Detained and beaten journalist from Hantsavichy fined

The jour­nal­ist Alyak­san­dr Paznyak from Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas was bru­tal­ly detained by local police on Sat­ur­day June 20. Togeth­er with his col­league Syarhei Bahrou and sev­er­al oth­er local res­i­dents he spent a week­end in the local police depart­ment, and on Mon­day, June 22, they were tak­en to court in Baranavichy.

On Sat­ur­day, accord­ing to his edi­to­r­i­al assign­ment (“Hantsav­it­s­ki Chas” reg­is­tered with the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion), he cov­ered the action of sol­i­dar­i­ty with polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Hantsavichy. He also streamed the event in VK. Already at court, he said that he was bru­tal­ly detained.

“They threw me on the grass, grabbed me by the hair and beat me on the ribs and in the face. They cuffed me,” said the jour­nal­ist.

Dur­ing the inter­ro­ga­tion in court, he not­ed that he was doing his job as a jour­nal­ist. He said that the police­men did not show up until two hours after the action start­ed. At once their actions were aggres­sive: they start­ed to inter­fere with film­ing. But as soon as Alyak­san­dr said he was a jour­nal­ist, they stopped inter­fer­ing with him.

A wit­ness , deputy head of Hantsavichy police, not­ed dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny that Paznyak did not react to the police demands to dis­perse and was a par­tic­i­pant of the action. Thus, phys­i­cal force was used against him.

As a result, despite the case mate­ri­als, the judge found Paznyak guilty under Arti­cle 23.4 (dis­obe­di­ence) and Arti­cle 23.34 (vio­la­tion of the order of hold­ing mass events) of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Vio­la­tions. The jour­nal­ist will appeal against the court deci­sion.

Apart from Paz­ni­ak, Yahor Dulik was tried in Baranavichy the oth­er day. He was record­ing the jour­nal­ists’ deten­tion by the police. The man had a rib bro­ken and was tak­en straight from the court to hos­pi­tal.

• On June 18–20, actions of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the detained Vik­tar Babary­ka were held all over the coun­try. How­ev­er, the action in Hantsavichy stood out by its harsh deten­tion: pho­tos, where the police­man was kneel­ing on the neck of the detained man were seen over the inter­net.

• The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists issued a state­ment demand­ing the release of all detained jour­nal­ists. The state­ment says that 14 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives were arrest­ed all over the coun­try. Some jour­nal­ists were beat­en dur­ing the arrest. Bel­sat also joined the state­ment.