Accents

A cameraman Uladzimir Luniou was filming peaceful protest actions in Minsk. On August 10, he was besieged by police near the ‘Pushkinskaya’ metro station. He was detained at about 11.30 pm, despite wearing a vest with the word “Press” and trying to explain that he was an independent journalist. According to the reporter, he was kept 'in inhumane conditions' in custody for 34 hours.  He was released later, but his personal belongings were not returned to him. Moreover, he had to visit the detention center again, in order to get his passport back. The court ruling of August 21 has not been sent to him yet.

Representatives of law-enforcement agencies brutally detained four independent journalists in Babruysk (Mahilou region) on August 10, 2020. Three of them were detained next to the local pretrial detention center, where the relatives of the previously locked up Babruysk dwellers gathered and waited for court decisions. The fourth journalist was taken into custody at his wife’s work place. 

Responding to the news that at least three more prominent Belarusian bloggers — Ihar Losik, Syarhei Pyatrukhin and Syarhei Sparish— were arrested on Thursday, as part of a crackdown ahead of the presidential election on 9 August, Aisha Jung, Amnesty International’s Senior Campaigner on Belarus, said:

State propaganda accuses independent colleagues of misinformation and whipping up public hysteria, authorities threaten them with warnings and fines. At the same time, officials meet the journalists with a wall of silence. It is extremely difficult to get either their comments, or official responses to media enquiries. Belarusian Association of Journalists asked colleagues from different media to tell their stories on how officials denied them information.