Solidarity Marathon for Imprisoned Belarusian Journalists held in Canada

“Over the past three years, IFEX has observed a rise in attacks on free­dom of expres­sion and access to infor­ma­tion in Belarus. Civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions have been sup­pressed, human rights defend­ers have fled the coun­try, and jour­nal­ists are being unjust­ly impris­oned. There are no signs of repres­sion slow­ing down,” the network’s staff stat­ed in a com­men­tary for BAJ.

IFEX was found­ed in 1992 in Mon­tre­al. Mul­ti­ple non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions agreed to work togeth­er to sup­port free­dom of expres­sion. Today, over 100 net­work mem­bers in 70 coun­tries col­lab­o­rate to pro­tect and pro­mote these val­ues. The UN rec­og­nized Novem­ber 2 as the Inter­na­tion­al Day to End Impuni­ty for Crimes against Jour­nal­ists, thanks to IFEX’s efforts.

Dur­ing the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon, par­tic­i­pants held por­traits of their impris­oned col­leagues, includ­ing Andrzej Poc­zobut, Mary­na Zolata­va, Ihar Losik, and Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich.

“We gath­ered to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with over 30 jour­nal­ists who are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Belarus. Women jour­nal­ists, in par­tic­u­lar, are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to vio­lence,” empha­sized the Marathon par­tic­i­pants.

IFEX aims to increase aware­ness and gain sup­port from the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. It is impor­tant to have civic space for a healthy and pros­per­ous democ­ra­cy. They encour­age oth­ers to join the cam­paign and spread the word.

BAJ calls on jour­nal­ists around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers, take pic­tures with them in out­stand­ing places in your city (out­side Belarus) and post them on social media using the hash­tags #СвабодуЖурналістам and #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist. Don’t for­get to send them to intercomm@baj.media.

#СвабодуЖурналістам
#BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist

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An isosceles triangle. A free journalism forum taking place in Vilnius