Hrodna: Eight policemen detain Belsat crew over livestream, camera seized

“The stream was over, and we were going back to the car. We saw a group of strong peo­ple fol­low­ing us. As soon as we turned round the cor­ner, they imme­di­ate­ly jumped up and shout­ed that they were from Lenin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment. There were eight of them,” said jour­nal­ist Pavel Mazhey­ka who wit­nessed the deten­tion.

The plain­clothed police­men round­ed up the two Bel­sat con­trib­u­tors, forcibly put them in a van and drove in an unknown direc­tion.

The crew had to spend about three three hours in the police sta­tion. A pro­to­col was drawn upon them under Art. 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences (ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts). The police­men seized all their equop­ment, includ­ing a cam­era and mobile phones.

“They were wait­ing for our leave so that they could detain behind the scenes, not in the heart of the city. They nev­er do it in pub­lic. They attacked us in a thug­gish way. If we were ordi­nary peo­ple unfa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus, we could start push­ing back against them. But we were ful­ly aware of the role being played by our brave police,” Zmitser Mitske­vich told Bel­sat about the details of the deten­tion after the release.

The hear­ing of the admin­is­tra­tive case is sched­uled for June 18. It is to begin at 14.10 in Lenin­s­ki dis­trict court of Hrod­na.