Ten days in jail for reporting Babruisk court: journalists have no right to cover unauthorized protests

Latsin­s­ki was tried along with two oth­er peo­ple detained at the protest.  They also received 10-day sen­tences. The cas­es were heard by judge Tat­siana Tarabuye­va.

The defen­dants did not have lawyers to defend them at court.

Siarhei Latsin­s­ki was detained togeth­er with his wife, Ale­sia Latsin­skaya, a jour­nal­ist of local por­tal bobr.by and a mem­ber of BAJ. She had an edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment to report from the event, but it seemed to mean noth­ing for the riot police.

Ale­sia says, they were brought to Babrusk city police depart­ment. Dur­ing per­son­al search she was forced to take off all her clothes.

«They took me into the per­son­al search room. There were two female police offi­cers. They ordered me to take off my dress, bra, and even panties, — Alesya says. — They looked at me for a few sec­onds and then told me to get dressed.  Before that, they warned me that any dis­agree­ment with the orders would be treat­ed as dis­obe­di­ence to law­ful demands of police offi­cers.»

Ale­sia was the only one who was searched so «care­ful­ly».

«I believe they did it to show me my place, to humil­i­ate me, and to intim­i­date oth­er women, like, this is what can hap­pen to you if you are arrest­ed at a pick­et,» — the jour­nal­ist said.

Ale­sia was let go after ques­tion­ing.

«The police­man did not let me talk to any­one, and escort­ed me out­side, say­ing, go and take care of your child,» — Ale­sia said. (The Latsin­skis have a 5‑year-old son.)

Siarhei Latsin­s­ki was left in cus­tody until hear­ing today . The judge reject­ed his request to have his wife rep­re­sent him in court, say­ing that Ale­sia was not a lawyer by edu­ca­tion.

Ale­sia Latsin­skaya appeared in court as a wit­ness.

«The judge did not lis­ten to any­thing I had to say, she did­n’t care that Siarhei was there as a jour­nal­ist and as an elec­tion observ­er from the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee, reg­is­tered at the Lenin­s­ki dis­trict elec­tion com­mis­sion. — the jour­nal­ist said, —

The judge claimed that jour­nal­ists have no right to cov­er unau­tho­rized protests.»

In the evening on June 19 anoth­er jour­nal­ist — Dzia­n­is Nosau of Vech­erni Babruisk was arrest­ed in Babruisk. He came to the police sta­tion to sup­port the detainees, but did not see any­body and left.

«It was walk­ing down the street and stopped for a moment near a bus stop to say hel­lo to a friend.  Two riot police­man rushed towards us: «You were warned, dis­perse». I tried to explain that I was on my way home, and was about to cross the street, they still detained me.»— Dzia­n­is told BAJ about his deten­tion.

He was let go after ques­tion­ing.