Representatives of Belarus’ biggest independent media outlets urge authorities to end persecution of journalists

In their appeal, the jour­nal­ists accuse the gov­ern­ment of tar­get­ing media work­ers with tough repres­sive mea­sures and note that 43 cor­re­spon­dents of dozens of media orga­ni­za­tions have been arrest­ed while doing their work since the start of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign.

The appeal specif­i­cal­ly men­tions the bru­tal arrest of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty cor­re­spon­dent Anton Trafi­movich that left him with a bro­ken nose. Mr. Trafi­movich, who was grabbed by police while live-stream­ing a gath­er­ing of sup­port­ers of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s pres­i­den­tial rivals, has since been charged with dis­obey­ing police orders.

The appeal warns that such arrests are inter­fer­ence with jour­nal­ists’ work, an offense pun­ish­able under the Crim­i­nal Code’s Arti­cle 198, and are meant to “intim­i­date jour­nal­ists and show them and entire soci­ety that laws don’t work when high­er polit­i­cal inter­ests are at stake.”

“How­ev­er, the shame­less­ness of such actions leads to the oppo­site effect,” it says. “The cyn­i­cal desire to show cit­i­zens how much defense­less they are against the gov­ern­ment above all dis­cred­its the gov­ern­ment itself.”

The jour­nal­ists express “sup­port for and sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those wrong­ful­ly detained, beat­en up and humil­i­at­ed” and stress that they will con­tin­ue per­form­ing their pro­fes­sion­al duty.

“We demand that the author­i­ties stop per­se­cut­ing jour­nal­ists rep­re­sent­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets and want to remind law enforce­ment offi­cers that by arrest­ing jour­nal­ists who are per­form­ing their pro­fes­sion­al duties and using force against them, they not only break the law but also com­mit a crime,” says the appeal.

The jour­nal­ists add that the lead­er­ship of the Min­sk city police ear­li­er ignored a sim­i­lar appeal while the inte­ri­or min­istry has gone back on its promise to hold a dis­cus­sion with jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing mass gath­er­ings.