Aliaksandr Kornyshau’s parents’ house searched over his appearance in Belsat TV show

Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau is the edi­tor of the Viteb­skiy Kuri­er News online pub­li­ca­tion who left Belarus in 2020. In an inter­view with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of this year, he revealed that he had expe­ri­enced health issues dur­ing his forced emi­gra­tion. He was diag­nosed with necro­sis of hip joints, which required two joint replace­ment surg­eries and a lengthy reha­bil­i­ta­tion process. Fol­low­ing the broad­cast, police offi­cers and inves­ti­ga­tors began to vis­it the res­i­dence of Kornyshau’s par­ents reg­u­lar­ly.

Source: pexels.com

In mid-April, the house where his par­ents live was searched, Ali­ak­san­dr said:

“Although I have not lived with my par­ents for about 25 years, I am still reg­is­tered in this house. The build­ing is divid­ed into two apart­ments, my broth­er lives in one and my par­ents live in the oth­er, they are in their 80s and my father is very sick, he had two strokes. The search was con­duct­ed as part of a crim­i­nal case in which my fam­i­ly under­stands I have wit­ness sta­tus. Since none of my belong­ings were there at all, the police did­n’t seize any­thing, just peeped into my broth­er’s com­put­er and tablet, and checked my father’s cell phone. They took pic­tures of our Telegram con­ver­sa­tions. We don’t text that much or talk about pol­i­tics, we most­ly dis­cuss health issues. My fam­i­ly was told that the crim­i­nal case con­cerns my inter­view with Bel­sat TV: they say that this is an extrem­ist for­ma­tion and that I there­fore alleged­ly pro­mote extrem­ist activ­i­ties.”

Since Ali­ak­san­dr’s par­ents are elder­ly, he would like the vis­its of law enforce­ment offi­cials to stop. All the more, since the rel­a­tives have noth­ing to do nei­ther with the inter­view with the media, rec­og­nized in Belarus as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion, nor with what he does in gen­er­al.

Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau also said that his broth­er had received phone calls from the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and that inves­ti­ga­tors had vis­it­ed him at home. They were inter­est­ed in the where­abouts and activ­i­ties of Kornyshau.

The last time there was a police vis­it was a week ago. They asked neigh­bors if they knew Kornyshau, showed his pho­tos, and asked if and when they had seen him. Police start­ed vis­it­ing Ali­ak­san­dr’s rel­a­tives at the end of 2022. They asked about his work as edi­tor of the Viteb­sk Kuri­er News. They also inquired about his views on the cur­rent Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment and how to con­tact him.

The last time Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau spoke to the inves­ti­ga­tors was in Novem­ber 2020. Three days after he left his coun­try, an inves­ti­ga­tor from Min­sk texted him on Telegram. He want­ed to inter­view Ali­ak­san­dr about Aleh Kor­ban, the head of the pub­lic ini­tia­tive Alter­na­tive, who was arrest­ed sev­er­al days before. Kornyshau was his deputy and left Belarus to escape arrest. He first went to Kyiv, then Ger­many, and now is based in Poland.