Freelance Journalists Face another Wave of Prosecution in Belarus: Police Report Made against Larysa Shchyrakova (Homiel)

Report­ed­ly, the police com­posed a report for ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of mass media prod­ucts’ (art. 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es) against an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist Larysa Shchyrako­va from Homiel.

Ms. Shchyrako­va has been noti­fied by mail that the report was made by a police offi­cer R.Tsitou in the journalist’s absence on Decem­ber 24, 2015.

Ms Shchyrakova’s TV report was ded­i­cat­ed to the prob­lems of a for­mer fos­ter-child from the orphan­age in Uryt­s­ki set­tle­ment, Homiel region. The TV footage was pre­sent­ed on ‘Bel­sat’ TV chan­nel.

It was the sixth police report against the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist for her coop­er­a­tion with a for­eign media out­let with­out the press accred­i­ta­tion. All in all, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media work­ers were fined 28 times on the same charges (arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es) in 2015.

It is worth men­tion­ing that the sit­u­a­tion improved for some time after August 4, 2015, when the Pres­i­dent of Belarus Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka stat­ed in his inter­view to inde­pen­dent media that he didn’t sup­port the restric­tions for jour­nal­ists in prin­ci­ple and promised to look into the sit­u­a­tion.

Con­se­quent­ly, admin­is­tra­tive cas­es against inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists weren’t filed for four months in a row.

Anoth­er free­lance jour­nal­ist from Homiel Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki was called to the police depart­ment to receive a police report for vio­lat­ing arti­cle 22.9 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es at the very end of the year 2015.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is deeply con­cerned with the new wave of pros­e­cu­tion against inde­pen­dent reporters. The BAJ lead­er­ship is about to take steps in order to defend the Asso­ci­a­tion mem­bers’ rights.