Prosecutor’s Office: Volha Radzivonova sentenced for publications in Die Tageszeitung

On 18 Decem­ber, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office of Belarus announced the grava­men in the case of jour­nal­ist Vol­ha Radzivono­va, who was sen­tenced to 4 years in prison.

Vol­ha Radzivono­va. Pho­to: Face­book

Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va was accused of libel­ing and insult­ing the pres­i­dent of Belarus, dis­cred­it­ing the coun­try, and incit­ing social enmi­ty or dis­cord.

On 10 Decem­ber, the judge of the Min­sk City Court, Vera Halauko­va, found Radzivono­va guilty and sen­tenced her to 4 years of impris­on­ment.

On 18 Decem­ber, the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office announced the main charges against the jour­nal­ist. Accord­ing to the agency, Vol­ha Radi­vono­va was con­vict­ed of “pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion of an extrem­ist nature to for­eign media for arti­cles”.

“In order to obtain finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion, she pre­pared and deliv­ered to for­eign media – rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Ger­man dai­ly Die Tageszeitung – a series of arti­cles aimed at incit­ing nation­al enmi­ty and hos­til­i­ty, dis­cred­it­ing Belarus, as well as slan­der­ing and insult­ing the head of state,” the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office said.

The report stress­es that “Radivonova’s arti­cles are pub­lished on the newspaper’s web­site and are freely avail­able to the pub­lic.”

In addi­tion to the prison sen­tence, the court imposed a fine of $1,208 on Vol­ha Radi­vono­va. At the same time, accord­ing to the prosecutor’s office, “the jour­nal­ist was charged with income obtained by crim­i­nal means”. The sen­tence has report­ed­ly not yet come into force.

The jour­nal­ist Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va was arrest­ed on March 7, 2024. It is known that dur­ing her deten­tion in Remand Cen­ter No. 1, she was sent for psy­chi­atric exam­i­na­tion.

On 28 March, the Belaru­sian Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion added two arti­cles pub­lished on the web­site of the Ger­man news­pa­per Die Tageszeitung to the nation­al list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als.

Vol­ha Radzivonava’s sick moth­er, who is over 80 years old, needs con­stant care.

Vol­ha Radzivon­a­va worked as a free­lancer for Belaru­sian and for­eign media until 2020.

On Octo­ber 30, 2024, the human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized the jour­nal­ist as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.