Belsat Offices in Minsk Searched, Equipment Seized

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from a jour­nal­ist of the chan­nel, who had not been allowed to enter the edi­to­r­i­al office, there was anoth­er jour­nal­ist of the chan­nel Ales Lubianchuk. At half past noon, he was tak­en to the Per­shamays­ki dis­trict police depart­ment. Between this time, it was report­ed that the police con­fis­cat­ed com­put­ers.

Anoth­er office, at Akademiya Navuk, was searched and equip­ment seized, report­ed the jour­nal­ist of the chan­nel Ales Zaleus­ki.

BAJ press office is fol­low­ing the events, will be updat­ed.

As of 10.30 am, head of infor­ma­tion­al pro­grams of the chan­nel Ali­ak­sei Dzikav­it­s­ki com­ment­ed that, in his view, the search­es were linked to the active cov­er­age of recent protests on the chan­nel.

***

BACKGROUND

In 2013, Andrey Belyak­ou, the own­er of com­pa­ny BEL­SAT­plus, accused tele­vi­sion Bel­sat TV of ille­gal using its trade mark and want­ed the court to ban us from it. Ini­tial­ly, the Supreme Court did not set­tle Mr Belyak­ou’s claims in Jan­u­ary, 2014. But in June Andrey Fedart­sou, a Deputy Chair of the Supreme Court, ordered to take a sec­ond look to the case. Accord­ing to him, the ver­dict was deliv­ered with­out giv­ing ‘care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion’ to the prob­lem. In Sep­tem­ber, 2014 the Supreme Court of Belarus retried the case Bel­sat­Plus vs Bel­sat TV. Although plain­tiff Andrey Belyak­ou failed to show any new evi­dence, the judges for­bade Bel­sat TV to use its name and trade mark in the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus and on its web­site.

Belarus sent doc­u­ments with a sen­tence con­cern­ing the pro­hi­bi­tion to the Dis­trict Court in War­saw. Before tak­ing a deci­sion, the court in War­saw asked the Pol­ish Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion (Bel­sat TV is a struc­tur­al unit of it) to present its posi­tion on the case. Accord­ing to Bel­sat direc­tor Agniesz­ka Romaszews­ka-Guzy, the law­suit against Bel­sat TV was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. The TV chan­nel and its domain name were reg­is­tered in Poland. They did not broad­cast from the ter­ri­to­ry of Belarus the trade mark did not fall with­in its juris­dic­tion. Fur­ther­more, the chan­nel is reg­is­tered as Bel­sat TV; the reg­is­tra­tion name of the plain­tiff uni­tary enter­prise is BEL­SAT­plus, they insist­ed.