“Stick to the truth, stick together!”

“Stick to the truth, stick togeth­er!” The war against the media is glob­al, the threats are world­wide. On 3 May, BAJ and LUJ will once again remind us of the prob­lems that jour­nal­ists face in Belarus and around the world.

Belarus remains the most dan­ger­ous coun­try in Europe for jour­nal­ists. Lukashenka’s regime has 35 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives in prison (In the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the announce­ment, the num­ber was 36. On May 1, we received infor­ma­tion about the release of one of our col­leagues, who had ful­ly served her 2.5 year sen­tence). The sen­tences hand­ed down to Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are among the harsh­est in the world.

More than three years after the vio­lent sup­pres­sion of post-elec­tion protests, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties con­tin­ue to severe­ly pun­ish jour­nal­ists and blog­gers not only for social and polit­i­cal mate­r­i­al but also for sim­ply belong­ing to a jour­nal­is­tic organ­i­sa­tion. The total sen­tences hand­ed down to Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists last year amount­ed to almost 100 years’ impris­on­ment.

The lat­est move by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties was a mass extra­ju­di­cial seizure of domain names of inde­pen­dent media sites with the .by exten­sion.

But the chal­lenges and threats to jour­nal­ists in Europe are not only man­i­fest­ed in Belarus, they are becom­ing glob­al. Phish­ing and cyber attacks, sur­veil­lance and pub­lic threats against jour­nal­ists, hack­ing of email accounts — these are all wide-reach­ing threats to jour­nal­ists against which there is no pro­tec­tion. And all our Ukrain­ian col­leagues today feel a par­tic­u­lar exis­ten­tial threat. The threat of being killed any moment.

On 3 May, World Press Free­dom Day, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and the Lithuan­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists once again call on the whole world to stand up for jour­nal­ists. We call for the release of all impris­oned jour­nal­ists in Belarus and guar­an­tees of safe­ty for jour­nal­ists in the region.

On this day, Belaru­sian and Lithuan­ian jour­nal­ists will hold a sym­bol­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty action at the for­mer tsarist prison “Luk­iškės” in Vil­nius, car­ry­ing por­traits of their impris­oned col­leagues.

“Stick to the truth, stick togeth­er!”

BAJ calls on jour­nal­ists around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers, take pic­tures with them in out­stand­ing places in your city (out­side Belarus) and post them on social media using the hash­tags. Don’t for­get to send them to intercomm@baj.media.

#СвабодуЖурналістам

#BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist

Belarusian media workers behind bars