Press conference on recent detentions of journalists

On Mon­day, March 20, press ser­vice of BAJ held a press con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the lat­est wave of pres­sure on jour­nal­ists and to remind of jour­nal­ists’ rights.

On Fri­day, March 17, BAJ sent a peti­tion to the Min­istry of Home Affairs and to the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s office demand­ing to inves­ti­gate the events. On March 22, BAJ lawyer Aleh Aheyeu will hold a meet­ing with Minkalay Melchanka, the Deputy Min­is­ter of Home Affairs. Andrei Bas­tunets under­lines that in the last few years, the num­ber of deten­tions had decreased, and there was an opin­ion that the ten­den­cy was a result of seri­ous talks with the author­i­ties, also backed by the OSCE.

Svi­at­lana Kalink­i­na, BAJ deputy chair, anchor on Bel­sat: “The events sad­den us. Recent­ly, every­one dis­cussed if there had been lib­er­al­iza­tion in Belarus. Now the dis­cus­sion is over, because words con­tra­dict to actions.

In my view, a witch-hunt for jour­nal­ists has start­ed…  Jour­nal­ists were pur­pose­ful­ly detained under mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent pre­texts…

It seems that the most awful thing is hap­pen­ing to Larysa Shchyrako­va as she is being black­mailed by her child” (the police warned that social ser­vice might take away her under-age son to an asy­lum, because his moth­er has sev­er­al admin­is­tra­tive penal­ties, and this is a kind of endan­ger­ing sit­u­a­tion for the child – note).

“In my view, the only thing that helped us for all the 20 years is jour­nal­ist sol­i­dar­i­ty, when we stand for each one. There were times when this saved both peo­ple and whole mass media.”

Svi­at­lana Kalink­i­na said that the chan­nel Bel­sat would sup­port its jour­nal­ists to the max­i­mum – com­pen­sate the fines, pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal aid etc.

Kat­siary­na Bal­h­vala­va: “I did not expect that every­thing will end up like this (the deten­tion in Orsha). I start­ed coop­er­at­ing with Bel­sat in 2014, and there had not been such awful per­se­cu­tion. I thought that the max­i­mum would be three hours’ deten­tion and an admin­is­tra­tive report as the most.”

Hali­na Abakunchyk: “I did not have illu­sions that the deten­tion would end eas­i­ly. The deten­tion was bru­tal. A minibus approached, and we were grasped and throw in like sacks with pota­toes. Plain-clothed peo­ple attacked us, throw­ing the equip­ment. We were just sit­ting for three hours. We were not told that we had been detained, but nobody let us call or go out, or use the equip­ment that was lying in front of us. I was tak­en to anoth­er depart­ment, with­out charges, as if for a talk with some senior offi­cer. In fact, there was no one – they placed me in the cell, got undressed to search, and left to wait again. It was not an acci­den­tal deten­tion. It is hard for me to say why, but it looks they are first­ly inter­est­ed in the jour­nal­ists who dis­trib­ute urgent infor­ma­tion.

I was impressed not even by the unground­ed sen­tence, but by the fact that the next day I was told that I would not be accred­it­ed for the next year.”

Vol­ha Chay­chyts: “In the depart­ment, I was sur­prised to be told to get undressed while a video cam­era was on. I had been detained many times, and I know how to behave. But an inex­pe­ri­enced per­son would have done every­thing he was told to. My report was writ­ten down not word by word, but arbi­trar­i­ly. For exam­ple, I said that I had arrived to the square to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion. But they wrote it down sim­ply as “I came to the square”, and fur­ther you can hold me liable for par­tic­i­pa­tion in a mass event.

I remark that when the recorder is on, police­men behave more dili­gent­ly, even though they vio­late some legal norms.

Last week­end, we took an inter­view from a wit­ness who had seen deten­tion of an activist. They we noticed that we were fol­lowed. We had to hide and step back, in order to send the report. I phoned my hus­band and then heard somebody’s voice “Lis­ten­ing…”, and only then I heard my husband’s voice. I think it is a method to threat­en and pres­sur­ize.”

The jour­nal­ists plan to appeal against the sen­tences.

Four TV Crews Detained on Saturday

BAJ Protests against the Wave of Detentions, Demands Justice