International journalist organizations call for release of Andrei Hniot

Media Free­dom Rapid Response part­ner orga­ni­za­tions have called on Ser­bian author­i­ties to release Belaru­sian activist and jour­nal­ist Andrei Hniot.

Andrei Hniot. Pho­to: Insta­gram

Hniot now faces depor­ta­tion from Ser­bia to Belarus on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges. His health has dete­ri­o­rat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in prison in Bel­grade.

The appeal to the Ser­bian author­i­ties was signed by the Inter­na­tion­al Press Insti­tute, the Euro­pean Cen­ter for Press and Media Free­dom, the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, and oth­er inter­na­tion­al part­ner orga­ni­za­tions of Media Free­dom Rapid Response.

Media Free­dom Rapid Response (MFRR) mon­i­tors and responds to press and media free­dom vio­la­tions in EU mem­ber states and can­di­date coun­tries. The project pro­vides infor­ma­tion, and legal and prac­ti­cal sup­port to jour­nal­ists and media pro­fes­sion­als. It was launched in 2020 and is fund­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion.

The BelPol asso­ci­a­tion, rep­re­sent­ing for­mer Belaru­sian law enforcers, has con­firmed that Andrei Hniot, a 41-year-old film­mak­er, was detained by the Ser­bian Bor­der Guard on Octo­ber 30, 2023, upon arrival in Bel­grade. He was sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over to the police.

The rea­son for deten­tion is the individual’s inclu­sion on the inter­na­tion­al want­ed list at the request of the Belaru­sian Inter­pol Bureau on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2023. The agency asks to extra­dite Hniot to Belarus for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

On Feb­ru­ary 29, the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter announced that Inter­pol had blocked Hniot’s data, cit­ing the need to ver­i­fy the grounds for which the Belaru­sian author­i­ties had declared him want­ed. The director’s legal coun­sel main­tains that the accused is being pros­e­cut­ed for polit­i­cal, not eco­nom­ic, rea­sons, as assert­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Min­sk.

On March 12, the Court of Appeal in Bel­grade over­turned the deci­sion to extra­dite Hniot to Belarus. The case was remand­ed for recon­sid­er­a­tion.

Andrei Hniot is a direc­tor of TV com­mer­cials and music videos and a jour­nal­ist. He was engaged in video pro­duc­tion for the asso­ci­a­tion SOS.by, which has been des­ig­nat­ed as an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion” in Belarus. Accord­ing to MFRS, he worked as a free­lancer for the inde­pen­dent TV chan­nel “Present Time”, which is part of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty media group.