Journalist convicted for protests against ‘deep integration’ with Russia

This time, the main wit­ness, a police offi­cer Siarhei Astafyeu — stat­ed that the unau­tho­rized protest on Decem­ber 20 last­ed for a long time. In the evening he saw Dziyana near Yan­ka Kupala park  and took a pic­ture of her on a mobile phone. The pic­ture was not shown to the pub­lic in the court­room.

Accord­ing to Astafyeu, he knows Dziyana «because of work». He claims, that she was not marked as a jour­nal­ist, and shout­ed the slo­gan «Long live Belarus!»

It turned out, the above men­tioned pho­to had been tak­en at the inter­sec­tion of the Inde­pen­dence Avenue and Yan­ka Kupala Park, while in the park Astafyeu «was unable to take a pic­ture, as Ser­adz­iuk turned away.»

Dur­ing the pre­vi­ous tri­al, anoth­er wit­ness, Ivashk­ou, tes­ti­fied that he had seen Dziyana betwen 6 and 6:30 p.m. How­ev­er, at today’s tri­al Ivashk­ou stat­ed he had made a mis­take ear­li­er. NOw he claims, he saw Dziyana at a dif­fer­ent time and in oth­er cir­cum­stances.

The jour­nal­ist point­ed out, such fun­da­men­tal changes of tes­ti­mo­ny are inad­mis­si­ble. She ques­tioned the com­pe­ten­cy of Ivashk­ou.

In 2017, Dziyana was tried by Per­sh­mais­ki court of Min­sk that acquit­ted her when police offi­cers who tes­ti­fied against her had been proven liars. The jour­nal­ist claimed her mis­trust of the wit­ness­es and asked the court to drop the charges.

Despite insuf­fi­cient evi­dence, errors in the tes­ti­mo­ny of wit­ness­es, and oth­er absur­di­ties, the court con­vict­ed her and pun­ished with a fine of 50 base val­ues (1350 BYN, or about 570 Euro).