Ex-state media journalist Dzmitry Semchanka sentenced to 13 more days of arrest

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka was to have been released on 30 Sep­tem­ber after serv­ing 15 days of arrest in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter. On 15 Sep­tem­ber, he and his wife were detained for alleged­ly “shar­ing infor­ma­tion from extrem­ist Telegram chan­nels.” As they are rais­ing a one-year-old child, the moth­er was released pend­ing tri­al, and the father was kept in the deten­tion cen­ter to be sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive arrest “for dis­or­der­ly con­duct” the day after. Yulia Sem­chanka, who has a degree in jour­nal­ism but now works as a make-up artist, got away with a fine of 960 Belaru­sian rubles ($380).

On 3 Octo­ber, the Frun­zen­s­ki Dis­trict Court extend­ed his deten­tion for almost two weeks. More­over, unlike the pre­vi­ous hear­ings, this one was held in cam­era.

On 29 Sep­tem­ber, law enforcers came to the Bela­gra com­pa­ny where Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka worked as press sec­re­tary after he left the state TV chan­nel. The com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and sev­er­al employ­ees were detained.

It soon became known that crim­i­nal and admin­is­tra­tive cas­es were opened against the busi­ness­men for par­tic­i­pat­ing in peace­ful ral­lies in 2020 and fol­low­ing “extrem­ist” Telegram chan­nels. Even though the offi­cial rea­son for the vis­it was “tax eva­sion”.

For over 10 years, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka worked as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent and then as a polit­i­cal observ­er for the All-Nation­al TV chan­nel. Due to his mer­its, he was trust­ed by his fel­low pro­pa­gan­dists to head the “pres­i­den­tial pool” of Lukashenka’s clos­est media entourage.

How­ev­er, in August 2020, he pub­licly con­demned the unprece­dent­ed bru­tal­i­ty of secu­ri­ty forces against mass protests and resigned from the TV sta­tion to protest against the state pol­i­cy of sup­press­ing dis­sent.

On 10 Sep­tem­ber of the same year, he was detained and his house searched. The Frun­zen­s­ki Dis­trict Court sen­tenced him to 15 days for par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized mass event.

In Novem­ber 2020, Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka was hired by Bela­gra com­pa­ny which sells Belaru­sian agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery and spare parts and has offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tions in sev­er­al coun­tries.