Journalist Larysa Shchyrakova’s house search ends in her arrest

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”