Lukashenka’s press corps ex-reporter recognized as political prisoner

Mr. Dzmit­ryi Sem­chanka is a jour­nal­ist and broad­cast­er. As a jour­nal­ist for All-Nation­al Tele­vi­sion, a state-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion, he was a mem­ber of  Lukashenka’s press corps.

Mr. Sem­chanka resigned from the tele­vi­sion in protest of the vio­lent crack­down on peace­ful demon­stra­tions in August 2020. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, he was sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive impris­on­ment for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a protest ral­ly.

After leav­ing state tele­vi­sion, Mr. Sem­chanka worked in pub­lic rela­tions and was an employ­ee of Bela­gro com­pa­ny.

On Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022, Mr. Dzmit­ryi Sem­chanka and his wife were arrest­ed. He was con­vict­ed of ‘pet­ty hooli­gan­ism’ under Arti­cle 19.1 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (CAO) and sen­tenced to 15 days of admin­is­tra­tive impris­on­ment. At the end of that term, Mr. Sem­chanka was not released. Instead, he was sen­tenced to anoth­er 13 days of impris­on­ment under Arti­cle 19.11 of the CAO for ‘dis­sem­i­nat­ing extrem­ist mate­ri­als’ in his social net­works.

On Octo­ber 13, 2022, he was not released again—it became known that a crim­i­nal case under part 1 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (‘incite­ment of social hatred’) was brought against him. This arti­cle pro­vides for up to five years of impris­on­ment as a max­i­mum penal­ty.

We empha­size once again that the nature of the acts of the accused in this case was the result of numer­ous and wide­spread human rights vio­la­tions by the author­i­ties, the lack of free­dom of expres­sion, and caused by dis­ap­point­ment with the author­i­ties’ reluc­tance to use the force of law to pro­tect cit­i­zens’ vio­lat­ed rights in the absence of con­di­tions for a demo­c­ra­t­ic and con­sti­tu­tion­al change of gov­ern­ment in fair elec­tions.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances, we believe that the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Mr. Dzmit­ryi Sem­chanka is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and aimed at stop­ping or chang­ing the nature of his legit­i­mate pub­lic activ­i­ties in the sphere of non-vio­lent exer­cise of free­dom of expres­sion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion.

Based on this and guid­ed by para. 2.1 and 3.1 of the Guide­lines on the Def­i­n­i­tion of Polit­i­cal Pris­on­ers adopt­ed at III Belaru­sian Human Rights Forum, we, human rights defend­ers, rec­og­nize Mr. Dzmit­ryi Sem­chanka as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and demand that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties:

• imme­di­ate­ly release Mr. Dzmit­ryi Sem­chanka and drop crim­i­nal charges against him;

• refrain from using crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion as an instru­ment of pres­sure on free­dom of expres­sion, or oth­er rights and free­doms;

• imme­di­ate­ly release all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, as well as oth­er indi­vid­u­als detained in con­nec­tion with their exer­cise of free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly in the post-elec­tion peri­od and stop polit­i­cal repres­sion in the coun­try.

Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Human Rights Cen­ter Vias­na

Legal Ini­tia­tive

Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee

PEN Belarus

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