KGB labels several Mahiliou media and sports news website as “extremist formations”

On Novem­ber 29, the Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee of Belarus made the cor­re­spon­dent deci­sion on region­al media. The rul­ing for Tribuna.com Belarus was issued on Decem­ber 5.

The KGB accused jour­nal­ists Dzmit­ry Salau­jou, Uladz­imir Lapt­se­vich, and Ali­ak­san­dr Burak­ou Sr from Mahil­iou of involve­ment in “extrem­ist activ­i­ties” by means of region­al media.

These jour­nal­ists are cur­rent­ly out­side of Belarus. They had to leave the coun­try due to per­se­cu­tion and pres­sure relat­ed to their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties fol­low­ing the 2020 protests.

Tribuna.com is the largest sports web­site in Belarus, for­mer­ly known as Goals.by. Since August 2020, the site has been blocked for users with­in Belarus. As of August 2021, the con­tent of the site and its social media accounts have been des­ig­nat­ed as “extrem­ist”.

Tri­buna jour­nal­ist Dzmit­ry Ruto was arrest­ed on 1 June 2020 for wear­ing a white and red scarf while dri­ving his car. He was sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion alleged­ly for par­tic­i­pat­ing in an ille­gal protest.

Anoth­er Tri­buna jour­nal­ist, Ali­ak­san­dr Ivulin, was arrest­ed on 3 June 2021 and lat­er sen­tenced to two years in prison for par­tic­i­pat­ing in actions that vio­lat­ed pub­lic order. In Feb­ru­ary 2023, he com­plet­ed his sen­tence and left Belarus.

Under cur­rent Belaru­sian law, indi­vid­u­als who are iden­ti­fied as mem­bers of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion may incur crim­i­nal charges for “cre­at­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion” (Arti­cle 361–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code) or “facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ty” (Arti­cle 361–4 of the Crim­i­nal Code). The pun­ish­ment for these acts includes a max­i­mum of 10 years of impris­on­ment.

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