All-National TV anchor Dzmitry Semchanka’s trial starts today

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka and his wife Yulia, also a cer­ti­fied jour­nal­ist, were orig­i­nal­ly arrest­ed on 15 Sep­tem­ber 2022 for «shar­ing con­tent of extrem­ist Telegram chan­nels.» Since the fam­i­ly is rais­ing a minor son, the moth­er got off with an admin­is­tra­tive fine, and Dzmit­ry was detained for 15 days for «dis­or­der­ly con­duct.»

Sem­chanka was not released on time, and new reports was drawn up against him, so he spent over 40 days in deten­tion, only to be charged lat­er with a crim­i­nal case. Human rights activists declared him a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka worked as a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent and polit­i­cal observ­er at the All-Nation­al TV in 2009–2020. For all his mer­its he was trust­ed to lead the «pres­i­den­tial pool» of Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashenka’s clos­est media entourage.

How­ev­er, in August 2020 he pub­licly con­demned the unprece­dent­ed bru­tal­i­ty of the law enforcers and left the TV chan­nel in protest. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, his house was raid­ed and he was detained for 15 days for par­tic­i­pat­ing in protests.

Dzmit­ry Sem­chanka remained unem­ployed for some time, and in Novem­ber 2020 he was invit­ed to work as a PR man­ag­er at Bela­gra, a com­pa­ny that trades Belaru­sian agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery and spare parts.

Last year, on Sep­tem­ber 29, law enforce­ment offi­cers came to Bela­gra and arrest­ed two dozen staff mem­bers, includ­ing the man­age­ment. As a con­se­quence, they were held admin­is­tra­tive­ly or crim­i­nal­ly respon­si­ble for par­tic­i­pa­tion in protests and fol­low­ing «destruc­tive» Inter­net resources.