Review of Belarusian journalists’ arrests and detention in May

May 11–12, dif­fer­ent courts of the coun­try tried par­tic­i­pants of actions of sol­i­dar­i­ty with blog­ger Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki (YouTube-chan­nel Coun­try for liv­ing), who is now serv­ing a 15-day deten­tion). The reporters who were present dur­ing these actions of sol­i­dar­i­ty got arrest­ed.

In Mahil­iou, on May 6 peo­ple came to the build­ing of the deten­tion cen­ter after the arrest of the blog­ger.  About 100 peo­ple gath­ered to express their sup­port to him. Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki was livestream­ing from the meet­ing. He was also present and post­ed a video from May 5, when sev­er­al dozen peo­ple did not let police offi­cers to detain Tsikhanouski’s sup­port­er on Viteb­s­ki Avenue.

Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki is a blog­ger and free­lancer. He coop­er­at­ed with Bel­sat TV as a cam­era­man, as well as with the region­al 6tv.by web­site. 

The police drew up two reports on Arshyn­s­ki, both for the vio­la­tion of Arti­cle 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code of Belarus (par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized mass event). Accord­ing to the author­i­ties, pub­lic meet­ings with blog­ger Tikhanous­ki, as well as the gath­er­ing near the deten­tion cen­ter on May 6 are con­sid­ered mass events.

Arshyn­s­ki was arrest­ed May 7, he is in the deten­tion cen­ter since that time.

May 12 Lenin­s­ki dis­trict court of Mahil­iou  sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to 11 days of deten­tion, under charges of vio­lat­ing Arti­cle 23.34 Part 1 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code, (Vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events).

Zmitser Salauyeu, chief edi­tor of 6tv.by, wit­nessed in court that  Arshyn­s­ki had just been doing his job: he had an assign­ment from the edi­tor to cov­er the event.

How­ev­er, judge Rat­nika­va sen­tenced the jour­nal­ist to 11 days of deten­tion.

 On May 11, anoth­er court (Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict court of Mahil­iou )tried Arshyn­s­ki on sim­i­lar charges (Arti­cle 23.34 Part 1) The jour­nal­ist was brought to court from the deten­tion cen­ter. Judge Tat­siana Mikhaila­va sen­tenced him to 10 days of jail for «par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized mass event» —  for livestream­ing from actions in sup­port of the blog­ger on May 5/

Alto­geth­er, Arshyn­s­ki will serve 21 days of arrest.

Ales Asipt­sou is a free­lance reporter of Bela­PAN news agency. Locat­ed in Mahil­iou, he arrived in Babruisk to cov­er the «Anti-Parade» dri­vers’ protest planned for the Vic­to­ry Day. The police arrest­ed about 20 par­tic­i­pants of the protest.

Mary­na Malchana­va, jour­nal­ist from Babruisk, says they were in touch in the morn­ing, they exchanged infor­ma­tion of what was going on in the city. At 12:38 Mary­na called him again. Asipt­sou told her he was in the car with one of the protest par­tic­i­pants dri­ving around the city. After some time the jour­nal­ist stopped answer­ing the calls.

Asipt­sou’s wife and col­leagues phoned the Babruisk police depart­ment, as well as traf­fic police, but were not giv­en any reli­able infor­ma­tion about Ales. Instead, the police rec­om­mend­ed his wife to report his disappearance.Only about 7 p.m. they informed his wife that he was in a tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Mahil­iou. No rea­sons for deten­tion were giv­en.

May 12 Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict court of Mahil­iou heard the case of Ales Asipt­sou. The jour­nal­ist was charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unau­tho­rized mass event — the meet­ing of the team of the blog «A coun­try for liv­ing» with their fol­low­ers on May 5th.

Asipt­sou explained that he was cov­er­ing the pub­lic meet­ing as a reporter: he watched the events and took pic­tures to report on the event. He not­ed that he was marked by an appro­pri­ate badge, and had press cre­den­tials and an assign­ment from the edi­tor. .

Court rul­ing: 10 days of arrest under Art. 23.34 Part 1 «Vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events.»

Ales Asipt­sou has been on hunger strike since his arrest on May 9. After the tri­al Asipt­sou said he would con­tin­ue the hunger strike until the end of the sen­tence.

Alexan­der Burak­ou — coop­er­ates with Deutsche Welle, has applied for accred­i­ta­tion, but was denied by the Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry.

Burak­ou was arrest­ed by police near the court build­ing in Mahil­iou on 8 May.

On 12 May the court heard his case. The reporter wait­ed for the tri­al in a pre-tri­al deten­tion facil­i­ty.

Court rul­ing: 10 days of arrest under Art. 23.34 Part 1 «Vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events.»

Accord­ing to the police report, on May 6 Burak­ou came to site of the tem­po­rary deten­tion facil­i­ty in a car with two oth­er per­sons, where he took part in an unsanc­tioned mass event for «a lit­tle more than two min­utes.» Burak­ou was not ofi­cial­ly informed that the event was not autho­rized. Also, the police report does not clar­i­fy the type of mass event: a demon­stra­tion, ral­ly, pick­et or march. In fact, peo­ple gath­ered in front of the deten­tion cen­ter to find out about the fate of blog­ger Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki who had been arrest­ed on May 5 after the meet­ing with his fol­low­ers.

Dur­ing the hear­ing Burak­ou pro­vid­ed con­vinc­ing evi­dence that he had been present there as a reporter and a human rights defend­er, per­form­ing his pro­fes­sion­al duties.

Zmitser Lupach coop­er­ates with Bel­sat TV and lives in Hly­bokaye, Viteb­sk Region.

On May 8, the police arrest­ed Lupach in his office. They sent the jour­nal­ist to a deten­tion cen­ter to wait for tri­al.

May 11, Hly­bokaye dis­trict court judge Dzmit­ry Tara­se­vich con­sid­ered two admin­is­tra­tive charges against Lupach:  Art. 22.9 Part 2( «ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts» — this is a charge for a dif­fer­ent sto­ry pro­duced by Lupach, not tied to blog­ger Tsikhanous­ki) and Art. 23.34 Part 1 ( «Vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events», when he was cov­er­ing a pub­lic meet­ing with the blog­ger). Court rul­ing: 10 days in jail and a fine of 45 basic val­ues (about 480 euro), on the charges, respec­tive­ly.

After the break, Zmit­ser’s lawyer joined the tri­al. He found a lot of flaws in police reports and asked the judge to send them back for revi­sion. How­ev­er, but the judge decid­ed to announce the rul­ing.

The jour­nal­ist col­lapsed at the cour­t­house, and his wife called an ambu­lance, as his blood pres­sure was very high. The para­medics con­firmed that Zmitser had a hyper­ten­sive cri­sis. The jour­nal­ist was tak­en to the local hos­pi­tal. The ambu­lance was fol­lowed by a police car.

On May 11–13, Lupach was in an inten­sive care unit of local hos­pi­tal, he was diag­nosed with a heart dis­ease — car­diac angi­na. On May 13 Lupach was dis­charged from the inten­sive care unit.

Lupach’s sen­tence — 10 days of jail was post­poned to May 18.

This way, 4 per­sons are serv­ing arrests under Art. 23.34 Part 1 «Vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events.»  In fact, the jour­nal­ists were treat­ed as par­tic­i­pants of mass events. OSCE media free­dom rep­re­sen­ta­tive called for release of the jour­nal­ists.

Law of the Repub­lic of Belarus «On Mass Media» enti­tles jour­nal­ists to be present at mass events, in emer­gency areas, at places of social­ly impor­tant events and pass on infor­ma­tion from there. Thus, the jour­nal­ists had the right to be present at the events and per­form their work there.

Pros­e­cu­tion of col­leagues for per­for­mance of their pro­fes­sion­al duties draws a strong protest in the pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty. We believe the use of admin­is­tra­tive arrest as a penal­ty dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is espe­cial­ly cyn­i­cal as it puts the health of the jour­nal­ists at seri­ous risk.

Belarusian Association of Journalists demands to release reporters and review their cases. Statement