IFJ and EFJ Speak For Belarus Journalists

The crack­down on the media in Belarus grew fur­ther today as jour­nal­ists Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Andrey Tolchyn were detained in Dobrush while a free­lance reporter work­ing for Bel­sat Vik­tar Yarashuk was detained in Pin­sk. They have all been released by the police after the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of their doc­u­ments although Yarashuk was fined.

At least 9 oth­er jour­nal­ists were detained across the coun­try on 18 March accord­ing to the BAJ:

• In Kobryn, jour­nal­ists Ales Liauchuk and Milana Khary­ton­a­va were detained after cov­er­ing a protest in the town. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ists, they were beat­en, threat­ened and detained for more than three hours for “ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media”. The police seized their equip­ment until the court hear­ing.

• In Barysau, jour­nal­ists Vol­ha Chay­chyts and Siarhei Kavaliou were detained after the TV crew came to cov­er a planned protest in the city cen­ter. The jour­nal­ists weren’t informed of the rea­son for the deten­tions.

• Jour­nal­ists Siarhei Ruset­s­ki, Uladz­imir Luniou and Ale­na Stsi­a­pana­va were detained twice on the same day: first on the way from Navap­o­latsk to Viteb­sk, where the police accused them of vio­lat­ing traf­fic rules, and lat­er in Polatsk, where the police decid­ed to inves­ti­gate whether the group ille­gal­ly changed the num­ber plate on their car.

• Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va was detained under sus­pi­cion of alleged theft, when she was head­ing to Mazyr. Police thought that the jour­nal­ist looked sim­i­lar to the descrip­tion of a sus­pect.

• Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki, who was also head­ing to Mazyr, was stopped by the traf­fic police.

The IFJ and EFJ con­demned the deten­tion of 18 more jour­nal­ists back on 12 March while cov­er­ing mas­sive protests against the unem­ploy­ment tax, also known as the “law against social par­a­sites”, that requires peo­ple who work less than 183 days a year to pay the gov­ern­ment $250 annu­al­ly, media report­ed. 2 of them were sen­tenced to 15 days in jail, 3 were fined and 5 are await­ing tri­al, accord­ing to a BAJ appeal to the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the pro­mo­tion of the right to free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion.

On March 10, Bela­PAN cor­re­spon­dent Siarhey Kar­ale­vich was also detained by the police after cov­er­ing a demon­stra­tion against the same new tax.

Fol­low­ing this first wave of deten­tions, the BAJ sent a peti­tion to the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs and Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor on 17 March con­demn­ing them and demand­ing a fair inves­ti­ga­tion.

In the peti­tion, the BAJ remind­ed that a jour­nal­ist has the right to attend mass events, any events of pub­lic sig­nif­i­cance, and dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion from there.

The IFJ and the EFJ backed their affil­i­ate recall­ing that hold­ing a jour­nal­ist liable for con­sci­en­tious work is inad­mis­si­ble.

“We draw atten­tion to the fact that vio­lat­ing jour­nal­ists’ rights is not only an unlaw­ful restric­tion of free­dom of infor­ma­tion but also vio­lates con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all cit­i­zens to express their opin­ion, receive and dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion,” said IFJ Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Antho­ny Bel­langer. “We mon­i­tor with our high­est con­cerns the media crack­down tak­ing place in Belarus and urge the author­i­ties to stop harass­ing our col­leagues and to drop all the charges against them as a mat­ter of urgency.”