Belarusian police question neighbors about exiled journalist Siarhei Skulavets’s visits home

Last week, on Octo­ber 13 and 14, police offi­cers from Ivat­se­vichy vis­it­ed the vil­lage of Yablan­ka, where the house of for­mer Bel­sat jour­nal­ist Siarhei Skulavets has stood unoc­cu­pied for three years.

Siarhei Skulavets in the U.S. Pho­to: social media

“On Tues­day, police offi­cers knocked on my neigh­bors’ door at sev­en in the morn­ing. Of course, they were in com­plete shock at such an unex­pect­ed vis­it. The offi­cers asked whether I come to the vil­lage, and to Belarus in gen­er­al, where I work, and whether they keep in touch with me. The neigh­bors don’t know any details, so they couldn’t answer any­thing. But the next day the police came to them again, this time at eight in the morn­ing. They asked the same things again and asked them to at least name the coun­try where I am now. And this is the strangest part: I am not hid­ing at all and write open­ly on social media about my life,” Skulavets told BAJ.

Accord­ing to him, secu­ri­ty offi­cials had come to the vil­lage before to ques­tion his neigh­bors, but they did so dur­ing the day rather than first thing in the morn­ing. The ques­tions were the same.

“This time, very young guys came. It seems they were giv­en an order to ques­tion peo­ple and know noth­ing about what hap­pened before,” the for­mer jour­nal­ist sus­pects.

For more than a year, a notice has hung on a board out­side the dis­trict police depart­ment in Ivat­se­vichy stat­ing that Skulavets is want­ed by the police. A crim­i­nal case has been opened against him under Part 1 of Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code (“facil­i­ta­tion of extrem­ist activ­i­ty”).

Police had pre­vi­ous­ly ques­tioned Skulavets’s moth­er and his grand­moth­er, who was 86 years old, about his cur­rent where­abouts. A few weeks after secu­ri­ty offi­cials came to search the grandmother’s home and ask about her grand­son, she died. The secu­ri­ty offi­cials then told the for­mer journalist’s rel­a­tives that his crim­i­nal case was “con­nect­ed to Bel­sat.”

Until June 2023, Skulavets lived near Ivat­se­vichy, worked as a farmer, and at the same time coop­er­at­ed with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel. After he was warned that anoth­er wave of repres­sion against jour­nal­ists was expect­ed, Skulavets left Belarus with his fam­i­ly. They now live in the Unit­ed States.