Belarusian Journalist Detained As Media Crackdown Continues

Andrey Kuznechyk went out for a bike ride on Novem­ber 25, before return­ing short­ly accom­pa­nied by four men garbed in civil­ian dress, Alesya Rak told RFE/RL.

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2021 (chart)

The four, who did not present any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, then searched their apart­ment, Rak said, only avoid­ing the rooms of their two young chil­dren.

“They took all the elec­tron­ic equip­ment and Andrey’s phone; my mobile phone, my tablet, and mon­ey,” she added.

Kuznechyk was then led away by the group of four, who did not give any rea­son for his deten­tion.

“Andrey was ordered to get dressed and to go with them. He was not allowed to take any­thing with him, only a spare pair of pants. They said that they were tak­ing him away for a short while, for a cou­ple of days,” Kuznechyk’s wife said.

Protests erupt­ed in Belarus last year after Lukashen­ka, in pow­er since 1994, was declared the win­ner of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that oppo­nents and the West say was rigged.

The West has refused to rec­og­nize Lukashen­ka as the legit­i­mate leader of Belarus. The Belaru­sian strong­man is now reliant more than ever on Rus­sia, which ana­lysts say is using his weak­ened posi­tion to strength­en its hold over its small­er neigh­bor.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple were detained and human rights activists say more than 800 peo­ple are now in jail as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion social media chan­nels have been tar­get­ed as well.

The web­site of RFE/RL’s Belarus Ser­vice has been blocked with­in Belarus since August 21, 2020, weeks after the dis­put­ed August 3 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

The accred­i­ta­tion of all local­ly based jour­nal­ists work­ing for for­eign media, includ­ing RFE/RL, were annulled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties in Octo­ber 2020.

Ihar Losik, a pop­u­lar blog­ger and RFE/RL con­sul­tant, was detained on June 25, 2020, and accused of using his pop­u­lar Telegram chan­nel to “pre­pare to dis­rupt pub­lic order.”

Losik is now on tri­al in a closed-door hear­ing.

Six months after the arrest of jour­nal­ist Raman Prata­se­vich, charges of “extrem­ism” are increas­ing­ly being used against Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media, Reporters With­out Bor­ders said on Novem­ber 23.

Prata­se­vich and his Russ­ian girl­friend, Sofia Sape­ga, were detained in May when Belarus scram­bled a mil­i­tary jet to escort their Athens-to-Vil­nius flight to land in Min­sk because of a bomb threat that proved to be false.

Many coun­tries called Belarus’s actions a “state hijack­ing.”

A day after his arrest on May 23, Prata­se­vich appeared with his face swollen in a video broad­cast by Belaru­sian TV, admit­ting to his involve­ment in orga­niz­ing “mass riot­ing.”

Prata­se­vich faces charges of being behind protests that fol­lowed the August 2020 dis­put­ed elec­tion, an offense pun­ish­able by up to 15 years in prison.

He was a key admin­is­tra­tor of the Telegram chan­nel Nex­ta-Live, which like oth­er social media chan­nels was wide­ly used dur­ing the street protests against Lukashen­ka last year both to coor­di­nate demon­stra­tions and share footage of the vio­lent police crack­down.

Six months after his deten­tion, Prata­se­vich is under house arrest at a secret loca­tion. His moth­er is allowed to take him food and his mail, but she has signed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty pledge.

The most recent offi­cial com­ment on Prata­se­vich’s case was on Sep­tem­ber 12 when, speak­ing on state-owned STV, the head of the Min­sk Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee said the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the case would be com­plet­ed in Octo­ber.

He added that the case – which he said also con­cerned Nex­ta founder Stepan Puty­lo, 1863x.com news web­site founder Eduard Palchys, and “anar­chist move­ments” — already con­sist­ed of “more than 600 vol­umes of doc­u­ments.” There has been no fur­ther offi­cial word since then.

Prata­se­vich, who had to wait four more days to see his lawyer, deliv­ered addi­tion­al seem­ing­ly forced con­fes­sions in sev­er­al more pub­lic appear­ances, includ­ing one in an ONT tele­vi­sion inter­view in which he pro­fessed “uncon­di­tion­al respect” for Lukashen­ka, who — he said — had “balls of steel.” He remained in prison for just over a month before being trans­ferred to house arrest.

“The phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure to which Raman Prata­se­vich has been sub­ject­ed for the past six month con­sti­tutes inhu­man treat­ment and even tor­ture,” said Jeanne Cave­li­er, the head of RSF’s East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia desk. “We call for his imme­di­ate release and the release of the 30 oth­er jour­nal­ists and media work­ers arbi­trar­i­ly impris­oned in Belarus.”