Homel journalist Yauhen Merkis to serve extra 12 days in jail

In August, jour­nal­ists and pro­test­ers were released ear­ly in response to the demands of pro­test­ers and warn­ing strikes held at numer­ous fac­to­ries. In par­tic­u­lar, the work­ers of the Belaru­sian Met­al­lur­gi­cal Plant took to the streets on a sol­i­dar­i­ty ral­ly, out­raged by fraud­u­lent elec­tions and police vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers. On August 14, speak­ing at the fac­to­ry in Zhlobin, chair­man of Homel region­al exec­u­tive com­mit­tee Henadz Salavei declared the release of all those arrest­ed for protest actions.

Yauhen Merkis was one of the released, hav­ing served only 3 out of 15 days of jail that he had got for cov­er­ing   the «wom­en’s march» in Homel. Now the police remem­bered this unserved  term.

«This looks like retal­i­a­tion for stream­ing from protest march­es against the fraude­lent elec­tion results», — says Yauhen’s col­league Mary­na Drabysheuskaya, who’s been just recent­ly released after 10 days in jail under the same charge.

Last time Yauhen Merkis was pre­ven­tive­ly detained on Sep­tem­ber 14, togeth­er with Mary­na Drabysheuskaya. Since then, he’s been kept in the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter. On 17 Sep­tem­ber, judge of Nav­abelit­s­ki dis­trict court of Homel pun­ished Yauhen with a 15-day jail term for alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized march, despite the fact that Merkis had been work­ing there as a jour­nal­ist. Yauhen was tried behind closed doors at Nav­abelit­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment. Such ‘field’ court ses­sions have become a com­mon prac­tice the Belaru­sian police and the courts now.