#BecauseTheJournalist

The list of “per­sons prone to extrem­ist activ­i­ty,” updat­ed on August 23 on the web­site of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus, indi­cates that Brest-based jour­nal­ist Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a sen­tence. The same is true for Ali­ak­san­dr Kirke­vich, a jour­nal­ist from Hrod­na. How­ev­er, he has long since left Belarus and is not […]

The Fritt Ord Foun­da­tion and the Zeit Stiftung Bucerius Foun­da­tion announced that the 2024 Free Media Awards will be pre­sent­ed to jour­nal­ists and media from Belarus, Geor­gia, Ukraine, Azer­bai­jan, Rus­sia and, for the first time, Hun­gary. Among the lau­re­ates, the name of Gomel jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va, who is cur­rent­ly behind bars, was announced.

The cou­ple was released from prison on par­don. Both were released from prison on July 3, but human rights activists report­ed only the release of Pali­na Palavin­ka. No infor­ma­tion about Dzmit­ry Luk­sha was report­ed.

Lut­ski­na was released from cus­tody a few days after Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka announced the release of sev­er­al polit­i­cal pris­on­ers with seri­ous health issues. Kse­nia Lut­ski­na suf­fers from asth­ma and has been diag­nosed with can­cer. Two tumors were found in her head, one of which was removed in 2012.

The con­sid­er­a­tion of the appeal of Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk, a jour­nal­ist from Brest, sen­tenced to 5 years in prison and fined $14,000, is sched­uled for August 16. The hear­ing in the Supreme Court will begin at 9:30 a.m. Judge Siarhei Hurau will pre­side.

On August 8, an infor­ma­tion stand was opened in Helsin­ki fea­tur­ing mail­box­es for let­ters to be sent to Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists who are behind bars. The mount has been installed in the Media Muse­um Merk­ki.

The Inter­na­tion­al and the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (IFJ-EFJ) join their affil­i­ate, the Belaru­sian Jour­nal­ists’ Asso­ci­a­tion (BAJ), in call­ing on the regime to release all jour­nal­ists and media work­ers behind bars. The Fed­er­a­tions also urge the author­i­ties to stop their harass­ment of exiled jour­nal­ists, includ­ing raid­ing their res­i­dences and caus­ing dis­tress to their fam­i­lies to […]

On June 28, Supreme Court Judge Siarhei Hurau con­sid­ered the appeal of Anas­ta­sia Mat­si­ash. The appeal was denied and the orig­i­nal ver­dict of the court of first instance was upheld.