Journalist Volha Czajczyc arrested for doing her job

From the very start, the police did not like that Vol­ha was record­ing in the police build­ing. The jour­nal­ist told Belsat.eu what hap­pened next:

“When I was detained, I was mak­ing a video, film­ing the police. When we entered the police sta­tion, the dis­trict police offi­cer of the Baraulyany police depart­ment, Dzmit­ry Smyk, asked me to turn off the cam­era. I said that the police sta­tion is not a closed facil­i­ty, it is a pub­lic place, I have the right to recird there. Then he force­ful­ly took the phone from me and delet­ed all the videos of the police that I shot. I was left in the cor­ri­dor, no actions were car­ried out with me for a long time. They brought papers to acquaint me with my rights. I asked them to speak Belaru­sian with me, to which they declared that we have two state lan­guages, and they have the right to speak any of them. Then they left. No one kept me there by force, I had no right to leave the depart­ment, but I had the right to walk inside of it.

I went to the head of the police to com­plain that my rights were being vio­lat­ed, and that the police were oblig­ed to speak with me in the state lan­guage I want­ed. To which he began to yell at me and kicked me out.

It was Kanstantsin Zay­ats — the head of the Baraulyany police depart­ment. Only after three hours had passed, they drew up a report about the arti­cle about Kura­p­aty and released me”.

The jour­nal­ist Vol­ha Czjczyc was detained in Kura­p­aty and tak­en to the police depart­ment to draw up a report for “record­ing video with­out accred­i­ta­tion” on Octo­ber 14.