Journalists Dzmitry Semchanka and Henadz Mazheika sentenced to 3 years in prison for inciting enmity

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka and his wife Yulia, also a cer­ti­fied jour­nal­ist, were orig­i­nal­ly arrest­ed on 15 Sep­tem­ber 2022 for “shar­ing con­tent of extrem­ist Telegram chan­nels.” Since the fam­i­ly is rais­ing a minor son, the moth­er got off with an admin­is­tra­tive fine, and Dzmit­ry was detained for 15 days for “dis­or­der­ly con­duct.”

Sem­chanka was not released on time, and new reports were drawn up against him, so he spent over 40 days in deten­tion, only to be charged lat­er with a crim­i­nal case. Human rights activists declared him a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka worked as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent and polit­i­cal observ­er at the All-Nation­al TV in 2009–2020. For all his mer­its he was trust­ed to lead the “pres­i­den­tial pool” of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s clos­est media entourage.

How­ev­er, in August 2020 he pub­licly con­demned the unprece­dent­ed bru­tal­i­ty of the law enforcers and left the TV chan­nel in protest. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, his house was raid­ed and he was detained for 15 days for par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests.

Henadz Mazhei­ka was detained on the night of Octo­ber 2. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist’s moth­er, on Octo­ber 1, KGB offi­cers searched her son’s apart­ment for two and a half hours. The sanc­tion referred to Arti­cles 130 and 369 of the Crim­i­nal Code (incit­ing racial, nation­al, reli­gious, or oth­er social hatred or dis­cord and insult­ing a gov­ern­ment offi­cial).

On Sep­tem­ber 29, after the pub­li­ca­tion of an arti­cle about Andrei Zeltser, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus blocked access to the web­site kp.by. Accord­ing to the agen­cy’s com­ment, the deci­sion was made since the pub­li­ca­tion pub­lished infor­ma­tion “that con­tributes to the for­ma­tion of sources of threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty.”