Homel journalist and local history expert Yauhen Merkis was sentenced to 4 years

The tri­al was held behind closed doors. Only the announce­ment of the ver­dict was made pub­lic. Sev­en court ses­sions were held. Accord­ing to human rights activists and friends of the jour­nal­ist, there was talk of trans­fer­ring pho­to infor­ma­tion on the pres­ence and move­ment of Russ­ian mil­i­tary equip­ment in the region to online resources clas­si­fied as “extrem­ist”.

It is the ninth month of Yauhen Merkis’ impris­on­ment in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. One day in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter is count­ed by the court as one and a half days in a colony. The secu­ri­ty forces detained him on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2022. A search was con­duct­ed then at the jour­nal­ist’s place of res­i­dence, the infor­ma­tion car­ri­ers were seized. Search­es took place at his father’s home, as well as at friends’ homes.

The human rights com­mu­ni­ty has rec­og­nized Yauhen Merkis as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

In March of this year, after the end of the inves­ti­ga­tion, Yauhen had a short-term meet­ing with his fam­i­ly. He did not com­plain about his health, although he had colds. In Decem­ber, he spent four days in a pun­ish­ment cell. He was pun­ished with tougher con­di­tions of deten­tion for alleged­ly not shav­ing.

Even before his arrest, Yauhen Merkis aban­doned his jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties due to the fact that a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media out­lets he col­lab­o­rat­ed with were clas­si­fied by the author­i­ties as “extrem­ist for­ma­tions”.

Merkis is a his­to­ri­an by edu­ca­tion; he grad­u­at­ed from the His­to­ry Depart­ment of the Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty. He focused on local his­to­ry, received a cer­tifi­cate of a tour guide, includ­ing for work­ing with for­eign­ers in Ger­man. The jour­nal­ist speaks Belaru­sian well. He also learned Eng­lish. Merkis also tried to learn French in the pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter, but, as far as we know, he had dif­fi­cul­ties with get­ting text­books.

Yauhen began to pop­u­lar­ize his­to­ry, lan­guage, and cul­ture of his native land and ethno­graph­ic trav­els as a stu­dent. Lat­er he found­ed a web­site Local His­to­ry of Homel and Homel region, head­ed the Homel youth pub­lic local his­to­ry asso­ci­a­tion Tala­ka, and he was also the region­al coor­di­na­tor of a social and cul­tur­al cam­paign Budz­ma!.

When protests of the so-called “social par­a­sites” took place in Homel and oth­er cities of Belarus in 2017, Merkis was stream­ing from mass actions and became one of the most rec­og­niz­able region­al lead­ing jour­nal­ists.

Pri­or to his deten­tion, Yauhen char­ac­ter­ized him­self as fol­lows: “I’m an Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian, a sup­port­er of West­ern val­ues and patri­archy in the fam­i­ly, I love punk, rock, and retro music of the 1950s–1970s, the works of “true poets” — Ana­toly Sys and Vasyl Stus. I love Homel. I val­ue authen­tic­i­ty in peo­ple. But the idea is the main and pri­ma­ry thing. I’m a depres­sive opti­mist. I admire peo­ple like the head of Tes­la Motors, Elon Musk, who go far with their ideas and activ­i­ties, who change the world”.

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