“Rewarding the brave efforts of journalists from Belarus.” BAJ receives Eastern Partnership Prize

Since 2018, the East­ern Part­ner­ship Civ­il Soci­ety Forum has been giv­ing awards to out­stand­ing orga­ni­za­tions in the region for their excep­tion­al and ded­i­cat­ed efforts to con­sis­tent­ly defend fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

The prize was received by BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets.

“We live in this crazy world of wars and con­flicts and it’s cru­cial that we remem­ber jour­nal­ists impris­oned in Belarus and the rest of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers there. We must keep Belarus in the inter­na­tion­al spot­light,” he stat­ed in his address.

Andrei Bas­tunets also not­ed that more than 1400 non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, such as BAJ, were shut down in Belarus over the last three years. How­ev­er, the asso­ci­a­tion per­sist­ed in its activ­i­ties from abroad, despite being lat­er declared an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. Even their infor­ma­tion­al chan­nels, such as the web­site, social media accounts, and logo, were deemed extrem­ist. Nonethe­less, accord­ing to the BAJ chair­man, the most chal­leng­ing predica­ment is that 33 jour­nal­ists remain incar­cer­at­ed, with rough­ly 1,500 indi­vid­u­als being rec­og­nized as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

“Civ­il soci­ety groups are com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues despite chal­lenges and oppo­si­tion,” the award com­mit­tee empha­sized in their state­ment. “Your unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to advanc­ing free expres­sion and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Belarus is admirable.”

Valer Kavaleus­ki, For­eign Affairs Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed Tran­si­tion­al Cab­i­net of Belarus com­ment­ed on the award.

“Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists have brave­ly worked in unsafe and oppres­sive sit­u­a­tions and have been appro­pri­ate­ly acknowl­edged and com­mend­ed for their efforts”.

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