Homel court dismisses Larysa Shchyrakova’s complaint against her detention

Shchyrako­va was detained on 6 Decem­ber 2022 after a search of her home. The police took her minor son Svi­ataslau to a children’s shel­ter.

The ex-jour­nal­ist is accused of dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus, how­ev­er, the charge details are unknown as her lawyer signed a nondis­clo­sure state­ment.

Larysa Shchyrako­va used to work for sev­er­al inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. But back in 2021, she pub­licly announced her quit­ting jour­nal­ism because of the harass­ment she had to endure for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion. Ex-jour­nal­ist was held admin­is­tra­tive­ly liable over 40 times, includ­ing for her cov­er­age of post-elec­tion protests.

Last week, the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (EFJ) and unions of French jour­nal­ists SNJ, SNJ-CGT, and CFDT-Jour­nal­istes issued a state­ment call­ing for the imme­di­ate release of Larysa Shchyrako­va.