CPJ condemns Belarus ‘witch hunt’ after three BelaPAN journalists sentenced to lengthy prison terms

All three have denied the charges, and Leushy­na and Navazhy­lau plan to appeal the ver­dict, accord­ing to for­mer Bela­PAN cor­re­spon­dent Tanya Korovenko­va, who spoke to CPJ via mes­sag­ing app. CPJ was unable to ver­i­fy whether Ali­ak­san­drau intends to appeal.

Bela­PAN cov­ered the nation­wide 2020 protests demand­ing Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko resign, as CPJ has doc­u­ment­ed. On Novem­ber 1, 2021, the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee of Belarus declared Bela­PAN an extrem­ist group, media report­ed.

“CPJ is alarmed by today’s sen­tenc­ing of three Bela­PAN jour­nal­ists in a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed case and denounces the witch hunt against the country’s lead­ing inde­pen­dent news agency,” said Gul­noza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor, in New York. “Belaru­sian author­i­ties must imme­di­ate­ly release Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau, Iry­na Leushy­na, and all oth­er impris­oned mem­bers of the press, and let the media work freely.”

On Thurs­day, Octo­ber 6, a court in Min­sk, the cap­i­tal, con­vict­ed Ali­ak­san­drau, founder and chief edi­tor of the news web­site Belarus­ki Zhur­nal and for­mer deputy direc­tor of the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN, of high trea­son, cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group, large-scale tax eva­sion, and “orga­niz­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in gross vio­la­tions of pub­lic order,” those reports said.

The court sen­tenced him to 14 years in prison and fined him 32,000 Belaru­sian rubles (US$12,600). Ali­ak­san­drau has been detained since Jan­u­ary 12, 2021.

For­mer Bela­PAN direc­tor Navazhy­lau was con­vict­ed of cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group and large-scale tax eva­sion, sen­tenced to 6 years in prison, and fined 22,400 Belaru­sian rubles (US$8,820), those reports said. He has been detained since August 18, 2021.

Bela­PAN direc­tor and chief edi­tor Leushy­na was con­vict­ed of cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group and sen­tenced to 4 years in prison. She was detained on August 18, 2021.

The closed-door tri­al began on June 6, 2022, and was sus­pend­ed for two months in June and near­ly two weeks in Sep­tem­ber, accord­ing to reports by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), a banned local advo­ca­cy and trade group. Due to the secre­cy of the pro­ce­dure, the penal­ties request­ed by the state pros­e­cu­tor were not dis­closed before the ver­dict, BAJ report­ed.

Belarus was the world’s fifth-worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists, with at least 19 jour­nal­ists behind bars on Decem­ber 1, 2021, when CPJ pub­lished its most recent prison cen­sus.