Belarus: Imprisonment and exile of journalists continues six years on from the fraudulent presidential election

Since the fraud­u­lent Belaru­sian elec­tions on 9 August 2020, Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko’s regime has increased pres­sure on dis­si­dents and inten­si­fied its crack­down on the press, hand­ing out dis­pro­por­tion­ate prison sen­tences to jour­nal­ists in Belarus and intim­i­dat­ing and harass­ing those who have been forced to exile. The crack­down has also affect­ed the BAJ, which was labelled ‘extrem­ist’ in 2023. It is the only inde­pen­dent and demo­c­ra­t­ic asso­ci­a­tion of Belaru­sian media rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Accord­ing to the BAJ, as of August 2026, 21 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers are behind bars for polit­i­cal rea­sons. Among them are indi­vid­u­als with seri­ous ill­ness­es or advanced age, such as jour­nal­ist Kiryl Paz­ni­ak, who was hos­pi­talised in May due to pneu­mo­nia and a con­cur­rent case of Covid-19 while in pre-tri­al deten­tion.

This year alone, six jour­nal­ists were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced with­in a week. Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich and Andrei Pakalen­ka, for­mer heads of inde­pen­dent region­al news­pa­per Intex-Press, were sen­tenced to 14 and 12 years in prison respec­tive­ly for alleged “high trea­son”; Jour­nal­ist Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was sen­tenced to nine years for a sim­i­lar offence; radio host Aleh Khamen­ka was sen­tenced to three years for “col­lab­o­rat­ing with the media”; and jour­nal­ist Tsi­na Palyn­skaya was sen­tenced to two years for alleged col­lab­o­ra­tion with an extrem­ist enti­ty, along­side her daugh­ter.

More­over, the per­se­cu­tions do not stop at the bor­der, and jour­nal­ists in exile con­tin­ue to be intim­i­dat­ed. In recent years, Belarus has active­ly per­se­cut­ed inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists who have been forced to flee the coun­try. BAJ reports that crim­i­nal cas­es have been opened against them, their fam­i­lies have been searched, their prop­er­ty has been con­fis­cat­ed, and they have been placed on inter­na­tion­al want­ed lists.

As a result of polit­i­cal pres­sure, exiled Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists whose pass­ports have expired are unable to renew them and thus encounter dif­fi­cul­ties in their host coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly the EU, Ukraine and Geor­gia. This inter­nal polit­i­cal pres­sure man­i­fest­ing as an exter­nal bureau­crat­ic obsta­cle con­sti­tutes a vio­la­tion of jour­nal­ists’ rights to prac­tise their pro­fes­sion freely.

“Despite all this, the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media sec­tor remains high­ly effec­tive and effec­tive­ly influ­ences events in the coun­try. Inde­pen­dent media have a huge domes­tic audi­ence, receive read­er feed­back, and are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more effec­tive than state-run media.” said the BAJ in a state­ment to the IFJ. “We believe that our pri­ma­ry goal is to main­tain the inde­pen­dent media sector’s effec­tive­ness and com­pet­i­tive­ness. The BAJ con­tin­ues its jour­nal­ist assis­tance and edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams, pro­vides legal assis­tance, and sup­ports the inde­pen­dent media com­mu­ni­ty.”

The IFJ-EFJ said: “Not only does Lukashenko’s regime pre­vent jour­nal­ists from doing their job and vio­late the public’s right to infor­ma­tion by intim­i­dat­ing, pros­e­cut­ing and impris­on­ing them, it also infringes the most basic civ­il rights of impris­oned jour­nal­ists and media work­ers in exile. We reaf­firm our unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to BAJ and Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, and we demand an end to their crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and harass­ment. We also urge the imme­di­ate and uncon­di­tion­al release of all impris­oned jour­nal­ists and media work­ers.”