Journalist Dzmitry Lupach publicly declared “criminal” in Hlybokaje

Dzmit­ry Lupach’s pho­tos, along with those of his two chil­dren, were dis­played on the infor­ma­tion stand near the Hly­boka­je police sta­tion. The stand is typ­i­cal­ly used for post­ing want­ed per­son notices. There is now a sep­a­rate list titled ‘Crim­i­nals.’ How­ev­er, most of these indi­vid­u­als have not been tried or proven guilty of any crimes.

Dzmit­ry Lupach

Accord­ing to reports, Dzmit­ry Lupach has abscond­ed the inves­tiga­tive agen­cies. His alleged crime is “recruit­ment, involve­ment in extrem­ist activ­i­ties, train­ing, and oth­er relat­ed activ­i­ties.”

Free­lance jour­nal­ist Dzmit­ry Lupach was forced to leave Belarus after numer­ous cas­es of admin­is­tra­tive pros­e­cu­tion for coop­er­a­tion with inde­pen­dent media. Just before his depar­ture in July 2021, he was detained for three days in a crim­i­nal case for alleged­ly incit­ing hatred. In Decem­ber 2023, law enforce­ment offi­cers searched Dzmit­ry Lupach’s apart­ment in Hly­bokaye, as well as his inher­it­ed coun­try house.

In Decem­ber of last year, a series of inter­ro­ga­tions and search­es took place in the Vit­seb­sk region as part of a crim­i­nal case against the cre­ators of a sto­ry filmed in Polatsk and broad­cast on the Bel­sat TV chan­nel. The TV chan­nel has been declared an ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tion’ in Belarus. Dzmit­ry Lupach sus­pects that the search­es in his house may be relat­ed to this case, but he is not aware of any per­son­al accu­sa­tions of ‘pro­mot­ing extrem­ism’. He has not received a sum­mons to appear in court, and there is no offi­cial infor­ma­tion that he has already been con­vict­ed of a crim­i­nal offense. That is why he believes that being labeled a ‘crim­i­nal’ is slan­der­ous.

On the same stand near the Hly­bokaye police sta­tion, there are also pho­tos of his chil­dren – his son Valiantsin and daugh­ter Kat­siary­na, who now also live abroad. The arti­cle men­tions Valiantsin Lupach alleged­ly evad­ing the draft and Katiary­na Lupach alleged­ly abscond­ing from the inves­ti­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed under part 1 of arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them).

Svi­at­lana, the eldest daugh­ter of Dzmit­ry Lupach, has already been con­vict­ed under the same arti­cle and is serv­ing her sen­tence in Homel Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 4. On Jan­u­ary 19 of this year, the wom­an’s name appeared on the List of Cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus, For­eign Nation­als, and State­less Per­sons Involved in Extrem­ist Activ­i­ties. The Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized her as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.