Journalist Andrei Tolchyn recognized as political prisoner

On Sep­tem­ber 27, 2023, author­i­ties arrest­ed Tolchyn in Homel, who was a for­mer jour­nal­ist. The next day, the secu­ri­ty forces searched his apart­ment and seized com­put­er equip­ment and oth­er dig­i­tal devices as evi­dence. Andrei Tolchyn was detained and charged with a crime.

He found­ed the Gomel­skie Vedo­mosti news­pa­per in Homel and worked as a free­lance jour­nal­ist for sev­er­al inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. Tolchyn has been detained and tried mul­ti­ple times for his jour­nal­is­tic work since 2017. Fol­low­ing the 2020 protests, he made the deci­sion to stop work­ing as a jour­nal­ist.

The organ­i­sa­tions who signed the state­ment, includ­ing the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, demand­ed that the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment release Andrei Tolchyn and oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers right away. They also want the gov­ern­ment to stop using crim­i­nal charges to pres­sure peo­ple into giv­ing up their free­dom of speech and oth­er rights.

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