Archive

 Alieh Supruniuk, an editor of the news website Pieršy Rehijon, was arrested at his home in Brest late on Tuesday.

Minsk, 3 July. Aliaksandr Ivulin, a sports journalist and soccer player who was handed a 30-day jail sentence in early June, has been declared a suspect in a criminal case, according to media reports.

Index on Censorship and 13 other human rights, freedom of expression, media freedom, and journalists’ organisations unreservedly condemn the arbitrary detention and judicial harassment of human rights defender and journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau, who is now facing up to 15 years in prison on baseless charges of “treason to the state”.

DW Akademie is deeply concerned that its long-time trainer, Andrei Aliaksandrau, has been charged with high treason in Belarus and now faces up to 15 years in prison.

on July 1, the Minsk city court continued to hear the case of Mikalai Dziadok. He is charged under three articles of the Criminal Code but pleads not guilty. Today Dziadok testified in court. Mikola Dziadok is an author in Novy Chas, blogger, and activist of the anarchist movement. Dziadok was detained on the night of November 11, 2020 by the officers of GUBOPiK (Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption) and Interior Ministry in a country house in the town of Sasnovy. The following charges were pressed against him: Article 342 of the Criminal Code — Organizing and preparing activities that breach public order or active participation in them;  Article 361 of the Criminal Code — calling to actions aimed at causing damage to the national security of Belarus;  and Article 295 of the Criminal Code — illegal actions in relation to firearms, ammunition and explosives

Minsk, 30 June. Detained journalist Andrej Aliaksandraŭ has been charged with high treason and may face up to 15 years in prison, his lawyer Anton Hašynski told BelaPAN.

A Belarusian dissident who was taken off a Ryanair jet forced to land in Minsk has been transferred to house arrest, his father has told the BBC.

VIENNA, 24 June 2021 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, today stated that the recently adopted laws in Belarus seriously contradict international human rights standards on freedom of expression and freedom of the media, including the OSCE commitments of the country.

The Investigative Committee reversed its decision to drop the charges under Article 342 "Organizing and preparing activities that breach public order or active participation in them" against translator Volha Kalatskaya. Ms. Kalatskaya will be prosecuted again. She is currently serving a two-year sentence of probation.

The Ministry of Justice has started a monitoring of the activities of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. The letter that BAJ received on Monday morning requires the NGO to present thousands of papers dated since January 1, 2018 to the Ministry's Non-profit organizations department. When we speak of thousands of documents, we really mean it.

Political prisoner Andrzej Paczobut has got Covid-19 and needs to be urgently taken to hospital His wife Aksana says he also has heart problems. He used to often lose consciousness, and Aksana is really concerned about his health now, as there is no proper medical care in jail.

BAJ letter with the request to hospitalize political prisoner, journalist Andrzej Paczobut, who has got Covid-19 in jail, and also has heart problems, was sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health Care, the Department of Corrections and its structural subdivisions — Minsk and Minsk region office, and Zhodzina prison number 8, where the journalist is kept.

At the beginning of the briefing, it was stated that "Mr. Pratasevich wanted to talk to the media, and we found a legal way to do that."  Recalled, Raman is being held in jail.

The hijacking of a plane and kidnapping of editor and blogger Raman Pratasevich is viewed by the free expression, press freedom and journalists’ community as the outrageous climax of a broader campaign against media freedom in Belarus that drastically intensified after the August 2020 election. Free Press Unlimited co-wrote a joint call to make respect for press freedom a cornerstone of all demands towards Belarus.

 The Justice for Journalists Foundation and its Media Risk Map partners monitoring attacks on media workers in the post-Soviet space call on international organisations and governments of all countries to do their utmost to secure the early release of all incarcerated media workers and to end the barbaric violations of their rights. According to the JFJ’s experts, at least 84 media workers from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Crimea, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are awaiting trial in detention or under house arrests, or have already been sentenced to long-term imprisonment and are held in prisons and prison camps.  Доклад Фонда «Справедливость для журналистов» о атаках на медиаработников в Беларуси