BAJ Protests against the Wave of Detentions, Demands Justice

State­ment

On March 12, the police detained 18 jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who were cov­er­ing mass events in Belarus.

Four of them – Kat­siary­na Bakhvala­va, Hali­na Abakunchyk, Siarhei Pia­trukhin and Dzmit­ry Har­bunou – spent a night in the deten­tion cen­ter await­ing tri­al.

Police offi­cers used dif­fer­ent pre­texts to inter­fere into jour­nal­is­tic work (to ver­i­fy doc­u­ments, incor­rect park­ing, sus­pi­cion of car jack, dis­obe­di­ence to police’s demands, and vio­la­tion of media leg­is­la­tion), how­ev­er, the evi­dent pur­pose was to pre­vent jour­nal­ists from obtain­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about the ongo­ing mass events. Since the deten­tions occurred in dif­fer­ent cities (Orsha, Raha­chou, Viteb­sk, Brest) one can infer that the imped­i­ments to jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties had been coor­di­nat­ed.

We used to notice that the num­ber of deten­tions of jour­nal­ists had decreased in Belarus. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ten­den­cy was crossed on March 12, when in one day more jour­nal­ists were detained than in the whole pre­ced­ing year.

On March 13, two of the detained jour­nal­ists – Hali­na Abakunchyk and Kat­siary­na Bakhvala­va – were held liable accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tive law. We con­sid­er the court deci­sions in these cas­es as unlaw­ful, unground­ed and to be over­turned.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists reminds that a jour­nal­ist has the right to attend mass events, any events of pub­lic sig­nif­i­cance, and dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion from there. The law cov­ers not only staff jour­nal­ists, but all oth­er per­sons involved in gath­er­ing, edit­ing, prepar­ing infor­ma­tion­al reports for mass media.

Hold­ing a jour­nal­ist liable for con­sci­en­tious work is inad­mis­si­ble.

We draw atten­tion to the fact that vio­lat­ing jour­nal­ists’ rights is not only an unlaw­ful restric­tion of free­dom of infor­ma­tion, but also vio­lates con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all cit­i­zens to express­ing their opin­ion, receiv­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion (art. 33, 34 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus).

We call on the state bod­ies with respec­tive pow­ers:

– To hold an imme­di­ate inves­ti­ga­tion of the mas­sive vio­la­tion of jour­nal­ists’ rights which took place on March 12, 2017;

– To iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble for the unlaw­ful actions and to hold them liable;

– To take nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent vio­la­tions of jour­nal­ists’ rights in future;

– To protest against the court rul­ings on hold­ing the jour­nal­ists liable accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tive law for that they had only imple­ment­ed their pro­fes­sion­al duties.

The Board of BAJ

March 13, 2017