Media-Polesye videographer Yauhen Nikalayevich’s sentence revealed

At the begin­ning of Octo­ber this year, the court of Pin­sk and Pin­sk dis­trict found Media-Polesye video­g­ra­ph­er Yauhen Nikalayevich guilty of par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots. The edi­to­r­i­al board learned that Judge Yauhe­nia Mel­nik sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to one year and six months of impris­on­ment.

Yauhen Nikalayevich. Pho­to: Media-Polesye

The tri­al against the jour­nal­ist began on Sep­tem­ber 26. On Octo­ber 2, the Pin­sk City and Dis­trict Court Judge Yauhe­nia Mel­nik announced the guilty ver­dict. She found Yauhen Nikalayevich guilty of par­tic­i­pa­tion in mass riots.

On Decem­ber 3, Yauhen Nikalayevich tried to appeal the sen­tence in the Brest Region­al Court, but Judge Kat­siary­na Hru­da reject­ed his appeal.

On Decem­ber 6, the name of the con­vict­ed jour­nal­ist appeared on the list of cit­i­zens “involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties” com­piled by the Belaru­sian Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs. The MIA web­site states that the jour­nal­ist is “serv­ing his sen­tence.”

Case background

In 2020, Yauhen Nikalayevich worked for the region­al pub­li­ca­tion Media-Polesye and cov­ered the protests that broke out in Pin­sk after the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

Yauhen Nikalayevich was arrest­ed while on duty on August 10, 2020. His cell­mates in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter report­ed that he showed signs of hav­ing been beat­en.

In Novem­ber 2020, Yauhen Nikalayevich was sum­moned to the Pin­sk dis­trict police sta­tion to give expla­na­tions in a crim­i­nal case of dis­re­spect to the local judge Bychy­la. As Yauhen lat­er shared, after a con­ver­sa­tion with the inves­ti­ga­tor, he was again detained and sent to serve a 10-day admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion.

After this arrest, Yauhen Niko­layevich left Belarus and worked abroad in a field unre­lat­ed to jour­nal­ism. At the begin­ning of 2024, he decid­ed to return home and was arrest­ed. The exact date of his arrest is unknown.