Reporter banned from courtroom because of his videocamera. His colleagues submit a complaint

The inci­dent was observed by oth­er reporters cov­er­ing the open tri­als against anti-inte­gra­tion pro­test­ers in Min­sk.

Han­na Zhu­rauskaya was wait­ing for the jour­nal­ists at the entrance to the build­ing.  She said she knew Dzmit­ry Buyanau as Bel­sat’s cam­era­man and told the guards not to let him in the build­ing.

Buyanau’s col­leagues left a writ­ten com­plaint.

The jour­nal­ists believe that the Assis­tant Court Chair­man went beyond her author­i­ty and gave an ille­gal instruc­tion to the police guard.

This is not the first inci­dent of the kind. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists had addressed the Min­sk City Court Chair­man with a writ­ten request to change the order of bring­ing record­ing equip­ment to courts, so that it would not depend on per­mis­sion of the court’s press ser­vice.

BAJ pro­posed to estab­lish that jour­nal­ists were enti­tled to enter the court build­ing with pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment upon pre­sen­ta­tion of an iden­ti­ty doc­u­ment or a cer­tifi­cate of employ­ment.