Detentions of journalists in Belarus, August 12

«Traffic policeman put a gun to my head,» — Volha Tsyhankova says.

In Min­sk, polit­i­cal ana­lyst Vital Tsy­hank­ou was bru­tal­ly detained and beat­en  Dr. Vol­ha Tsy­hanko­va was detained, too.  

Tsy­hanko­va told their sto­ry:

«We were dri­ving on Niami­ha Street when we were stopped by a police­man. He demand­ed that we leave the car. With all recent events in mind, when peo­ple are pulled out of the car, beat­en and detained, I refused. I said that I would show my doc­u­ments from the car. The police­man’s response was pret­ty bru­tal. He began began to low­er the win­dow and hit the car, he put a gun to my head through the win­dow and demand­ed to get out. I drove a bit for­ward. We are sur­round­ed by sev­er­al traf­fic police cars, Vitaly was dragged from the car and beat­en, with his face down on the con­crete. We are now in the Mask­ous­ki police depart­ment. »

Also, Min­sk police detained Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists Kon­stan­tin Reut­s­ki (Hro­madske TV) and Yeven Vasi­lyev. They stayed at the apart­ment of Tat­siana Revi­a­ka, a human rights activist.  On August 12, the police came to search Tat­siana’s place.

The search was con­duct­ed by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mi­tee. They were inter­est­ed in the belong­ings of the Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens. Final­ly, the police left with a lap­top and a pass­port of one of the Ukraini­ans and Tat­siana’s lap­top. Tat­siana was not detained.

Alos, Bel­sat jour­nal­ists Lubou Lunio­va and Zmitser Soltan were detained today. They were released after some time with­out charges.

The Vil­lage Belarus jour­nal­ist Andrei Lychau­ka was snatched on the street and lat­er released with­out charges.

In Babruisk, Bobruis­ki Couri­er jour­nal­ist Andrei Shobin was detained. He was walk­ing to cov­er the protests in the city. Andrew will be tried in prison tomor­row, i.e. the tri­al will be closed for pub­lic.

A free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er of Brest­skaya Gaze­ta Sergei Nikra­she­vich was detained also. He is in the deten­tion cen­ter of the Lenin­sky Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs of Brest. It is not known what he was detained for.

Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists in Belarus in 2020 (the chart is reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed)