments, a safe with a seal, a receipt for the pur­chase of water for 9 Belaru­sian rubles, as well as mon­ey — 23 Belaru­sian rubles. More­over, the mag­a­zines «Aba­jour», which are pub­lished by BAJ, were seized. On the cov­er of the last issue there were pub­lished pho­tos of the protests in white and red colours. It end­ed up seal­ing off the office.

Today we have no access to the office, no seal, no account­ing doc­u­ments. The bank account was arrest­ed. In oth­er words, every­thing was done to paral­yse the work of the orga­ni­za­tion. But, if that was the pur­pose of the search­es, it was not achieved. First­ly, because of the pan­dem­ic, many BAJ employ­ees have been work­ing remote­ly for a long time, and there is no need to be in the office. Sec­ond­ly, we will con­tin­ue our work any­way — we will defend the rights of our fel­low-jour­nal­ists, sup­port inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in the coun­try, espe­cial­ly at this time when it is under par­tic­u­lar­ly great pres­sure.

Dur­ing the search of the office, the police offi­cers were real­ly con­cerned that there were many peo­ple in the cor­ri­dor, espe­cial­ly jour­nal­ists. The secu­ri­ty forces called the man­age­ment, clar­i­fied what to do and how to do it.

After that, I gave a quick inter­view to the gath­ered jour­nal­ists. Dur­ing this dis­cus­sion, I sud­den­ly learned that the search had also tak­en place in the apart­ment where my son lives. Fur­ther­more, they came to him one of the very first: at sev­en in the morn­ing, they broke down the doors in the hall and entered the apart­ment. Eight peo­ple, ful­ly equipped, with auto­mat­ic weapons. They laid my son on the floor, shout­ing at him. These images lat­er appeared in the video mate­ri­als of the MIA. As a result of the search all the equip­ment, that was in the apart­ment, was seized. This was a sur­prise to me, because the apart­ment is the prop­er­ty of my wife. Besides, my son has noth­ing to do with BAJ’s activ­i­ties or specif­i­cal­ly with mine.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I am con­vinced that pres­sure on the press, media orga­ni­za­tions, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and activists will only increase. On Feb­ru­ary 16, the police raid­ed 90 address­es of human rights defend­ers, jour­nal­ists and union­ists. At each address some­thing was seized: com­put­ers, phones, doc­u­ments.

I’m guess­ing that the Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee, which autho­rized these search­es, is in a state of shock because all this seized prop­er­ty has to be dealt with. Now they are study­ing every­thing, look­ing for any kind of clue. Crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the per­sons involved in these search­es are like­ly to fol­low. Now the sta­tus of all those who were searched on Feb­ru­ary 16 is not defined.

Since the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment has already crossed the Rubi­con and it is not stopped by the atti­tude of the US, the EU and oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties to the events that are tak­ing place, I pre­dict that even tougher mea­sures will soon fol­low. Then, of course, there may be a pull­back, and bar­gain­ing may begin, as usu­al. Per­haps the sit­u­a­tion will even begin to improve (the eco­nom­ic cri­sis can push this). How­ev­er, I don’t see any pos­i­tive signs of change in the near future.

Almost all of us live in the expec­ta­tion that soon­er or lat­er some­one will come to us. And this can hap­pen absolute­ly any day. Every morn­ing I wake up and wait for the door­bell to ring, for some­one to break in again. It is impos­si­ble to build long-term plans in such con­di­tions.

I am not going to leave the coun­try, also I am absolute­ly ready for my deten­tion. Togeth­er with our col­leagues we dis­cussed a plan of action in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions and cre­at­ed an anti-cri­sis head­quar­ters. On April 16, we plan to hold a Con­gress of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, which takes place every three years. Now we are prepar­ing for it. In addi­tion, we will try to con­tin­ue our trips to the regions to meet with col­leagues who are also under pres­sure from the author­i­ties.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists was cre­at­ed as a reac­tion to vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights in the coun­try. Now, these vio­la­tions have reached an unprece­dent­ed lev­el. This is a chal­lenge for us, and we will try to resist this pres­sure in every pos­si­ble way, con­tin­ue to ful­fil our main task — to sup­port and pro­tect jour­nal­ists who work in Belarus.

 “The state unilaterally ceased acting in the public interest”

Aleh Aheyeu, BAJ Vice-Chair­per­son

Exact­ly at 7 in the morn­ing on Feb­ru­ary 16, some men start­ed ring­ing the door­bell, knock­ing loud­ly and demand­ing: «Open! Police!». Among the men’s voic­es, I heard the voice of my neigh­bour. I called her and asked what was going on. She replied that there is a bunch of police offi­cers with a saw near my door and they are prepar­ing to break it down. When I heard the sound of the saw start­ing, I real­ized that it was bet­ter to let this peo­ple in. Oth­er­wise, repair­ing the door would be anoth­er prob­lem that would have to be solved.

Five peo­ple broke into the apart­ment very quick­ly, but with­out vio­lence. Then two young men came in qui­et­ly as the wit­ness­es. In the group of secu­ri­ty offi­cers, one was in a black uni­form with­out iden­ti­fi­ca­tion marks with a weapon and a bul­let­proof vest, the oth­er — «in civvies». Three oth­er, who were armed with pis­tols, pre­sent­ed their doc­u­ments: one is an employ­ee of the Repub­li­can Drug Con­trol Depart­ment (the Main Direc­torate for Drug Con­trol and Com­bat­ing Human Traf­fick­ing of the MIA of Belarus. — Ed.), the sec­ond-from the Repub­li­can Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment (the Main Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment of the MIA of Belarus. — Ed.), the third-from the Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment of Min­sk (Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment of the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. — Ed.).

When I’ve read the doc­u­ments, I noticed an inter­est­ing fea­ture: the search was car­ried out on Feb­ru­ary 16, but the deci­sion to con­duct it was issued on Feb­ru­ary 1, and on the same day it was autho­rized by the Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al. That is, the prepa­ra­tion for such large-scale actions took them more than two weeks.

Sub­se­quent­ly, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs report­ed that there were 90 sim­i­lar search­es through­out the coun­try. A search war­rant was almost emp­ty on the con­tent: the inves­ti­ga­tor of such inves­tiga­tive depart­ment reviewed the mate­ri­als of the crim­i­nal case (the num­ber is indi­cat­ed), ini­ti­at­ed under arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code, and decid­ed to con­duct a search at my place of res­i­dence (the address is indi­cat­ed).

Admit­ted­ly, the employ­ees of secu­ri­ty forces behaved quite cor­rect­ly. Through­out the search, if there were any dis­putes, they were more con­cerned with the cor­rect­ness of the pro­to­col. In some cas­es, they did not agree with my demands, reject­ed some of my appli­ca­tions.

I have seen var­i­ous search­es and the dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of this one was the lack of rude­ness on the part of the spe­cial ser­vices.

How­ev­er, there was a full shake­down in the apart­ment. They moved and turned over the fur­ni­ture, pulled out all the prop­er­ty of the house to the cen­tre of the room. All the pock­ets in all the clothes, all the cor­ners, shelves and mez­za­nines were checked. In total, the search last­ed about five hours and with­out any break. At 7 in the morn­ing, they came to me and left at 12, and this is despite the fact that I have a one-room apart­ment.

The search report con­tains 38 items of seized prop­er­ty. Employ­ees of the MIA arrest­ed all the cash that was in the apart­ment (they left only more than 100 rubles in my wal­let). Addi­tion­al­ly, they seized all lap­tops, exter­nal hard dri­ves, flash dri­ves, two hard dri­ves from an old com­put­er (I believe, it still has Win­dows-98). Of the office equip­ment, only the print­er and the TV were left. They took away four flags, two of which are the nation­al flags of Ukraine and Poland.

They didn’t give me an answer to my ques­tion about what kind of crime can be com­mit­ted, for exam­ple, with the help of the nation­al flag of Poland.

They con­fis­cat­ed three note­books with hand­writ­ten notes, a large num­ber of busi­ness cards of for­eign and Belaru­sian lawyers, employ­ees of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions — the UN, the Coun­cil of Europe, the OSCE and embassies. By the way, this seemed strange to me, but they also took the let­ters of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers with whom I was in per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence. Anoth­er very impor­tant point is that my BAJ ID cards were impound­ed, even old ones that have expired. The pow­er of attor­ney grant­i­ng me the right to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the rights of its mem­bers in oth­er orga­ni­za­tions was also seized. More­over, they took away sev­er­al doc­u­ments of a legal nature on the cas­es of jour­nal­ists, on which I, as a lawyer, rep­re­sent­ed their inter­ests.

But even tak­ing into account all the search­es and the fact that BAJ activ­i­ty is very com­pli­cat­ed now, we still con­tin­ue to work. I want to thank every­one who imme­di­ate­ly offered help, gave us equip­ment to replace the con­fis­cat­ed one. We are work­ing remote­ly now and hope that we will soon return to nor­mal con­di­tion.

Not only jour­nal­ists but almost all res­i­dents of Belarus have lost the most impor­tant thing: the pro­tec­tion of a com­pe­tent state body, as required by inter­na­tion­al law. The courts, the pros­e­cu­tor’s offices, the police and oth­er rel­e­vant struc­tures have delib­er­ate­ly stopped to ful­fill their oblig­a­tions to pro­tect human rights. If the vio­la­tion occurs on the part of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of state bod­ies, the state open­ly pro­tects the employ­ee of the state author­i­ty.

From my expe­ri­ence I can say, that over the past six months none of the legal doc­u­ments have been sat­is­fied, some have not even been con­sid­ered on their mer­its. Just short replies are received in response to appli­ca­tions for the ini­ti­a­tion of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings (often in vio­la­tion of all pro­ce­dures and pro­ce­dur­al leg­is­la­tion). By this they make it clear to us: we will not con­sid­er the case, you can do what­ev­er you want with it.

And this is a very seri­ous chal­lenge because the state has a sig­nif­i­cant amount of respon­si­bil­i­ties to soci­ety and to the indi­vid­ual in the sys­tem of rela­tions «state — soci­ety — indi­vid­ual».

In our coun­try, the state has uni­lat­er­al­ly ceased pro­tect­ing the rights of indi­vid­u­als and act­ing in the pub­lic inter­est.

There­fore, the num­ber of appeals to inter­na­tion­al legal mech­a­nisms has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. And it becomes pos­si­ble to use the legal mech­a­nisms of oth­er states to work on crimes against human­i­ty. There are already ini­ti­at­ed crim­i­nal cas­es on such offences. They refer to the ille­gal acts that have been com­mit­ted and are still being com­mit­ted in Belarus since last August and up to now. In oth­er words, crimes against human­i­ty are rec­og­nized as crimes under inter­na­tion­al law, and any coun­try can insti­tute appro­pri­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings on its ter­ri­to­ry and by its law enforce­ment agen­cies. Espe­cial­ly if there are cit­i­zens of this coun­try among the vic­tims. Such inves­ti­ga­tions under uni­ver­sal juris­dic­tion have already been ini­ti­at­ed in Poland, Lithua­nia, and Ukraine.

But unfor­tu­nate­ly, the rights of many peo­ple — espe­cial­ly jour­nal­ists, human rights defend­ers, civ­il activists, oppo­si­tion politi­cians — will be mas­sive­ly vio­lat­ed in Belarus in the near future, and their secu­ri­ty is under threat.

As for BAJ activ­i­ties, we plan to orga­nize a meet­ing with lawyers who help jour­nal­ists. We will try to dis­cuss and devel­op a com­mon guide­line on how to act in these dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

For 26 years of work­ing with the cur­rent polit­i­cal sys­tem in Belarus, it is not the first time that we have encoun­tered such a sit­u­a­tion.

But for the first time rights are being vio­lat­ed so mas­sive­ly and so cyn­i­cal­ly.

How­ev­er, the expe­ri­ence of pre­vi­ous years is pay­ing off. Every­thing that hap­pens now is rather iron­ic: «This has nev­er hap­pened before, and here it is again.» The main thing is not to give up hope, do what we can and should do.

 “They were stopped from using violence by the fact that there were three children in the apartment”

 

Barys Haret­s­ki, BAJ Vice-Chair­per­son

On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 16, we were going to school or to work. At about sev­en o’clock, through the win­dow, I saw a gray Polo that was stand­ing at the entrance and two men in black masks were next to it. At 7:20 there were some calls to the inter­com, then the door­bell rang, and it became clear that all these things hap­pened for a rea­son. The fears were con­firmed.

But dur­ing these 10–20 min­utes I man­aged to call my col­leagues and warn them about what was hap­pen­ing. Aleh Aheyeu was already being searched at that time. Also, I noticed a group of secu­ri­ty forces with an angle grinder. I ran to the door, shout­ed that it was not nec­es­sary to cut any­thing, that I have three chil­dren. Then I opened the door to them and held up my hands to show that I was unarmed so that there would be no vio­lence.