BAJ Board rules on case involving deputy chair Barys Haretski

BAJ Board Deci­sion of August 25, 2026

On August 25, 2026, the BAJ Board held a meet­ing to review the imple­men­ta­tion of its Decem­ber 23, 2025, deci­sion in the case involv­ing Barys Haret­s­ki, as well as a draft of BAJ’s Gen­der Pol­i­cy.

On Decem­ber 23, 2025, fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion and tak­ing into account an expert assess­ment, the Board of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists adopt­ed a deci­sion that, among oth­er things, pro­vid­ed for:

• Sus­pend­ing B. Haret­s­ki from rep­re­sen­ta­tive and lead­er­ship duties for 12 months, start­ing from August 14, 2025, the date the BAJ Board decid­ed to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter;
• Impos­ing addi­tion­al restric­tions on B. Haret­s­ki to pre­vent sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in the future, includ­ing requir­ing him to con­duct pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions only dur­ing work­ing hours, in the work­place, or through approved busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels;
• Requir­ing B. Haret­s­ki to under­go train­ing on pre­vent­ing harass­ment and vio­la­tions of per­son­al bound­aries in a pro­fes­sion­al set­ting;
• Con­tin­u­ing work on a com­pre­hen­sive BAJ Gen­der Pol­i­cy, as well as a plan for its imple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing, and eval­u­a­tion.

At its August 25, 2026, meet­ing, the BAJ Board deter­mined that Barys Haret­s­ki had ful­ly com­plied with the pre­vi­ous deci­sion, specif­i­cal­ly:

• He had not per­formed rep­re­sen­ta­tive or lead­er­ship func­tions with­in BAJ since August 14, 2025;
• He had con­duct­ed pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions only dur­ing work­ing hours, in the work­place, or through approved busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, as stip­u­lat­ed in the Board’s Decem­ber 23, 2025, deci­sion;
• He had com­plet­ed train­ing on pre­vent­ing harass­ment and vio­la­tions of per­son­al bound­aries in pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. This includ­ed the “BAJ Gen­der Pol­i­cy and Anti-Harass­ment Train­ing” as well as the edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram “Men for Gen­der Equal­i­ty and Non-Dis­crim­i­na­tion, Against Vio­lence and Harass­ment,” orga­nized by the Unit­ed Tran­si­tion­al Cabinet’s Office for Social Pol­i­cy and the Swedish orga­ni­za­tion MÄN, in coop­er­a­tion with the Swedish Min­istry for For­eign Affairs.

The oth­er require­ments of the Board’s pre­vi­ous deci­sion were also ful­filled.

In light of this, the BAJ Board resolved to:

• Con­sid­er the Board’s Decem­ber 23, 2025, deci­sion ful­ly imple­ment­ed;
• Lift, effec­tive August 25, 2026, the restric­tions on BAJ Deputy Chair Barys Haretski’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive and lead­er­ship duties, in accor­dance with the BAJ Char­ter and the organization’s plans;
• Approve the draft BAJ Gen­der Pol­i­cy and sub­mit it to the BAJ Coun­cil for con­sid­er­a­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2026, tak­ing into account the pro­pos­als and amend­ments dis­cussed dur­ing the review of the draft.