Freelance Journalists in Homel Complain to Prosecutor General

Natal­lia Kry­vashei and Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki, with diplo­mas «For ded­i­ca­tion to pro­fes­sion» from the Homel branch of BAJ, this year

Larysa Schyrako­va. Pho­to by svaboda.org

They filed the com­plaint against the fines to the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Ali­ak­san­dr Kaniuk.

They are to pay large sums of mon­ey for the fact that they had authored articels pub­lished or shown on Bel­sat: Natal­lia has to pay 24.3 mil­lion rubles, Larysa — 3.6 mil­lion rubles, Kas­tus — 31.5 mil­li­ion rubles.

The com­plaints were com­posed with the help of BAJ lawyer Leanid Sudalen­ka. The com­plaint refers to arti­cles 23 and 34 of the Belaru­sian Con­sti­tu­tion and arti­cle 19 of the ICCPR.

The fines were imposed on the jour­nal­ists between March and July 2015 (See the chart). All the fines were upheld by the court of appeal.

Pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists under arti­cle 22.9 last­ed for more than a year and end­ed after a press con­fer­ence of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka in August when he promised to take care of the sit­u­a­tion. In fact, there real­ly were no more new tri­als, how­ev­er, the fines imposed in the ear­li­er peri­od were not over­turned.

Article 22.9 of the Code of Administrative Violations