Belarus: judicial repression after police repression

Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are now fac­ing a wave of judi­cial repres­sion, fol­low­ing police repres­sion. The Belaru­sian judi­cia­ry is step­ping up pros­e­cu­tions for par­tic­i­pa­tion in unau­tho­rised demon­stra­tions against jour­nal­ists who were actu­al­ly present to cov­er the events. The Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (EFJ) joins the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) to call on Belaru­sian law enforce­ment agen­cies to imme­di­ate­ly stop admin­is­tra­tive and judi­cial pro­ceed­ings against jour­nal­ists.

Bel­sat jour­nal­ist Eka­te­ri­na Andree­va (our pic­ture) will be tried in the Zavad­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk on Thurs­day. She was detained while she was cov­er­ing a protest ral­ly on 14 July. She is accused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unau­tho­rized ral­ly (Arti­cle 23.34 of the Belaru­sian Admin­is­tra­tive Code).

Free­lance jour­nal­ist Alyak­sei Kairis, from Grod­no, was called by the prosecutor’s office today because of his alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized street action.

Siarhei Lyud­ke­vich, a Bela­PAN cor­re­spon­dent in Grod­no, was sum­moned to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on 26 August. He will be ques­tioned on a crim­i­nal case under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (“Orga­ni­za­tion or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order”).

Alyak­sei Kairis and Siarhei Lyud­ke­vich were detained by police on the evening of 9 August while cov­er­ing a peace­ful protest ral­ly in Grod­no. They were tak­en to a deten­tion cen­ter. On 10 August, the court found the two jour­nal­ists guilty of vio­lat­ing the law on mass events (Arti­cle 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code).

BAJ points out that accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Law on Mass Media, jour­nal­ists have the right to attend unau­tho­rized ral­lies.

The wave of pros­e­cu­tions of jour­nal­ists fol­lows an unprece­dent­ed wave of police vio­lence. Since the begin­ning of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign, BAJ has doc­u­ment­ed 200 seri­ous vio­la­tions of press free­dom in Belarus, includ­ing arbi­trary arrests, depor­ta­tions and phys­i­cal vio­lence.

BAJ report­ed at least 38 cas­es of jour­nal­ists injured or beat­en by law enforce­ment offi­cers. At least two jour­nal­ists have been injured by rub­ber bul­lets fired by police offi­cers. Press pho­tog­ra­ph­er Natalia Lub­nevskaya was injured in the knee by a police­man who delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed her, although she was clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able as a jour­nal­ist.

“It is impor­tant to sup­port vic­tims of repres­sion and demand that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties desist with acts of vio­lence,” said BAJ Pres­i­dent Andrei Bas­tunets in an inter­view with Jour­nal­ists For Tol­er­ance and Article19.