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  • BAJ reached out to UN Special Rapporteur regarding Dzianis Ivashyn’s case

    In a letter to the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Belarusian Association of Journalists told the officer about the gross violation of the right to freedom of expression of Belarusian journalist Dzianis Ivashyn. BAJ hopes for an immediate reaction from the UN Human Rights Council.

    The let­ter informed the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur Irene Hahn about Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, a Belaru­sian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, a free­lance cor­re­spon­dent of “Novy chas” news­pa­per, as well as the edi­tor of the Belaru­sian ser­vice of Inform­Na­palm web­site,  is cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Hrod­na Prison No. 1.

    On March 11, 2021, Dzia­n­is was giv­ing an inter­view on the air of the TV chan­nel “Cur­rent time” about the third part of his inves­ti­ga­tion of the for­mer mem­bers of the dis­band­ed in Ukraine spe­cial unit «Berkut», who after flee­ing from Ukraine joined the Lukashenko regime in Belarus.  Ivashyn found out that there are more than ten «ex-Berkut offi­cers» in the Belaru­sian OMON, who have received the Belaru­sian cit­i­zen­ship and were hired by the police with vio­la­tions of the law. Accord­ing to his infor­ma­tion,  «ex-Berkut offi­cers» par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sup­pres­sion of mass protests in 2020 and, among oth­er things, act­ed as pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es in the tri­als against the activists. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist and his spouse, he took all the data for the inves­ti­ga­tion from open sources.

    On March 12, 2021 his apart­ment in Hrod­na was searched and Dzia­n­is was detained and tak­en into cus­tody. On March 20, 2021 it became known that Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was charged under Art. 365 of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus (inter­fer­ence in the activ­i­ties of an inter­nal affairs offi­cer), which is sanc­tioned by a fine, or arrest, or impris­on­ment of up to three years.

    On March 24, 2021, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized Dzia­n­is Ivashyn as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

    Dur­ing his time in deten­tion, Dzia­n­is was repeat­ed­ly pun­ished with soli­tary con­fine­ment. When Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was in soli­tary con­fine­ment from 19 to 24 June 2021, the jour­nal­ist had a heart attack. Accord­ing to the jour­nal­ist’s moth­er, her son had no heart prob­lems before the arrest, and the cause of the attack was the con­di­tions of deten­tion — «It’s very hot in the cell, the win­dows are closed, and the prison admin­is­tra­tion won’t let me give him a fan».

    In Sep­tem­ber 2021 Dzia­n­is Ivashyn was charged under Part 1 of Arti­cle 356 of the Crim­i­nal Code (high trea­son), which pro­vides impris­on­ment of sev­en to fif­teen years with a fine or with­out a fine.

    On Feb­ru­ary 21, 2022 the Court of Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict of Hrod­na reject­ed the appeal to change the mea­sure of restraint for jour­nal­ist.

    On March 22, 2022 the State Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee claimed that the jour­nal­ist worked for the intel­li­gence ser­vices of Ukraine and caused dam­age to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus. The Min­istry also claimed that the Ukrain­ian project Inform­Na­palm, where Ivashyn was the edi­tor of the Belaru­sian page, was cre­at­ed and oper­at­ed «in the inter­ests of the Main Depart­ment of Intel­li­gence of the Min­istry of Defence of Ukraine”. Accord­ing to the offi­cial posi­tion, Ivashyn’s actions «went far beyond jour­nal­is­tic work”.

    Accord­ing to the journalist’s spouse Vol­ha Ivashy­na, Dzia­n­is could not have access to any secret infor­ma­tion and, in order to pre­pare his inves­ti­ga­tions, he stud­ied infor­ma­tion from open sources, the ref­er­ences to which are clear­ly indi­cat­ed in his pub­li­ca­tions.

    On May 7, 2022, the jour­nal­ist’s spouse report­ed that the inves­ti­ga­tion was over, and on June 10, 2022, she learned that the case had gone to tri­al.

    On August 15, 2022 and August 17, 2022, the Hrod­na Region­al Court held behind closed doors the first court hear­ings. The next court hear­ing is sched­uled for 12 Sep­tem­ber 2022.

    Arti­cle 19 of the ICCPR enshrines the right of every­one to free­dom of expres­sion, includ­ing the right to impart infor­ma­tion of all kinds in writ­ing or in print. In its Gen­er­al Com­ment No. 34 the Human Rights Com­mit­tee empha­sized that extreme care must be tak­en by States par­ties to ensure that trea­son laws  and sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions relat­ing to nation­al secu­ri­ty are craft­ed and applied in a man­ner that con­forms to the strict require­ments of para­graph 3. It is not com­pat­i­ble with para­graph 3 to invoke such laws to sup­press or with­hold from the pub­lic infor­ma­tion of legit­i­mate pub­lic inter­est that does not harm nation­al secu­ri­ty or to pros­e­cute jour­nal­ists for hav­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed such infor­ma­tion.

    Over the past two years, the Belaru­sian media have faced unprece­dent­ed pres­sure from the State, which has the sole pur­pose of com­plete­ly destroy­ing inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Belarus. The tight­en­ing of the legal reg­u­la­tion of media, the recog­ni­tion of a num­ber of inde­pen­dent media out­lets as «extrem­ist for­ma­tions» and their pub­li­ca­tions as «extrem­ist mate­ri­als,» the restric­tions on free access to inde­pen­dent media web­sites, the clo­sures of inde­pen­dent media, as well as cre­at­ing the obsta­cles to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of print­ed media are only a small part of the large-scale repres­sive pol­i­cy that the author­i­ties have deployed. Mass arbi­trary deten­tions of media rep­re­sen­ta­tives (480 cas­es in 2020, 113 cas­es in 2021), often accom­pa­nied by phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal vio­lence, as well as dam­age or seizure of pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment and pros­e­cu­tion in the form of admin­is­tra­tive arrests and fines; also became one of the tools in the fight against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. How­ev­er, one of the most egre­gious forms of per­se­cu­tion is the ini­ti­a­tion of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed crim­i­nal cas­es against indi­vid­ual rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mass media.

    The crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Dzia­n­is Ivashyn under Arti­cle 356 and Arti­cle 365 of the Crim­i­nal Code on the grounds of his law­ful exer­cise of jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties con­sti­tutes a fla­grant vio­la­tion of his free­dom of expres­sion.

    The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists calls on you to respond urgent­ly to this com­mu­ni­ca­tion and to appeal to the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment to imme­di­ate­ly stop the polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn.

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