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International Media Support (IMS) resolutely condemns the Belarusian regime’s assault on the country’s independent media TUT.BY and calls on the international community to take robust action to stop abuses against journalists, media and civil society in Belarus. 

VIENNA, 17 May 2021 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, deplores the latest imprisonment of several journalists in Belarus.

As TUT.BY learned, recently our colleague Katerina Borisevich was transferred to the women’s colony in Gomel. Katerina was sentenced to six months of imprisonment in the so-called “0 ‰ of alcohol” case. The term of imprisonment expires on 19 May, that is, in two days she must be released.

On 14 May, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Minsk begins to consider the “case of students” who were detained last November and accused of organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order. There are 12 accused in total: ten students from different Minsk universities, a medical graduate and a teacher at BSUIR. For more than six months they have been in jail. By the beginning of the first session, more than a hundred people had come to the courthouse, but only some of them managed to get inside. Journalists of independent media and even some relatives of the accused had to wait outside. Police asked the crowd to disperse, after which the arrests took place.

On Thursday. freelance photographer Tatsyana Kapitonava was detained at Startup Family coworking in Minsk, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reports.