Solidarity rally with Belarusian imprisoned journalists held in Tallinn

In ear­ly Novem­ber, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Glob­al Affairs Cana­da and Jour­nal­ists for Human Rights, togeth­er with inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in exile, gath­ered in front of the Eston­ian For­eign Min­istry to once again remind the world of the impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists.

Par­tic­i­pants of the sol­i­dar­i­ty action in front of the Eston­ian Min­istry of For­eign Affairs. Pho­to: BAJ

Today, 36 media work­ers are in Belaru­sian pris­ons for polit­i­cal con­vic­tions. Repres­sion in the coun­try is inten­si­fy­ing as the so-called “pres­i­den­tial elec­tion” approach­es. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists con­tin­ues the Marathon of Sol­i­dar­i­ty so that the world doesn’t for­get that jour­nal­ists are not crim­i­nals.

This time, the action occurred in front of the Eston­ian Min­istry of For­eign Affairs. Rachel Pulfer, Pres­i­dent of the largest Cana­di­an inter­na­tion­al media devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion, Jour­nal­ists for Human Rights; Janine De Vries, Direc­tor of Euro­pean Pro­grams of JHR; Mar­cus Kol­ga, Direc­tor of the lead­ing Cana­di­an plat­form for mon­i­tor­ing and expos­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion abroad Dis­in­foWatch; and their Cana­di­an col­leagues demon­strat­ed por­traits of polit­i­cal­ly impris­oned jour­nal­ists. Along with the for­eign par­tic­i­pants, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in exile and Vital Malchanau, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s Office in Esto­nia and Latvia, expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with their col­leagues behind bars.

Erik Gamzeyev (on the right), edi­tor-in-chief of the news­pa­per Sev­er­noye Poberezhye, and Erik Kal­da, super­vis­ing edi­tor, with por­traits of Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Pho­to: BAJ

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the only week­ly Russ­ian-lan­guage news­pa­per in Esto­nia, Sev­er­noye Poberezhye, also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon, which the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists orga­nized. The newspaper’s paper ver­sion is pub­lished in Ida-Viru­maa coun­ty, locat­ed in the north­east of the coun­try. Approx­i­mate­ly 130 thou­sand peo­ple live in the region, almost 10% of the Eston­ian pop­u­la­tion.

Erik Gamzeyev, the newspaper’s edi­tor-in-chief, and Erik Kal­da, the super­vis­ing edi­tor, empha­size that it is unac­cept­able that jour­nal­ists today are behind bars sim­ply for car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al duties in good faith.

Esto­nia became the 25th coun­try to sup­port impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists.

BAJ calls on jour­nal­ists around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers, take pic­tures with them in out­stand­ing places in your city (out­side Belarus) and post them on social media using the hash­tags #СвабодуЖурналістам and #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist. Don’t for­get to send them to office@baj.media or intercomm@baj.media.