BelaPAN Reporter Forced to Leave an International Health Conference

The con­fer­ence On Health and Envi­ron­ment has tak­en place on Octo­ber 27 — 28 and was ded­i­cat­ed to the 90^th anniver­sary of the san­i­tary and epi­dem­ic ser­vice of Belarus. The event was announced pub­licly on the web­site of the cen­ter; the terms for accred­i­ta­tion have not been defined.

Ale­na Spa­siuk entered the venue with the offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion of the news agency. How­ev­er, five min­utes lat­er, two rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Research and prac­ti­cal Cen­ter came up and asked her to leave, argu­ing they expect­ed only invit­ed jour­nal­ists. She refused, after which deputy chair of main­te­nance depart­ment Henadz Loseu warned that he would call the police and escort­ed her out of the build­ing.

Bela­PAN news agency filed a request to Siarhei Sychyk, the head of the cen­ter, ask­ing to con­sid­er the actions of his sub­or­di­nates, and to instruct them on prin­ci­ples of work with mass media regard­ing the prin­ci­ple of open­ness of state bod­ies. Ana­log­i­cal let­ters were sent to the Min­is­ter of Health Vasil Zharko and the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich.