BAJ reached out to UN Special Rapporteur regarding Dzianis Ivashyn’s case

The let­ter informed the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur Irene Hahn about Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, a Belaru­sian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, a free­lance cor­re­spon­dent of “Novy chas” news­pa­per, as well as the edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Inform­Na­palm web­site,  is cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Hrod­na Prison No. 1.

On March 11, 2021, Dzia­n­is was giv­ing an inter­view on the air of the TV chan­nel “Cur­rent time” about the third part of his inves­ti­ga­tion of the for­mer mem­bers of the dis­band­ed in Ukraine spe­cial unit «Berkut», who after flee­ing from Ukraine joined the Lukashenko regime in Belarus.  Ivashyn found out that there are more than ten «ex-Berkut offi­cers» in the Belaru­sian OMON, who have received the Belaru­sian cit­i­zen­ship and were hired by the police with vio­la­tions of the law. Accord­ing to his infor­ma­tion,  «ex-Berkut offi­cers» par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sup­pres­sion of mass protests in 2020 and, among oth­er things, act­ed as pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es in the tri­als against the activists. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist and his spouse, he took all the data for the inves­ti­ga­tion from open sources.

On March 12, 2021 his apart­ment in Hrod­na was searched and Dzia­n­is was detained and tak­en into cus­tody. On March 20, 2021 it became known that Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was charged under Art. 365 of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus (inter­fer­ence in the activ­i­ties of an inter­nal affairs offi­cer), which is sanc­tioned by a fine, or arrest, or impris­on­ment of up to three years.

On March 24, 2021, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized Dzia­n­is Ivashyn as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Dur­ing his time in deten­tion, Dzia­n­is was repeat­ed­ly pun­ished with soli­tary con­fine­ment. When Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was in soli­tary con­fine­ment from 19 to 24 June 2021, the jour­nal­ist had a heart attack. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist’s moth­er, her son had no heart prob­lems before the arrest, and the cause of the attack was the con­di­tions of deten­tion — «It’s very hot in the cell, the win­dows are closed, and the prison admin­is­tra­tion won’t let me give him a fan».

In Sep­tem­ber 2021 Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was charged under Part 1 of Arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code (high trea­son), which pro­vides impris­on­ment of sev­en to fif­teen years with a fine or with­out a fine.

On Feb­ru­ary 21, 2022 the Court of Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict of Hrod­na reject­ed the appeal to change the mea­sure of restraint for jour­nal­ist.

On March 22, 2022 the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee claimed that the jour­nal­ist worked for the intel­li­gence ser­vices of Ukraine and caused dam­age to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus. The Min­istry also claimed that the Ukrain­ian project Inform­Na­palm, where Ivashyn was the edi­tor of the Belaru­sian page, was cre­at­ed and oper­at­ed «in the inter­ests of the Main Depart­ment of Intel­li­gence of the Min­istry of Defence of Ukraine”. Accord­ing to the offi­cial posi­tion, Ivashyn’s actions «went far beyond jour­nal­is­tic work”.

Accord­ing to the journalist’s spouse Vol­ha Ivashy­na, Dzia­n­is could not have access to any secret infor­ma­tion and, in order to pre­pare his inves­ti­ga­tions, he stud­ied infor­ma­tion from open sources, the ref­er­ences to which are clear­ly indi­cat­ed in his pub­li­ca­tions.

On May 7, 2022, the jour­nal­ist’s spouse report­ed that the inves­ti­ga­tion was over, and on June 10, 2022, she learned that the case had gone to tri­al.

On August 15, 2022 and August 17, 2022, the Hrod­na Region­al Court held behind closed doors the first court hear­ings. The next court hear­ing is sched­uled for 12 Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Arti­cle 19 of the ICCPR enshrines the right of every­one to free­dom of expres­sion, includ­ing the right to impart infor­ma­tion of all kinds in writ­ing or in print. In its Gen­er­al Com­ment No. 34 the Human Rights Com­mit­tee empha­sized that extreme care must be tak­en by States par­ties to ensure that trea­son laws  and sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions relat­ing to nation­al secu­ri­ty are craft­ed and applied in a man­ner that con­forms to the strict require­ments of para­graph 3. It is not com­pat­i­ble with para­graph 3 to invoke such laws to sup­press or with­hold from the pub­lic infor­ma­tion of legit­i­mate pub­lic inter­est that does not harm nation­al secu­ri­ty or to pros­e­cute jour­nal­ists for hav­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed such infor­ma­tion.

Over the past two years, the Belaru­sian media have faced unprece­dent­ed pres­sure from the State, which has the sole pur­pose of com­plete­ly destroy­ing inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Belarus. The tight­en­ing of the legal reg­u­la­tion of media, the recog­ni­tion of a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media out­lets as «extrem­ist for­ma­tions» and their pub­li­ca­tions as «extrem­ist mate­ri­als,» the restric­tions on free access to inde­pen­dent media web­sites, the clo­sures of inde­pen­dent media, as well as cre­at­ing the obsta­cles to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of print­ed media are only a small part of the large-scale repres­sive pol­i­cy that the author­i­ties have deployed. Mass arbi­trary deten­tions of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives (480 cas­es in 2020, 113 cas­es in 2021), often accom­pa­nied by phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence, as well as dam­age or seizure of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and pros­e­cu­tion in the form of admin­is­tra­tive arrests and fines; also became one of the tools in the fight against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. How­ev­er, one of the most egre­gious forms of per­se­cu­tion is the ini­ti­a­tion of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es against indi­vid­ual rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mass media.

The crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Dzia­n­is Ivashyn under Arti­cle 356 and Arti­cle 365 of the Crim­i­nal Code on the grounds of his law­ful exer­cise of jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties con­sti­tutes a fla­grant vio­la­tion of his free­dom of expres­sion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists calls on you to respond urgent­ly to this com­mu­ni­ca­tion and to appeal to the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment to imme­di­ate­ly stop the polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn.