‘I feel the need to cover human problems’. A freelance journalist Volha Chaichyts fined again

The local gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties per­mit­ted a con­struct­ing com­pa­ny to den­si­fy a quar­ter, where peo­ple with vision impair­ments reside. The local dwellers start­ed protest­ing against the deci­sion. The author­i­ties react­ed to the protests by penal­iz­ing a jour­nal­ist, who report­ed about the prob­lem.

Accord­ing to the court deci­sion, Chaichyts was guilty of pro­duc­ing a report for a for­eign media out­let ‘Bel­sat’ TV Chan­nel with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

‘How­ev­er, I don’t need any accred­i­ta­tion, in order to col­lect and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion about events in Belarus… The right is giv­en to me by arti­cle 34 of Con­sti­tu­tion of Belarus,” — not­ed the jour­nal­ist in the court room.

Ms Chaichyts’ col­leagues tried to take footage of the lit­i­ga­tion. How­ev­er, the judge banned TV-jour­nal­ists to report from the court room, refer­ring to some inter­nal instruc­tion. The argu­ments that such film­ing is not for­bid­den by the Con­sti­tu­tion and that the judi­cia­ry sys­tem should be trans­par­ent do not influ­ence the judge’s deci­sion, who even ordered to call the police to make the jour­nal­ists stop tak­ing footage from the tri­al.

It was the 22^nd tri­al against free­lance jour­nal­ists, coop­er­at­ing with ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel, in 2018.

— I often pre­pare mate­ri­als for TV-reports from the regions or take footage on acute social top­ics. That’s prob­a­bly the main rea­son for so many tri­als against me. The top­ics require urgent reac­tion on the part of gov­ern­men­tal author­i­ties and draw a lot of atten­tion to them. I think that this per­se­cu­tion is aimed at silenc­ing the prob­lems that take place in the coun­try, — not­ed Vol­ha Chaichyts.

Sev­er­al local dwellers, who protest­ed against den­si­fi­ca­tion in the res­i­den­tial area, came to court to sup­port the jour­nal­ist.

‘We have come here, in order to sup­port the jour­nal­ists, who high­light our prob­lem. We are high­ly grate­ful to them. It is well seen that they are eager to help us. The ‘Bel­sat’ report showed a very seri­ous prob­lem, since the pro­ject­ed block of flats will ruin the bar­ri­er-free envi­ron­ment for peo­ple with vision impair­ments,’ — said a local dweller Ala Valenchuke­vich.

Still, nei­ther the local res­i­dents’ sup­port, nor the high social impor­tance of the top­ic influ­enced the court deci­sion. Once again, a huge fine was imposed on the free­lance reporter for her jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty.