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  • Journalist Larysa Shchyrakova’s house search ends in her arrest

    On February 18, security forces searched journalist Larysa Shchyrakova's house. This is Larysa's fourth search since February 2021.

    Larysa Shchyrakova. Archive photo

    On Feb­ru­ary 18, at about 5 pm, three offi­cers of the Homel Depart­ment for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion accom­pa­nied by two wit­ness­es vis­it­ed her house once again. It was stat­ed that the jour­nal­ist was alleged­ly involved in a crim­i­nal case on orga­niz­ing dis­rup­tive actions in the city on 20 Sep­tem­ber 2020 (Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code).

    Police seized a Dell com­put­er, a Pana­son­ic cam­era, and an iPhone 5, but nev­er left a copy of the seizure report.

    “After the search,” Shchyrako­va said, “I was tak­en to Chyr­von­aarmeyskaya Street to be ques­tioned as a wit­ness. But I had noth­ing to tes­ti­fy about: on 20 Sep­tem­ber 2020, I was not present on the protest march against elec­tion fraud and did not cov­er it. I used my priv­i­lege against self-incrim­i­na­tion.

    “I was also asked if I was going to pick up my son and “bail out” abroad soon. I explained that I had stopped jour­nal­ism alto­geth­er and pub­licly announced that on Face­book.”

    Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist, the offi­cers offered her to record a video con­firm­ing her refusal to work as a jour­nal­ist, but she reject­ed the offer on the pre­text that “their record­ings turn out to be low-qual­i­ty.” She promised to record such an appeal on her own and post it on Face­book in addi­tion to what she had writ­ten.

    Accord­ing to Shchyrako­va, the “carousel” search­es of jour­nal­ists, blog­gers, and pub­lic activists’ homes are direct­ly con­nect­ed with the polit­i­cal cam­paigns in the coun­try — this time with the announced ref­er­en­dum on amend­ments to the Con­sti­tu­tion. It seems that the author­i­ties can­not stand the fact that soci­ety has alter­na­tive views on the orga­ni­za­tion of the cam­paign and vot­ing. There­fore, var­i­ous rea­sons are being devised to obstruct the activ­i­ty, instill more fear, and at the same time dis­cred­it well-known fig­ures.

    In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary in Homel, police con­duct­ed a third search in the apart­ment of one of the region’s old­est jour­nal­ists on the grounds that he alleged­ly scat­tered about some tire-burst­ing spikes near the traf­fic police sta­tion, “act­ing with extreme cyn­i­cism.”

    Ларыса Шчыракова: “Мая журналісцкая кар’ера скончылася”

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