Two TUT.BY media workers sentenced to 12 years in prison, three more wanted

The closed tri­al of the liq­ui­dat­ed TUT.BY MEDIA staff mem­bers start­ed on 9 Jan­u­ary and end­ed in the judge hand­ing down harsh sen­tences: edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va and CEO Lud­mi­la Chek­ina received 12 years in prison each. They have been behind bars since 18 May 2021, when law enforcers searched the media’s office and detained half a dozen of its staff mem­bers.

Three more defen­dants were sup­posed to stand tri­al: Vol­ha Loi­ka, edi­tor-in-chief of the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sec­tion, Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va, edi­tor of the real estate sec­tion, and Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka, a legal con­sul­tant at TUT.BY. They were bailed last year with a pledge to appear in court, but left the coun­try as soon as the court date was announced. The “fugi­tives” have been put on an inter­na­tion­al want­ed list and their case was sev­ered.

The TUT.BY work­ers were accused of sev­er­al “crimes” that a pri­ori entailed long terms of impris­on­ment: grand tax eva­sion, incit­ing hatred, caus­ing harm to nation­al secu­ri­ty, etc. In addi­tion, Lud­mi­la Chek­ina, Mary­na Zolata­va, Vol­ha Loi­ka, and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va were includ­ed in the KGB list as per­sons “asso­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties”.

Lud­mi­la Chek­ina, Mary­na Zolata­va, Vol­ha Loi­ka, and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va were accused of pub­lish­ing arti­cles on the media out­let TUT.BY and its affil­i­at­ed social media pages pre­sent­ing “a pos­i­tive assess­ment of the actions of the oppo­nents of the author­i­ties and a neg­a­tive assess­ment of the offi­cials advo­cat­ing the main­te­nance of the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al order, as well as implic­it coor­di­na­tion of protest activ­i­ty, infor­ma­tion aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing the sit­u­a­tion and harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty”.

On 18 May 2021, law enforcers raid­ed the TUT.BY edi­to­r­i­al office. Half a dozen of staff mem­bers were arrest­ed, includ­ing Yulia Char­ni­auskaya, wife of the deceased founder of the por­tal Yury Zis­er. Crim­i­nal cas­es were brought against all of them under part 2 of arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (grand tax eva­sion). The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ruled to block the outlet’s web­site, and the activ­i­ties of numer­ous jour­nal­ist teams were par­a­lyzed.

Soon jour­nal­ists and man­agers who were lucky to flee Belarus estab­lished Zerkalo.io, a media sub­sti­tut­ing TUT.BY.