Foreign journalists lose their accreditation in Belarus

Ilia Kuz­ni­at­sou and Russ­ian cit­i­zens Sergey Sergeyev and Mikhail Fomin (all three were accred­it­ed by the Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry as jour­nal­ists of the ARD TV chan­nel) were detained in Min­sk the day before. The jour­nal­ists spent the night at the police depart­ment, they were released only in the morn­ing.

- Drew up a pro­to­col under Art. 23.34 — active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mass action and was deprived of accred­i­ta­tion «in order to ensure the infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty of the coun­try,» Ilya Kuznetsov told TUT.BY.

Accord­ing to Ilya, his Russ­ian col­leagues are deport­ed from Belarus, banned from trav­el­ling to Belarus for 5 years.

The Russ­ian jour­nal­ists were picked up by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Russ­ian embassy. It is not yet known when the tri­al of Ilya Kuznetsov will take place.

The for­eign min­istry accred­i­ta­tion, which allows them to legal­ly work in the coun­try, was also deprived of the BBC jour­nal­ists Tatyana Mel­nichuk and Tatyana Yanut­se­vich.

- They called in the morn­ing from the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, they said that accord­ing to the deci­sion of the Inter­de­part­men­tal Com­mis­sion on Secu­ri­ty in the Infor­ma­tion Sphere, accred­i­ta­tion has been can­celed from today, — Tatyana Mel­nichuk told TUT.BY. — When asked what I was guilty of, they answered that they were instruct­ed to con­vey only this infor­ma­tion.

Radio Svabo­da informs that by the deci­sion of the same com­mis­sion its cor­re­spon­dents Ales Dashchin­sky, Oleg Gruzdilovich, Vladimir Gridin, Alek­san­dra Dynko were deprived of their accred­i­ta­tion.

Vasi­ly Fedosenko (Reuters), Sergey Gapon (AFP), Gen­nady Sharip­kin (RFi) are also on the list of those who have their accred­i­ta­tion can­celed.

The day before the famous Swedish pho­to­jour­nal­ist, win­ner of World Press Pho­to Paul Han­son was also deport­ed from Belarus with a ban on entry for five years.

Han­son was detained on 27 August. On that day, more than 50 jour­nal­ists were detained in Min­sk, includ­ing the cor­re­spon­dents of TUT.BY. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists appealed to the head of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee with a demand to ini­ti­ate a crim­i­nal case for obstruct­ing the law­ful pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ty of the jour­nal­ist.

About 50 journalists detained, 4 to stand trial, 1 deported

Belarus: criminal complaint against obstruction of journalists’ work