Blogger Dzmitry Selviastruk recognized as political prisoner
On 17 October, the Belarusian human rights community declared him a political prisoner. Sports blogger and journalist Dzmitry Selviastruk has been in jail since May.
He is accused of promoting extremist activity and his case has been considered by the Minsk City Court since 29 September.
Dzmitry Selviastruk is known to football fans as the person behind the Telegram channel called Silver Age. Belarusian Football. He made the latest post on May 5. On the same day, he informed his friends that a police officer visited him, but he would not open the door. Communication with Selviastruk has ceased ever since.
In May, he got arrested and was later tried twice for distributing “extremist” content, as per human rights activists. Since the blogger was not released post-trial, he is likely to have landed in administrative custody. Another trial was held on May 30.
While Selviastruk was in administrative custody, he was charged with promoting extremist activity and put in a remand center.
The result of Dzmitry Selviastruk’s criminal trial is currently unknown. His sentence has not yet been published in the Court Decisions database.
Readers of the Silver Age. Belarusian Football Telegram channel think that Selviastruk was arrested because of his negative posts about certain teams and sports managers in the country’s championship. The followers noticed that it often shared inside information that was based on rumors and comments from several sports forums.
33-year-old Dzmitry Selviastruk graduated from the journalism department at Belarusian State University. He worked for a while at the state-run newspaper Narodnaya Gazeta and covered social issues and the IT industry. He gradually shifted his focus to sports news and began collaborating with the niche media Football.by. He launched his own project, a Telegram channel about Belarusian football, three years ago with about 2000 followers.
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