Obstruction of professional activities of journalists on 25 March

17:00 — Hali­na Abakunchyk, a con­trib­u­tor to Radio Lib­er­ty, was detained after the allowed con­cert in Min­sk. She was released from the Cen­tral­ny dis­trict police depart­ment three and a half hours lat­er. No police report was drawn up. Abakunchyk said that all the detained per­sons had small white-red-white flags with them.

Abakunchuk was also detained when the police saw her car­ry­ing a small flag. In the precinct, they took her belong­ings away from her. She was not allowed to make phone calls and vis­it the WC.

16:30 — Jour­nal­ists Liubou Lunio­va, Stanis­lau Ivashkievich, Ihar Illiash, Kat­siary­na Andreje­va and Siarhiej Kavaliou were released from the police precinct with­out draw­ing up the reports. Andrej Koziel and Vol­ha Cha­jchyc were also allowed to go free.

14:09 — The police detained the free­lance jour­nal­ist Tat­st­siana Smotk­i­na from Hly­boka­je (the Vit­sieb­sk region). She was detained because they had a white-red-white flag in their car. Her dri­ver was for­mal­ly charged with speed­ing. The police drew up the ques­tion­ing reports.

13:45 — Bad mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion is observed near the Opera and Bal­let The­atre where the gala con­cert ded­i­cat­ed to the 100th anniver­sary of the Belaru­sian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic is tak­ing place. This fac­tor cre­ates obsta­cles for mass media which broad­cast the event live.

12:10 — It became known that jour­nal­ists Liubou Lunio­va, Stanis­lau Ivashkievich and Ihar Illiash had been detained near the Jakub Kolas Square.

The jour­nal­ists of Bel­sat Kat­siary­na Andreje­va and Siarhiej Kavaliou were detained on the Jakub Kolas Square before the begin­ning of the unau­tho­rized ral­ly. Bel­sat planned to stream the event. The jour­nal­ists were first tak­en to a blue minibus and then moved to a pad­dy wag­on. They con­tin­ued the stream dur­ing their trip in the police vehi­cle. At 11:49 the com­mu­ni­ca­tion stopped.

Andrej Koziel was tak­en to the men­tal hos­pi­tal in Sien­it­sa. There, they checked his blood alco­hol con­tent and then released him. Vol­ha Chaichyc was also released.

How­ev­er, only a few min­utes lat­er the road police again stopped Chajchyc’s and Koziel’s car.

The jour­nal­ists were released after an ID check. Cha­jchyc and Koziel believe that their car was stopped inten­tion­al­ly as the road police offi­cer had their license plate num­ber writ­ten on his palm

Approx­i­mate­ly at 10:30, the road police stopped the car of the free­lance jour­nal­ists Vol­ha Chaichyc and Andrej Koziel.