Journalists Union of Athens message of solidarity to BAJ

Dear All,

Maria Anto­ni­adou  Pres­i­dent and Stavros Kapakos Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Jour­nal­ists’ Union of the Athens Dai­ly News­pa­pers JUADN, Greece’s old­est and largest in mem­ber­ship jour­nal­ists Union, in response to the lat­est events in vio­la­tion of Press Free­dom and Jour­nal­ists Rights in Belarus doc­u­ment­ed by sis­ter Union the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has sent yes­ter­day in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our Belaru­sian col­leagues fol­low­ing let­ter to:

H.E. Mrs Eka­teri­ni Sakel­laropoulou, Pres­i­dent of the Hel­lenic Repub­lic.

Mr. Kyr­i­akos Mit­so­takis, Prime Min­is­ter of Greece

Mr. Niko­laos Den­dias, Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs of Greece

Mr. Ste­lios Pet­sas, Min­is­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment Spokesman

Mr. Alex­ios Tsipras, Pres­i­dent SYRIZA par­ty

Mrs. Fofi Gen­i­ma­ta, Pres­i­dent of KINAL par­ty

Mr. Yanis Varo­ufakis, Sec­re­tary of MERA 25 par­ty

Mr. Demitrios Kout­soum­bas, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of KKE par­ty

Mr. Kyr­i­akos Velopou­los, Pres­i­dent “Greek Solu­tion” par­ty

Along with the let­ter JUADN sent the BAJ chart “Repres­sions against jour­nal­ists in Belarus 2020” pub­lished 13^th Augudy on IFJ site. The let­ter signed by Maria Anto­ni­adou  and Stavros Kapakos, JUADN Pres­i­dent and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary respec­tive­ly,

reads in Eng­lish:

“JUADN Exec­u­tive Board express­es deep con­cern over lat­est events in Belarus where in the wake of polit­i­cal devel­op­ments, more than 25 jour­nal­ists were detained dur­ing the last days and 200 jour­nal­ists have been assault­ed.

Jour­nal­ists and inde­pen­dent media are oper­at­ing under extreme­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions in Belarus. The local jour­nal­ists asso­ci­a­tion “Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists” (BAJ) stress they have nev­er before expe­ri­enced such vio­lent inci­dents against jour­nal­ists, like the recent ones.

JUADN Exec­u­tive board joins their voice with the Inter­na­tion­al and Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists to inform you of the unprece­dent­ed events tak­ing place con­tribut­ing in bla­tant vio­la­tion of Press Free­dom. JUADN a found­ing mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists since 1920 has long cham­pi­oned in mat­ters for Free­dom of Expres­sion. For this rea­son in 2019 IFJ World Con­gress vot­ed for the imple­men­ta­tion of “Glob­al Ethics Char­ter for Jour­nal­ists”.

Fur­ther­more JUADN Exec­u­tive Board in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Greek Min­istry of For­eign Affairs is mak­ing efforts to pro­mote vot­ing the “Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Safe­ty and Inde­pen­dence of Jour­nal­ists and oth­er Media Pro­fes­sion­als” in UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly, that was pre­sent­ed on Novem­ber 2018 in Athens dur­ing JUADN inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence of “Mediter­ranean and Black Sea IFJ Affil­i­ates”. An effort we con­tin­ue with the active sup­port of the Greek Min­istry of For­eign Affairs.

JUADN along with oth­er Euro­pean jour­nal­ists unions, con­demn assaults against jour­nal­ists in Belarus and seeks your sup­port in rais­ing this issue with the Coun­cil of Europe, Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe and UNESCO, pri­mar­i­ly to pro­tect Free­dom of Expres­sion and jour­nal­ists fun­da­men­tal rights.»

The let­ter on JUADN site in Greek https://www.esiea.gr/i‑esiea-zitei-tin-stirik­si-ton-dimosiog/