IPI: Repression accelerates as five more journalists sentenced to prison

The IPI glob­al net­work today con­demns the accel­er­a­tion of repres­sion against inde­pen­dent media in Belarus after five more jour­nal­ists were sen­tenced to prison on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges in just over one week.

Con­vict­ed Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists. Col­lage: BAJ

On March 9, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), a union oper­at­ing from exile, report­ed the sen­tenc­ing to nine years in prison of Pavel Dabravol­sky, a jour­nal­ist who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­Pan as well as Ukrain­ian online out­let NV.ua.

Dabravol­sky left Belarus in 2021, after serv­ing a 15-day prison sen­tence for par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests against the fal­si­fied re-elec­tion of Alexan­der Lukashenko. He returned home in the autumn of 2024 and was detained sev­er­al months lat­er. The jour­nal­ist has remained behind bars since then on charges of high trea­son. While Belaru­sian author­i­ties did not com­mu­ni­cate any details regard­ing Dabravolsky’s case, accord­ing to BAJ his jail­ing was direct­ly linked to his work as a jour­nal­ist.

On March 6, BAJ addi­tion­al­ly report­ed on the sen­tenc­ing to two years in prison of Tsi­na Palyn­skaya. A jour­nal­ist from the city of Polatsk, Palyn­skaya was like­ly sen­tenced for con­duct­ing sur­veys for an inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian ana­lyt­i­cal cen­tre which the Lukashenko regime lat­er des­ig­nat­ed as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion”.

Pri­or to this, on March 4 a court in Min­sk sen­tenced radio host Aleh Khamen­ka to three years in prison on charges of “facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties”.

Sev­er­al days ear­li­er, a court in the west­ern city of Brest sen­tenced two promi­nent region­al jour­nal­ists, Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich and Andrei Pakalen­ka, to 14 and 12 years in prison, respec­tive­ly, on charges of “high trea­son”.

“The recent sen­tenc­ing of five jour­nal­ists in Belarus over a very short peri­od of time serves as a reminder to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the Lukashenko regime con­tin­ues its efforts to silence all inde­pen­dent report­ing in Belarus, now hold­ing near­ly 30 media work­ers behind bars on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges,” said IPI East­ern Europe Press Free­dom Advi­sor Karol Łucz­ka. “While in recent months some of these pris­on­ers were able to leave Belaru­sian pris­ons as a result of deals between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the Lukashenko regime, the vast major­i­ty are still in jail on unjust charges, where they face incred­i­ble pres­sure and where their phys­i­cal safe­ty is often at risk. IPI stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with these Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists, calls for more inter­na­tion­al atten­tion to their sit­u­a­tion, and demands their release. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must also con­tin­ue to include jour­nal­ists in their push for the release of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Belarus.”

As of March 2026, at least 28 media work­ers remain behind bars in Belarus, mak­ing the coun­try one of the worst jail­ers of jour­nal­ists in the world.