The Dutch Journalists Frightened by Sergeant with Shooting while Reporting from ‘Zakhad-2017’ Military Exercises

Illus­tra­tive pho­to: surfanon.net

The Dutch jour­nal­ists want­ed to expe­ri­ence all aspects of ordi­nary civ­il life dur­ing the mil­i­tary exer­cis­es in the dis­trict cen­ter. Also, they were inter­est­ed in prepar­ing a report for their news­pa­per. In par­tic­u­lar, they want­ed to pass a check­point, to inquire the mil­i­tary men about the con­duct­ed exer­cis­es. Despite the free­lance reporter’s crit­i­cism, the guests expressed per­sis­tence and tried to pass one of main check­points with the armed police and mil­i­tary offi­cers at Barok sub­urb of Hly­bokaye togeth­er with their Belaru­sian guide on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2017.

The police rep­re­sen­ta­tives refused to talk to the Dutch reporters, since, alleged­ly, every­thing was kept in secre­cy. Also, the police told them that the jour­nal­ists weren’t per­mit­ted to film the loca­tion, since they didn’t have the press cre­den­tials from the Min­istry of Defense.

The police pro­posed the jour­nal­ists polite­ly to pass the check­point imme­di­ate­ly in either of direc­tions.

All at once, a mil­i­tary per­son in the sergeant rank came out of a tent and start­ed curs­ing at the jour­nal­ists and fright­en­ing them with shoot­ing.

As soon as the jour­nal­ists tried to tell him some­thing about their rights and the law, the mil­i­tary man start­ed curs­ing even more severe­ly and con­tin­ued shak­ing his gun at them.

As soon as the Dutch media work­ers decid­ed to pass the check­point and go to the city, the police searched the car and the sergeant raised a mil­i­tary bar­ri­er — a stick with the attached gear and let the car move for­ward. Upon arrival in Hly­bokaye, the jour­nal­ists tried to talk to the mil­i­tary or police offi­cers who were involved in the exer­cis­es, but all in vain. They weren’t pro­vid­ed with any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion at all.