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Three more news websites were made inaccessible to users in Belarus on October 28 by order of the country’s information ministry. The sites are those of Belarus’ newspaper Novy Čas, as well as of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle and of Current Time TV, a Russian-language television channel launched by U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty with participation of Voice of America.

The content of the local news site ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY has been designated extremist at the request of the Barysaŭ District Prosecutor’s Office, the Prosecutor General’s Office said on Monday. ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY covers news in Barysaŭ and Žodzina, two cities in the Minsk region. According to the ЕХ-PRЕSS.ВY editorial team, some 100,000 people visit the website every day. In addition, the “extremist” label has been slapped on the content of a Telegram chat that unites residents of the city of Šarkaŭščyna in the Viciebsk region. The decision has been made at the request of the Šarkaŭščyna District Prosecutor’s Office.

 The news website Telegraf.by has been inaccessible to Belarusian users after being blocked by the country’s authorities.

Minsk, 21 October. A prominent journalist was rearrested immediately after being released in a courtroom in the Mahilioŭ region on Wednesday, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ).

Novy Chas newspaper employees stopped responding to messages on the morning of October 20. It later became known that journalists' homes and the editorial office were being searched. After the searches, Siarhei Pulsha and Aksana Kolb were interrogated and released.

 The detention of BelaPAN Director General Iryna Lieŭšyna has been extended by two more months, according to her daughter, Hanna.Dzmitryj Navažylaŭ, BelaPAN’s former director general, is likely to have had his detention extended, too.

Andrej Skurko, a prominent journalist and the head of the online publication Naša Niva’s advertising and marketing department, was not released on October 17 after a three-month detention.

The trial of journalist Siarhei Niarouny detained over the weekend and accused of distributing extremist materials has started in Krychau.

A judge of the Partyzanski District Court in Minsk on Wednesday turned down an appeal against the detention of Hienadź Mažejka, a reporter for the Belarus version of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makiej and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, discussed the functioning of Belarusian media outlets in Russia and Russian media outlets in Belarus during their meeting in Minsk on Thursday.

Webinars: “Trust in media: Photojournalism in the digital age” where will discuss the role of photojournalists, the challenges many of them are facing and how to mitigate risks to health and safety.

The annual meeting of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), meeting in Zagreb, Croatia, on 8-9 October, unanimously adopted a resolution on the dissolution of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an EFJ affiliate.

Henadz Mazheyka, a journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus, has been charged with two articles of the Criminal Code: inciting social hatred or discord and insulting a government official. Henadz is in the Zhodzina pre-trial detention center quarantined for coronavirus, he cannot be visited by lawyers and relatives, care packages are not allowed.

Minsk, 7 October. The Belarusian information ministry announced on Thursday that it would consider a request for restoring access to www.kp.by, the website of the Belarus version of Russia’s newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.