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Larysa Shchyrakova, a Homiel-based Belsat journalist, is currently in the police department.

Today the Lithuanian Union of Journalists’ (LŽS) Journalist Rights Defence and Monitoring Committee officially appealed to the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a proposal to take active action to defend journalists in neighbouring Belarus from baseless persecution.

Volha Siakhovich, a representative of the Belarusian Association of Journalists,  delivered speech during the UN Security Council Arria meeting. Since the beginning of the 2020 presidential election campaign, the situation with freedom of speech in Belarus has deteriorated dramatically as the authorities launched a violent crackdown trying to discourage journalists and bloggers from reporting on election-related protests. Since May, the authorities have stepped up their efforts to curb media coverage of the protests in Belarus, with more journalists being arrested than ever before.

After the arbitrary detention of about 50 journalists on Thursday, the Belarusian authorities are stepping up the withdrawal of press accreditations for journalists covering the country’s news for foreign media. A wall of silence is gradually isolating Belarus from the rest of the world. The EFJ condemns the inaction and wait-and-see attitude of the international community. The Belarusian Interdepartmental Commission on Security in the Information Sphere has proceeded to a massive cancellation of press accreditations issued to journalists working for foreign media (AFP, AP, ARD, BBC, RFE/RL, Reuters, RFI…) in recent days.