CPJ calls for the immediate release of journalist Andrei Tolchyn

New York, March 21, 2023—The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists calls for jour­nal­ist Andrei Tolchyn’s imme­di­ate release after a Belaru­sian court on Thurs­day sen­tenced him to 2.5 years in prison for facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ism and defam­ing Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dr Lukashenko.

Andrey Tolchin. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

“The 2.5 year prison sen­tence hand­ed to jour­nal­ist Andrei Tolchyn on unfound­ed charges is yet anoth­er demon­stra­tion of Belaru­sian author­i­ties’ vin­dic­tive­ness toward cur­rent and for­mer mem­bers of the press—like Tolchyn—for their inde­pen­dent cov­er­age of the country’s 2020 mass protests,” said Gul­noza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Cen­tral Asia pro­gram coor­di­na­tor. “Belaru­sian author­i­ties must imme­di­ate­ly drop all charges against Tolchyn and release him, along with all oth­er jailed jour­nal­ists.”

A court in the south­east­ern city of Homel con­vict­ed Tolchyn of facil­i­tat­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ty and defam­ing the pres­i­dent, accord­ing to the banned human rights group Vias­na and Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), an advo­ca­cy and trade group oper­at­ing from exile.

His tri­al began on March 5, and he has been detained since Sep­tem­ber 2023, when author­i­ties searched his home and seized his equip­ment, includ­ing a lap­top. Author­i­ties have detained Tolchyn mul­ti­ple times and fined him in con­nec­tion to his work and cov­er­age of the 2020 protests demand­ing Lukashenko’s res­ig­na­tion. Tolchyn left jour­nal­ism in 2020.

CPJ was not imme­di­ate­ly able to con­firm whether the charges were con­nect­ed to his 2020 report­ing or if Tolchyn plans to appeal.

Belarus was the world’s third-worst jail­er of jour­nal­ists in CPJ’s 2023 prison cen­sus, with at least 28 jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Tolchyn, behind bars on Decem­ber 1.