Russian Union of Journalists demands release of Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist in Belarus

The Russ­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists has issued a state­ment demand­ing the release of Hien­adź Maže­j­ka, a reporter for the Belarus ver­sion of the Russ­ian news­pa­per Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da.

The Union insists that the pub­lic must be imme­di­ate­ly informed where and how Mr. Maže­j­ka was arrest­ed.

“His col­leagues and loved ones must be able to make sure that noth­ing threat­ens the jour­nal­ist’s life and health, and Mažejka’s lawyers must get appro­pri­ate expla­na­tions in con­nec­tion with his arrest,” the Union says.

It notes that Mr. Mažejka’s arrest and deten­tion, accom­pa­nied by “the total silence of the respon­si­ble law enforce­ment agen­cies,” can­not be seen as any­thing oth­er than “pres­sure on the press and a threat to the jour­nal­ist.”

On Octo­ber 2, Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da report­ed that Mr. Maže­j­ka had been arrest­ed and placed in the deten­tion cen­ter on Akresci­na Street in Min­sk.

Mr. Maže­j­ka is the author of an inter­view with a for­mer class­mate of Andrej Zieĺcer, a Min­sk man who was killed by offi­cers of the Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty (KGB) dur­ing a raid on his apart­ment on Sep­tem­ber 28.

Mr. Zieĺcer, a 31-year-old IT work­er, is believed to have fatal­ly wound­ed a KGB offi­cer before being shot dead inside his apart­ment.

In the inter­view, which was post­ed on the night of Sep­tem­ber 28, a woman who went to school togeth­er with Mr. Zieĺcer described him as a good per­son who “always stood up for truth.”

On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 29, the web­site of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da stopped being acces­si­ble to users by order of the Belaru­sian infor­ma­tion min­istry.

Com­ment­ing on the block, Dmit­ry Peskov, spokesper­son for Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, said that the Krem­lin dis­agreed with it and con­sid­ered it to be a vio­la­tion of the prin­ci­ple of media free­dom.

Speak­ing to reporters on Octo­ber 2, Maria Zakharo­va, spokesper­son for the Russ­ian for­eign min­istry, said that the Russ­ian embassy in Min­sk was in con­stant con­tact with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to dis­cuss issues regard­ing the oper­a­tion of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da. 

“Answer­ing the numer­ous ques­tions about the arrest of an employ­ee of the Belarus ver­sion of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da, I would like to say that we are talk­ing about the Belaru­sian media out­let and cit­i­zens of Belarus. At the same time, the news­pa­per oper­ates as a sub­sidiary of a Russ­ian pub­li­ca­tion. So we pro­ceed from the assump­tion that the rights of jour­nal­ists will be observed in accor­dance with gen­er­al­ly accept­ed inter­na­tion­al stan­dards,” Ms. Zakharo­va said.

Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da was expect­ed to send its spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Min­sk fol­low­ing Mr. Mažejka’s arrest.

The newspaper’s edi­tor in chief, Vladimir Sun­gorkin, described the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing its Belarus ver­sion as arbi­trari­ness.