EFJ and BAJ demand the release of Sergei Satsuk, sentenced to 8 years in prison

Judge Svi­at­lana Ban­daren­ka sen­tenced Sergei Sat­suk, the edi­tor of the Ezhed­nevnik news web­site, for alleged charges of “incit­ing hatred”, “offi­cial mis­con­duct” and “accept­ing bribes”.

The 58-year-old was detained in Decem­ber 2021 after author­i­ties searched his home and office. He is the lat­est jour­nal­ist to be jailed in the author­i­tar­i­an coun­try, which has been ruled by Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko since 1994.

Satsuk’s col­leagues say he is being pun­ished for inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion scan­dals that rocked the Belaru­sian health­care sys­tem, as well as for hav­ing pub­lished sto­ries about the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of Covid cas­es. When the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic struck Belarus, Lukashenko down­played the dan­gers of the virus and sug­gest­ed it was not real.

“The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists believes inves­ti­ga­tors and the court arbi­trar­i­ly pros­e­cut­ed Sat­suk in revenge for his high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tions,” BAJ said on its web­site, call­ing for Satsuk’s release.

“The con­vic­tions of jour­nal­ists in Belarus on false pre­texts are total­ly ille­git­i­mate, unfound­ed and just aimed at intim­i­dat­ing media pro­fes­sion­als and inde­pen­dent voic­es,” said EFJ Pres­i­dent Maja Sev­er. “We do not for­get the names of the author­i­ties and judges who apply indis­crim­i­nate repres­sion on our col­leagues”.

The promi­nent Vias­na rights group, whose founder was co-award­ed the Nobel Peace Prize this year, has recog­nised Sat­suk as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. It says there are cur­rent­ly 1,344 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Belarus.

Lukashenko has orches­trat­ed a major crack­down on media and jour­nal­ists in Belarus after sup­press­ing unprece­dent­ed protests against his rule in 2020.

Accord­ing to BAJ mon­i­tor­ing,32 jour­nal­ists and media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are cur­rent­ly in prison in Belarus, just for doing their job.