Journalist Ales Asiptsou goes on hunger strike, gets 10 days of jail. Alexander Burakou to spend 10 days in jail, too

Yes­ter­day dur­ing the hear­ing Burak­ou pro­vid­ed con­vinc­ing evi­dence that he had been present there as a reporter and a human rights defend­er, per­form­ing his pro­fes­sion­al duties.

The rul­ing for vio­la­tion of Art. 23.34 Part 1 («vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events») based on the reports drawn up by the Lenin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment.

Imme­di­ate­ly after he heard the rul­ing, Burak­ou made a cas­sa­tion­al appeal to Mahil­iou Region­al Court. Right after he left the court room, he was tak­en to jail, where he is to serve his sen­tence, by police offi­cers who had been wait­ing for him in the lob­by.

At 9.30 a.m. Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict court of Mahil­iou began the hear­ing of the case against Bela­PAN news agency reporter Ales Asipt­sou .

Only one jour­nal­ist was able to enter the court­room, aside from Asip­tou and his lawyer.  Judge Natalia Yasen­ka did not let oth­er jour­nal­ists and human rights defend­ers in the court­room, refer­ring to the small size of room and the risk of COVID-19.

Ales Asipt­sou went on hunger strike right after his arrest.

He will con­tin­ue the hunger strike through 10 days of his jail sen­tence.

Jour­nal­ist Ales Asipt­sou dis­ap­peared after the «Anti-parade» protest on Sat­ur­day, May 9, and did not return home.

Mary­na Malchana­va, jour­nal­ist from Babruisk, says they were in touch in the morn­ing, they exchanged infor­ma­tion of what was going on in the city. At 12:38 Mary­na called him again. Asipt­sou told her he was in the car with one of the protest par­tic­i­pants dri­ving around the city. After some time, the jour­nal­ist stopped answer­ing the calls.

Ales Asipt­sou is a free­lance reporter of Bela­PAN. Locat­ed in Mahil­iou, he arrived in Babruisk to cov­er the «Anti-Parade» dri­vers’ protest planned for the Vic­to­ry Day. The police arrest­ed about 20 par­tic­i­pants of the protest.

Asipt­sou’s wife and col­leagues phoned the Babruisk police depart­ment, as well as traf­fic police, but were not giv­en any reli­able infor­ma­tion about Ales. Instead, the police rec­om­mend­ed his wife to report his disappearance.Only about 7 p.m. they informed his wife that he was in a tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Mahil­iou. No rea­sons for deten­tion were giv­en.