BAJ Demands Criminal Investigation into the Fact of Beating a Journalist

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is out­raged by the fact that a mem­ber of our asso­ci­a­tion, jour­nal­ist Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was beat­en in the court build­ing while per­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al duties.  Such bar­bar­ic actions dis­cred­it Belaru­sian author­i­ties. We demand hold­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the fact of beat­ing the jour­nal­ist, and bring those guilty to jus­tice.

On Jan­u­ary 25, in the build­ing of Frun­zen­s­ki dis­trict court of Min­sk, employ­ees of the police and spe­cial forces bru­tal­ly beat two civ­il activists, who were force­ful­ly tak­en out of the court room where a hear­ing was held, and the jour­nal­ist of TUT.by por­tal Pavel Dabravol­s­ki who attempt­ed to record the inci­dent with a cell phone video cam­era.

The actions of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of law enforce­ment agen­cies are a grave vio­la­tion of the journalist’s rights, pun­ish­able accord­ing to art. 198 of the Crim­i­nal Code (obstruct­ing law­ful pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties of a jour­nal­ist).

The fact that offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives beat the jour­nal­ist in a pub­lic place – the place which is an embod­i­ment of law and jus­tice – this fact is scan­dalous and out­rag­ing. The absur­di­ty was mul­ti­plied by sub­se­quent tri­al in the same very build­ing: the jour­nal­ist was held liable under art. 17.1 (minor hooli­gan­ism) (cor­rect­ed — arti­cle «con­tempt of court» was used against the two activists, but not against the jour­nal­ist — he had not been in the court­room) and art. 23.4 (dis­obey­ing law­ful demands of offi­cials), and was fined for 45 basic amounts (9 450 000 rubles).

The scan­dalous inci­dent dis­cred­its efforts of the Belaru­sian state that offi­cial­ly rat­i­fied inter­na­tion­al treaties on pro­tec­tion of free speech and human rights.

PA BAJ demands an inves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy the per­sons involved in the beat­ing and to hold them liable under the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus.

The Board of BAJ, Jan­u­ary 26, 2016.

Mean­while, the offi­cial com­ment from the chief police depart­ment of Min­sk says that the jour­nal­ist got into the staff-only room, where the offend­ers were placed, and obstruct­ed legit­i­mate actions of law enforce­ment offi­cials, did not react to their demands to stop his unlaw­ful actions.” 

“Accord­ing to the Law on the Inter­nal Affairs Bod­ies”, phys­i­cal force was used to stop unlaw­ful actions. The chief police depart­ment of the Min­sk City Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee assigned an offi­cial inquiry into the fact.”

Activists Tak­en out of Court, Jour­nal­ist Gets into the Staff-Only Room (Video)