«Together we counteract propaganda and demand the release of political prisoners.» BAJ meets with European Federation of Journalists’ President

Among the issues of impor­tance to the Belaru­sian team are new crim­i­nal cas­es against Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, unjus­ti­fied and ille­gal per­se­cu­tion, as well as the arbi­trary accu­sa­tion of jour­nal­ists of trea­son.

26 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Belarus are cur­rent­ly behind bars. In addi­tion to unprece­dent­ed pres­sure on pris­on­ers, and per­ma­nent ille­gal restric­tions on cor­re­spon­dence with col­leagues and rel­a­tives, more and more cas­es are being filed against jour­nal­ists.

«We are work­ing every angle to make the infor­ma­tion about the unprece­dent­ed per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists heard all over the world. Despite the ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine fol­low­ing the Russ­ian attack, each of the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists is valu­able to the world com­mu­ni­ty. It is impor­tant to talk about their plight at all lev­els and to try our best to release each jour­nal­ist,» says the Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Mogens Blich­er Bere­gard.

Among the impor­tant top­ics of the meet­ing were also the reg­u­lar­iza­tion of stay and legal sta­tus of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists in Euro­pean coun­tries, and the via­bil­i­ty of non-state media.

The coor­di­na­tion of efforts of the jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ties of Belarus, Lithua­nia, Esto­nia, Ukraine and Euro­pean jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions in the fight against aggres­sive Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da was dis­cussed at a sep­a­rate pan­el. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of jour­nal­ist orga­ni­za­tions in these coun­tries are con­vinced of the need for such coor­di­na­tion to main­tain the stan­dards of qual­i­ty and truth­ful jour­nal­ism in the Euro­pean region.

The coop­er­a­tion of jour­nal­is­tic orga­ni­za­tions will con­tin­ue.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean and Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and works close­ly with world media orga­ni­za­tions. In addi­tion to help­ing Belaru­sian col­leagues, in the last two months, the BAJ has been sup­port­ing Ukrain­ian human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions.

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2022 (chart)

Media workers behind bars. Current post addresses