OSCE Media Freedom Representative meets with representatives of the BAJ and editors of independent media

Ribeiro met with BAJ mem­bers Andrei Bas­tunets (Chair­per­son), Oleg Ageev, Boris Goret­skiy and Olga Khvoin. She also met with Mari­na Zolo­to­va from the media por­tal Tut.by; Iri­na Lev­shi­na from Bela­PAN news agency; Aleksy Dzikaw­ic­ki with Bel­sat TV chan­nel; Iri­na Novik from the news por­tal, Hrodna.life; Vladimir Yanuke­vich with Intex-Press news­pa­per; and Alex­ey Kozliuk from Human Con­stan­ta, a human rights orga­ni­za­tion.

The Rep­re­sen­ta­tive expressed her seri­ous con­cern regard­ing the neg­a­tive impli­ca­tions of the ongo­ing polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in the coun­try on the work of media out­lets and the con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tions and harass­ment of media actors and pro­fes­sion­als. She also not­ed the wor­ri­some legal devel­op­ments in the coun­try and their poten­tial to neg­a­tive­ly affect free­dom of expres­sion and free flow of infor­ma­tion, both offline and online.

Ribeiro thanked the par­tic­i­pants for their courage and con­tin­ued ded­i­ca­tion to media free­dom prin­ci­ples, despite the var­i­ous chal­lenges to jour­nal­ists’ safe­ty in Belarus in recent months.

The Rep­re­sen­ta­tive pre­vi­ous­ly expressed her con­cern about the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of media free­dom in Belarus on 16 Feb­ru­ary and 18 Feb­ru­ary 2021.