Aliaksei Batsiukou, vlogger and journalist from Mahiliou, reportedly detained

On Decem­ber 5 and 6, jour­nal­ists and activists sus­pect­ed of hav­ing links with the region­al media resources Mahiliou.Media and 6TV Belarus were searched and inter­ro­gat­ed. On 29 Novem­ber, the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee declared these media out­lets as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions”. The Inte­ri­or Min­istry of Belarus post­ed a noti­fi­ca­tion about this sta­tus on Decem­ber 4.

Last Fri­day, the state TV chan­nel Belarus 4 Mahil­iou aired a show “Face Down”, fea­tur­ing the for­mer direc­tor of the Mahil­iou His­to­ry Muse­um and vlog­ger Ali­ak­sei Bat­siuk­ou bru­tal­ly detained dur­ing a raid.

Accord­ing to the show, Ali­ak­sei Bat­siuk­ou edit­ed a media resource rec­og­nized by the KGB as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion.” He was also involved in dis­trib­ut­ing funds intend­ed for jour­nal­ists’ salaries.

Dzmit­ry Salau­jou, an activist referred to as Bat­siuk­ou’s accom­plice in the movie, believes that Ali­ak­sei has been detained in a crim­i­nal case. His where­abouts have been unknown for almost two weeks.

In late July and ear­ly August, Ali­ak­sei Bat­siuk­ou was detained in an admin­is­tra­tive case for 11 days. He was found guilty of dis­trib­ut­ing “extrem­ist infor­ma­tion prod­ucts”.

Ali­ak­sei Bat­siuk­ou was fined in 2020 for par­tic­i­pat­ing in unau­tho­rized pub­lic gath­er­ings. As a con­se­quence, his labor con­tract was not renewed in Jan­u­ary 2021, and he was forced to leave his posi­tion as direc­tor of the Mahil­iou His­to­ry Muse­um.

After leav­ing the muse­um, Bat­siuk­ou cre­at­ed his own YouTube chan­nel, where he dis­cussed the his­to­ry of Mahil­iou.

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