Tribuna journo Dzmitry Ruto, Hrodna.life editor Iryna Novik detained

On Tues­day morn­ing, Bel­sat got infor­ma­tion about more cas­es of appre­hend­ing Belaru­sian media work­ers.

Dzmit­ry Ruto, an author at the media out­let Tri­buna, was detained when the police noticed a white-red-white scarf in his car. He was accused of ‘hold­ing an unau­tho­rised mass event’ under Arti­cle 24.23 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offences and tak­en to Kas­trych­nit­s­ki police depart­ment of Min­sk, tribuna.com reports.

As report­ed ear­li­er, uni­formed ser­vices came to the place of Iry­na Novik, the spe­cial projects edi­tor of Hrodna.life, on May 30, but the woman was out. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), Iry­na Novik showed up at the local police sta­tion after being sum­moned. A bit lat­er, she was placed in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre; her flat was searched.

On May 30, Hrodna.life edi­tor-in-chief Alyak­sei Shota was detained and released in Hrod­na. He had his lap­top, phone, three old hard dri­ves, and a WRW umbrel­la tak­en away. Being accused of ‘dis­trib­ut­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als’, i.e. to cit­ing sources banned by Belaru­sian author­i­ties again, he is await­ing tri­al. Notably, Belaru­sian offi­cials uploaded to Youtube a video about his deten­tion two days before the deten­tion. If found guilty, he may face a fine of up to 14,500 belaru­sian rubles.