Security officials enter offices and flats of BAJ, human rights defenders and journalists

 “Andrei Bas­tunets is being tak­en away by the police offi­cers of the Min­sk city exec­u­tive com­mit­tee. At least that’s how they intro­duced them­selves. The house is not searched, but Bas­tunets is tak­en away, as the search will be car­ried out in the BAJ office. The police behave polite­ly and urge not to wor­ry, ” Sabi­na Bry­lo, the wife of Bas­tunets, said. She does not know the rea­son for the search in BAJ’s office. The police offi­cers alleged­ly said that they would show all the nec­es­sary papers “when the time comes”. It was not pos­si­ble to con­tact Haret­s­ki and Aheyeu: Haret­ski’s phone is still work­ing, Aheyeu’s is not.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is a Belaru­sian non-gov­ern­men­tal pub­lic orga­ni­za­tion. It unites cit­i­zens engaged in pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ty or con­tribut­ing to its devel­op­ment. Found­ed in 1995, it under­went state re-reg­is­tra­tion in 2006. BAJ advo­cates for the rights of jour­nal­ists and defends prin­ci­ples of free and pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ism.

Search­es in the flats of jour­nal­ists and human rights defend­ers

As report­ed by the non-reg­is­tered Vias­na human rights cen­ter, on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 16, riot police offi­cers came to the house of the Homiel free­lance jour­nal­ist Lar­isa Shchyrako­va . She is being searched as part of a crim­i­nal case under Art. 362 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (mur­der of an employ­ee of the inter­nal affairs bod­ies). Anoth­er Homiel jour­nal­ist, Ana­toly Gotov­chits, is also being searched.

The search­es were con­duct­ed at the mem­bers of the Mahilou branch of «Vias­na» Ali­ak­sei Kolchyn and Barys Buhel and Mahilou jour­nal­ist Ales Burak­ou Jr.

In addi­tion, search­es were car­ried out at the offices of the heads of the Mazyr and Svet­la­horsk branch­es of the HRC “Vias­na” Uladz­imir Tseli­a­pun and  Ale­na Maslyuko­va.

The search was car­ried out at the office of the coor­di­na­tor of the cam­paign «Human Rights Defend­ers Against the Death Penal­ty» Andrei Palu­da . His phone is off.

“We will post all the infor­ma­tion on our depart­men­tal resources, but for now we are work­ing with this infor­ma­tion,” Vol­ha Chamadana­va, an offi­cial spokes­woman for the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, said.

Upd Search is under way at the apart­ment where the press sec­re­tary of Barys Zvozkau Belaru­sian Human Rights House Yauhe­nia Parashchanka is present with her young son.

The Investigative Committee comments:

The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee con­tin­ues to inves­ti­gate the crim­i­nal case under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus (Orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of actions that seri­ous­ly vio­late pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them).

As part of the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion to estab­lish the cir­cum­stances of fund­ing the protest, the inves­ti­ga­tion bod­ies ini­ti­at­ed search­es of orga­ni­za­tions that posi­tion them­selves as human rights groups.

Pro­ce­dur­al actions are car­ried out by the offi­cers of the Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion (aka GUBOPiK, or GUBAZiK) of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs and autho­rized by the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office. The final legal assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion will fol­low the com­ple­tion of all pro­ce­dur­al actions.