EBU calls for all journalists imprisoned in Belarus to be released

the EBU calls for all jour­nal­ists detained for doing their jobs to be released. Cur­rent­ly three jour­nal­ists who work for Bel­sat, the Belaru­sian sta­tion owned by Pol­ish broad­cast­er TVP, are in prison in Belarus.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, 31 jour­nal­ists are cur­rent­ly in prison or police deten­tion in Belarus. Many are being sub­ject­ed to exces­sive pre-tri­al deten­tions on charges they strong­ly deny. Oth­ers have received long jail sen­tences.

Iry­na Slau­nika­va is a Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist work­ing for Bel­sat. She was detained along with her hus­band Alyak­san­dr Loj­ka on 30 Octo­ber 2021 when they returned to Belarus from a hol­i­day in Egypt. They were first detained for 15 days for «shar­ing alleged­ly extrem­ist mate­ri­als on Face­book» and «pet­ty hooli­gan­ism». But their deten­tion has been repeat­ed­ly extend­ed and now Ms Slau­nika­va has been giv­en the sta­tus as a sus­pect involved in «the orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of activ­i­ties that sig­nif­i­cant­ly vio­late the social order or active­ly par­tic­i­pate in them».

This is the same legal basis on which two oth­er Bel­sat jour­nal­ists have been giv­en lengthy prison sen­tences. In Novem­ber 2020, Kat­syary­na Andreye­va and Darya Chultso­va were arrest­ed while con­duct­ing a live broad­cast of clash­es between secu­ri­ty forces and peo­ple attend­ing a memo­r­i­al fol­low­ing the death of a pro­test­er. They were charged with the “orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order”. They were held for two months before their tri­al and then jailed for two years.

Liz Corbin, EBU Deputy Media Direc­tor and Head of News said: “The jour­nal­ists impris­oned in Belarus are brave indi­vid­u­als pay­ing an intol­er­a­ble price for their ded­i­ca­tion to report­ing the truth about what is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try. It is part of a wider cam­paign by the gov­ern­ment to silence inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and to pre­vent the Belaru­sian peo­ple from hav­ing access to trust­wor­thy and accu­rate infor­ma­tion.”

In addi­tion to the deten­tions, accred­i­ta­tions of Belaru­sian nation­als who were work­ing for for­eign news orga­ni­za­tions were can­celled by the author­i­ties and have not been rein­stat­ed. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is banned from legal­ly oper­at­ing in the coun­try and has relo­cat­ed out­side Belarus.

While a num­ber of for­eign jour­nal­ists, from both broad­cast and print/online media, have recent­ly been grant­ed annu­al accred­i­ta­tions to work in Belarus after a long hia­tus, this is not a sign of improved media free­dom.

Pres­i­dent Lukashenko recent­ly gave an inter­view to EBU Mem­ber, the BBC. Excerpts of the inter­view con­duct­ed by Moscow Cor­re­spon­dent Steve Rosen­berg were broad­cast by state media but edit­ed in such a way as to dis­tort the edi­to­r­i­al sense of the inter­view. 

The EBU calls for all jour­nal­ists impris­oned in Belarus to be released and for jour­nal­ists to be able to do their job safe­ly and with­out threat or hin­drance.