Third fine for freelance journalism. The court failed to pay attention to contradictions

The jour­nal­ists were found guilty of ille­gal­ly pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing media prod­ucts for the Pol­ish satel­lite TV chan­nel Bel­sat with­out accred­i­ta­tion.

In mid-Feb­ru­ary, the web site of Bel­sat post­ed infor­ma­tion and videos about the mass slaugh­ter of pigs at the farm-mill Sozh in the Homiel dis­trict. Based on these mate­ri­als, Police Cap­tain Jakau Sukha­jk­ou, an inspec­tor at the Homiel dis­trict police depart­ment, drew up the admin­is­tra­tive reports under Arti­cle 22.9, Part 2 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code.

Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki told Judge Andrei Sus­la that there is no inde­pen­dent judi­cia­ry in Belarus. He explained that he had not sent any video record­ings to Bel­sat but only to a num­ber of agen­cies includ­ing N.E.W.S. Infor­ma­c­je. Also, he pub­lished them on his YouTube account in the pub­lic domain. Besides, the sto­ry on Bel­sat has an author – Vol­ha Starastsi­na.

The judge reject­ed Zhukouski’s request to sum­mon the police­man as well as the sales­women of the farm shop who told the free­lancers that there were no pork for sale at the shop dur­ing the pre­vi­ous week. The sales­women could have con­firmed who had been shoot­ing the sto­ry and how he had named him­self.

At the police’s ini­tia­tivee, only the farm’s secu­ri­ty guard Niko­lai Miad­viedzieu was sum­moned to the court. How­ev­er, he failed to rec­og­nize nei­ther Zhuk­ous­ki nor Tolchyn.

«A young man and a girl came on 13 Feb­ru­ary. The guy took pic­tures of the farm’s plan. He was wear­ing a jack­et and looked a bit like Zhuk­ous­ki. But I didn’t see Tolchyn at all», the guard tes­ti­fied.

The court ignored the expla­na­tions of Zhuk­ous­ki and Tolchyn. They argued that they are not jour­nal­ists at Bel­sat; they do not have an employ­ment rela­tion­ship with the TV chan­nel and there­fore they are not accred­it­ed in the Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry. The free­lancers sug­gest­ed to send an inquiry to Bel­sat.

The judge did not take into account these and oth­er con­tra­dic­tions and sen­tenced the free­lancers to heavy fines.

«The court exe­cut­ed the order it had received. A dif­fer­ent ver­dict should not have been expect­ed», said Andrei Tolchyn.

The fines Tolchyn received this year for his free­lance activ­i­ties amount­ed to BYN 2,695 (about EUR 1,120), and Zhuk­ous­ki – BYN 2,572.5 (about EUR 1,070).