Belarusian security forces interrogate mother of exiled ex-Belsat journalist twice

Law enforce­ment offi­cers were inter­est­ed in whether jour­nal­ist Siarhei Skulavets was plan­ning to return to Belarus. How­ev­er, as they told his moth­er, “he will be con­sid­ered a crim­i­nal no mat­ter what, even if the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion changes.”

Siarhei Skulavets. Pho­to: Julia Cialpuk / Face­book

On June 24, Siarhei’s moth­er was sum­moned to the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee office in the Ivat­se­vichy Dis­trict.

“The inves­ti­ga­tor, right in front of my mom, pulled out a thick fold­er with my so-called case file, showed her pho­tos of me — includ­ing pic­tures tak­en in the U.S. — and asked her to iden­ti­fy me. At the end, he asked if I was plan­ning to return,” Skulavets wrote on his Face­book page.

Three days lat­er, on June 27, crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tors from the Ivat­se­vichy Dis­trict Police came to his mother’s home. They demand­ed to check her phone, exam­ined her social media and mes­sag­ing apps, and specif­i­cal­ly looked through her mes­sages with her son. Again, they asked whether Siarhei was plan­ning to return. They told her that “he will still be con­sid­ered a crim­i­nal,” even if the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try changes.

“But it could just as eas­i­ly hap­pen that they swap places with the peo­ple they now call crim­i­nals,” Siarhei Skulavets not­ed in his post.

One of the inves­ti­ga­tors even saved his phone num­ber in Siarhei’s mother’s phone — to pass along to her son. They sug­gest­ed that he should call the local police depart­ment him­self, “but no aggres­sive behav­iour.” Siarhei says he has no inten­tion of call­ing:

“I have noth­ing to tell them. The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee told my mom I’d be arrest­ed the moment I set foot in Belarus. But my mom knows I’m not a crim­i­nal — I haven’t done any­thing wrong. The only thing that hurts is that they keep ter­ror­iz­ing my rel­a­tives.

After they raid­ed my 86-year-old grandmother’s home around New Year’s eve, she only lived for a few more weeks. Maybe the stress from that played a role.”

Accord­ing to Skulavets, the author­i­ties’ increased activ­i­ty might be con­nect­ed to the fact that his crim­i­nal case is being pre­pared for tri­al. He still doesn’t know the exact charges, but rel­a­tives have been told the case is “relat­ed to Bel­sat.”

Siarhei Skulavets now lives in the Unit­ed States. He and his fam­i­ly left Belarus in the sum­mer of 2023 after being warned that anoth­er wave of repres­sion against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists was com­ing.