BAJ demands the immediate release of TUT.BY reporter Katsiaryna Barysevich!

BAJ demands the imme­di­ate release of TUT.BY reporter Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich

19 Novem­ber, the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office of Belarus ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal case under part 3 art.178 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus («Dis­clo­sure of med­ical secret, result­ing in grave con­se­quences»).

It start­ed with the beat­ing of Raman Ban­daren­ka by unknown peo­ple in Min­sk. Lat­er he died in a hos­pi­tal emer­gency room. A med­ical work­er as well as a jour­nal­ist of the most pop­u­lar online por­tal TUT.BY, Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich, who wrote about the death of Raman Ban­daren­ka, were arrest­ed with­in the case.

On Thurs­day, the police searched the jour­nal­ist’s apart­ment, while she was placed in the KGB deten­tion cen­ter.

Mean­while, it is still unknown, if a crim­i­nal case on inflict­ing seri­ous bod­i­ly harm to Raman Ban­daren­ka, lead­ing to his death, has been insti­gat­ed.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists believes that instead of look­ing for the real per­pe­tra­tors of the mur­der, the inves­ti­ga­tors per­se­cute those who are try­ing to find out the truth about the cir­cum­stances of Raman Ban­darenka’s death.

BAJ demands from the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and, above all, from the Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office of the Repub­lic of Belarus, which is inves­ti­gat­ing the case:

- to imme­di­ate­ly release Kat­siary­na Bary­se­vich (one of the best court jour­nal­ists in Belarus), as well as the med­ical work­er, who hand­ed the social­ly impor­tant infor­ma­tion over to the media, with­out vio­lat­ing the rights of the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly;

- to focus on the search for the killers instead of per­se­cut­ing for dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion.

We call on the Belaru­sian and inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to join our demands.