Article 19: Stop harassment of independent media outlets

“The raids are clear­ly aimed at silenc­ing Belarus’s belea­guered inde­pen­dent media”, said Katie Mor­ris, Head of Europe and Cen­tral Asia at ARTICLE 19. “The alle­ga­tions, which are already dubious, would not war­rant such repres­sive actions, and mere­ly seek to scare those dar­ing to under­take crit­i­cal report­ing in a coun­try where dis­sent is seen as crim­i­nal”, she added.

On 7 August 2018, Belaru­sian law enforce­ment agen­cies raid­ed the offices of inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­Pan, online media out­let Tut.by and pub­lish­ing house Belarusskaya Nau­ka. They detained Tut.by jour­nal­ists Hali­na Ulasik, Mary­na Zolata­va, Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Ulyana Babayed, Dzmit­ry Bobryk, Han­na Yer­ma­chonak and Evge­nia Berez­iuk; as well as  Bela­PAN edi­tors Tat­syana Kar­avyanko­va and Andrey Ser­a­da.

Andrey Ser­a­da, Evge­nia Berez­iuk, Ulyana Babayed and Dzmit­ry Bobryk were released lat­er that day, but the remain­ing five jour­nal­ists remain in deten­tion.

On the morn­ing of 8 August, law enforce­ment entered the flat of free­lance media experts and jour­nal­ists Olga and Paulyuk Byk­ous­ki with a search war­rant.

Accord­ing to Radio Svo­bo­da, four jour­nal­ists from web por­tal Realt.by (Ihar Khmara, Maria Saro­ka, Ale­na Maslouskaya, Uladis­lau Kulet­s­ki) as well as a jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­sei Zhukau from online por­tal Belarus and the Mar­ket ‚were detained for ques­tion­ing by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee. While Realt.by jour­nal­ists were lat­er released, Paulyuk Byk­ous­ki and Ali­ak­sei Zhukau remain detained.

On 9 August, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee stat­ed that of anoth­er jour­nal­ist, Iry­na Leushy­na, edi­tor-in-chief of Bela­PAN, is also being ques­tioned.

It is believed that the Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee have ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal case against the jour­nal­ists under Arti­cle 349(2) of the Crim­i­nal Code, which crim­i­nalis­es “unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion, made out of per­son­al inter­est, which caused sig­nif­i­cant harm”. Accord­ing to the author­i­ties, the jour­nal­ists were ille­gal­ly using a paid-sub­scrip­tion account for the gov­ern­ment news agency BelTA. News at BelTA is lim­it­ed to sub­scribers only for the 15 min­utes after being post­ed. Bela­PAN claims that there was no need for their agency to get access to paid sources of BelTA, and that they nev­er used BelTA sources with­out cita­tion.

We urge the gov­ern­ment of Belarus to imme­di­ate­ly and uncon­di­tion­al­ly release all jour­nalists detained on ques­tion­able alle­ga­tions for exer­cis­ing their legit­i­mate rights to free­dom of expres­sion, and to end all forms of harass­ment against jour­nal­ists, includ­ing raids on indepen­dent media out­lets.