Belarus Freelance Journalists Heavily Fined in Big Numbers

The author­i­ties have increased pres­sure on the jour­nal­ists who coop­er­ate with Bel­sat TV and do not have accred­i­ta­tion by the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs.

This week, as many as six Min­sk jour­nal­ists received sum­mons to vis­it the Savet­s­ki police depart­ment of Min­sk. They are Kat­siary­na Andreye­va, Tat­siana Belasho­va, Vital Dubik, Siarhei Kavaliou, Vol­ha Chaichyts and Andrei Kozel.

Each of the jour­nal­ists are charged under infa­mous arti­cle 22.9 p. 2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts). How­ev­er, none of them know what exact­ly they are charged with and why the police sum­mon so many peo­ple in one day.

In Viteb­sk region, the police drew up 5 reports at the same time against  jour­nal­ists Tat­siana Smotk­i­na and Dzmit­ry Lupach. They are charged under Art. 22.9 part 2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, again. They are imput­ed with vio­la­tion of Arti­cle 35 of the Media Law.

In Homel, free­lance jour­nal­ist Kas­tus Zhuk­ousky received six admin­is­tra­tive reports from police, by mail, for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

On May 29, the case against Mahil­iou free­lance jour­nal­ists Ali­na Skrabuno­va and Yauhen Hlushk­ou was heard by court. They are pun­ished with heavy fines for their coop­er­a­tion with Bel­sat TV. Ali­na Skrabuno­va was fined 50 basic val­ues (about 900 euro). Yauhen Hlushk­ou received a fine of 30 basic val­ues (about 550 euro).

May 28, Kalinkavichy dis­trict court gave inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va a large fine under Arti­cle 22.9 part 2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code.

Judge Svet­lana Kuhei­ka ruled to fine her 40 basic val­ues (about 430 euro). She found the jour­nal­ist guilty of ille­gal pro­duc­tion of media prod­ucts  with­out accred­i­ta­tion for Bel­sat TV. How­ev­er, Shchyrako­va livestreamed the events around the hunger strike of six moth­ers in Kalinkavichy only to her Face­book page, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for oth­er media to take video con­tent from it.

Shchyrako­va appeared in court with a gauze mask on her lips. She with­drew it before talk­ing to the court. The jour­nal­ist claimed she did not trust the Belaru­sian jus­tice in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed cas­es, such as the cov­er­age of the ‘Moth­ers 328’ hunger strike. She explained that as a cit­i­zen she has the right to col­lect and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion and does not need a per­mis­sion from any­body to do that.

The police and courts use per­se­cu­tion and fines to silence inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and stop them from cov­er­ing the prob­lems peo­ple are con­cerned about. Dur­ing the two weeks of hunger strike, none of the offi­cial media have vis­it­ed the moth­ers whose chil­dren are serv­ing long sen­tences for drug use, and lis­tened to them,’ — Shchyrako­va says.

About two dozen com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers came to sup­port the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist in court, includ­ing the hunger strik­ers — Ele­na Kaza­ko­va from Kalinkavichy and Svi­at­lana Bah­danovich from Mazyr.

«Such crazy fines just don’t make sense! What for? For the jour­nal­ist just telling the truth about us? That the author­i­ties final­ly heard us and made a small step towards revi­sion of leg­is­la­tion and, hope­ful­ly, the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of Arti­cle 328 of the Crim­i­nal Code on ille­gal drug traf­fick­ing,» — says Ele­na Kaza­ko­va, the own­er of the apart­ment turned into a hunger strike head­quar­ters.

Alto­geth­er, since the begin­ning of 2018, the jour­nal­ists who coop­er­ate with Bel­sat TV received fines of about 20, 000 USD.