Belarus: Free Belarusian journalists and media workers NOW!

The Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (IFJ) con­ven­ing in Mon­tre­al on 10 and 11 June 2025, demands the release of all Belaru­sian jailed jour­nal­ists and media work­ers.

Despite the fact that almost five years have passed since the protests against the fraud­u­lent pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in 2020, the coun­try’s repres­sion against jour­nal­ists and civ­il soci­ety has not decreased. Belarus ranks 166th out of 180 coun­tries in the world in the “2025 Press Free­dom Index”.

At least forty of our col­leagues are cur­rent­ly behind bars in Belarus. Some of them have been sen­tenced to long prison terms – eight, 13, 14, 15 years in jail just for car­ry­ing out their pro­fes­sion­al duties. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties regard jour­nal­is­tic work as an ‘extrem­ist activ­i­ty’, ‘arrange­ment of mass riots’ or ‘trea­son against the state’. 

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), which is an IFJ affil­i­ate, was labelled an ‘extrem­ist’ group and banned in Belarus in 2023 like many inde­pen­dent media out­lets and organ­i­sa­tions in the coun­try. This means that every activist and leader of BAJ is in direct dan­ger of arbi­trary crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion in Belarus. More­over, any per­son can be pros­e­cut­ed for coop­er­a­tion with ‘extrem­ist’ groups, even for lik­ing or repost­ing their social media con­tent. 

We demand that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties release all our col­leagues from prison and halt their per­se­cu­tion just for express­ing their opin­ion. We call on the gov­ern­ments of demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries to sup­port these demands at the diplo­mat­ic lev­el.