CPJ condemns sentencing of Belarus journalist Katsiaryna Barysevich to 6 months in jail

“Today’s sen­tenc­ing of jour­nal­ist Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich is yet anoth­er exam­ple of how the Belaru­sian author­i­ties will bul­ly into silence any jour­nal­ist who would dare to report inde­pen­dent­ly,” said Gul­noza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor. “Bary­se­vich should be released imme­di­ate­ly and allowed to con­tin­ue her work freely and safe­ly.”

Today, the Mask­ou­vsky dis­trict court in Min­sk, the cap­i­tal, con­vict­ed Bary­se­vich, a cor­re­spon­dent for the inde­pen­dent news web­site Tut.by, on charges of “vio­lat­ing med­ical con­fi­den­tial­i­ty with grave con­se­quences,” sen­tenced her to six months in jail, and fined her 2,880 Belaru­sian rubles (US $1105), accord­ing to a report by her employ­er.

The charges stemmed from a Novem­ber 13, 2020, arti­cle by Bary­se­vich about the death of a man dur­ing a protest call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko, in which she ques­tioned author­i­ties’ expla­na­tion for the man’s death, accord­ing to her employ­er. Bary­se­vich was arrest­ed on Novem­ber 19, 2020, accord­ing to CPJ research, and has been detained since then.