BAJ statement on mass detentions of journalists

These days, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists not­ed at least 15 cas­es when reporters, includ­ing for­eign ones, were detained when per­form­ing their pro­fes­sion­al duties. 

Some of the jour­nal­ists were told they were not detained but tak­en to a police sta­tion for an iden­ti­ty check. How­ev­er, it was obvi­ous­ly done to keep them from report­ing.

RFE/RL reporter Anton Trafi­movich had his nose bro­ken dur­ing a bru­tal arrest.

On June 23, after the first wave of deten­tions of reporters, BAJ and 57 media orga­ni­za­tions addressed the state author­i­ties of Belarus with the demand to stop harass­ment of jour­nal­ists for per­for­mance of their pro­fes­sion­al duties.

The state­ment demand­ed to pro­vide a legal assess­ment of the law-enforce­ment offi­cers’ activ­i­ties, includ­ing deten­tion of jour­nal­ists and pre­vent­ing them from doing their job, and to bring the per­pe­tra­tors to account under Art. 198 of the Crim­i­nal Code. This arti­cle pro­vides for lia­bil­i­ty for any form of imped­ing of legal pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties of a jour­nal­ist or forc­ing to dis­sem­i­nate or not to dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, com­mit­ted with vio­lence or threat of vio­lence, destruc­tion or dam­age of prop­er­ty, or vio­la­tion of the rights and legit­i­mate inter­ests of a jour­nal­ist.

In fact, the Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor’s Office and the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs refused to con­sid­er the state­ment of the media com­mu­ni­ty, lead­ing the way to con­tin­ued vio­la­tions of the law by the law-enforce­ment bod­ies in their actions against jour­nal­ists.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists:

• express­es its indig­na­tion and protests against the deten­tion of jour­nal­ists who are per­form­ing their duties;

• con­firms the demands expressed in its state­ment on June 23, 2020, and calls upon the author­i­ties to stop vio­la­tions of the Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion by the law-enforce­ment forces and to bring those respon­si­ble to account;

• reit­er­ates the guar­an­teed right of jour­nal­ists to be present at mass events and trans­mit infor­ma­tion from there; and

• calls on the author­i­ties of Belarus to abide by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and oblig­a­tions in the field of free­dom of speech.