OSCE Representative condemns police violence against journalist in Belarus and reiterates call on authorities to stop persecuting members of media

Accord­ing to reports, on 25 Jan­u­ary Pavel Dabravol­s­ki, jour­nal­ist with the Tut.by news web­site, was beat­en by police offi­cers while cov­er­ing the deten­tion of two pro­test­ers in a court build­ing in the Frun­ze dis­trict of Min­sk. Dabravol­s­ki, clear­ly iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as a jour­nal­ist, sus­tained sev­er­al bruis­es. The jour­nal­ist was then detained and fined by the same court on charges of hooli­gan­ism and dis­obey­ing the police. Police offi­cers report­ed­ly also erased data from his mobile phone. 

“I call on the author­i­ties to prompt­ly inves­ti­gate this inci­dent,” Mija­tović said. “These kind of dis­turb­ing and intol­er­a­ble actions by law enforce­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives toward mem­bers of the media are unac­cept­able. Police should facil­i­tate the work of jour­nal­ists, not obstruct their activ­i­ties and intim­i­date them.”

Mija­tović also reit­er­at­ed her call on the author­i­ties to stop per­se­cut­ing free­lance jour­nal­ists. Accord­ing to reports, in Jan­u­ary 2016 jour­nal­ists Kon­stan­tin Zhukovskiy and Laris­sa Shiryako­va received new admin­is­tra­tive fines for work­ing for for­eign media out­lets with­out accred­i­ta­tion. Both jour­nal­ists have been fined in the past along with many oth­er free­lance jour­nal­ists. Mija­tović raised the issue on sev­er­al occa­sions in the past (see http://www.osce.org/fom/150011 and http://www.osce.org/fom/131656)

“This trend is detri­men­tal to media free­dom and must be reversed as soon as pos­si­ble,” Mija­tović said, reit­er­at­ing the readi­ness of her Office to assist the author­i­ties in any way nec­es­sary. 

The Rep­re­sen­ta­tive not­ed the con­cerns expressed by the media com­mu­ni­ty and civ­il soci­ety, includ­ing the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, on both mat­ters.