Silenced voices: 22 journalists spend World Press Freedom Day behind bars in Belarus

The sit­u­a­tion with free­dom of speech in Belarus remains the worst in Europe. Since the sweep­ing repres­sion that began in 2020, hun­dreds of Belaru­sian media work­ers have endured deten­tion, arrest, and per­se­cu­tion.

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Recent­ly, sev­er­al well-known jour­nal­ists were released — and we sin­cere­ly wel­come our col­leagues and friends on the out­side. But we wor­ry about those who remain behind bars.

In Feb­ru­ary and March of this year, after large-scale releas­es of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, sev­er­al media spe­cial­ists were sen­tenced to enor­mous terms over trea­son against the state — up to 14 years of impris­on­ment.

We are con­cerned that amid the wide­spread joy and atten­tion sur­round­ing the release of promi­nent fig­ures, those who remain behind bars may receive less notice, grad­u­al­ly fad­ing from pub­lic view.

The issue of jailed jour­nal­ists can­not be con­sid­ered resolved as long as even one per­son remains behind bars.

On May 3, World Press Free­dom Day, we join col­leagues around the world in demand­ing the release of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists.

#Stand­With­Be­larus #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist #Jour­nal­is­mIs­No­taCrime

This video was cre­at­ed with the help of AI