DW Akademie deeply concerned that trainer Andrei Aliaksandrau now faces up to 15 years in prison

Carsten von Nah­men, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of DW Akademie, con­demned the charge as “absolute­ly unfound­ed” and urged the gov­ern­ment of Belarus to imme­di­ate­ly free Ali­ak­san­drau as well as sev­er­al oth­er media pro­fes­sion­als cur­rent­ly in cus­tody in the East­ern Euro­pean coun­try.  

Detained in Jan­u­ary 2021 with his part­ner Iri­na Zlobi­na, Ali­ak­san­drau was orig­i­nal­ly accused of orga­niz­ing actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order. He was due for release lat­er this month. The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) reports that the new charge has left Ali­ak­san­drau “shocked,” accord­ing to his lawyer. The case marks an esca­la­tion in Belarus’ dra­con­ian crack­down on press free­dom and human rights activism. 

“Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are under unprece­dent­ed pres­sure and repres­sions have inten­si­fied since the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last year,” says von Nah­men. Col­leagues have been pre­vent­ed from doing their work. Web­sites have been blocked, and refusals to print and revo­ca­tions of accred­i­ta­tion have become com­mon­place for media orga­ni­za­tions in Belarus. Inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists have been detained on the streets while report­ing from ral­lies and are no longer pro­tect­ed, even when iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as mem­bers of the press. There are also reports that mem­bers of the media are being tar­get­ed by secu­ri­ty forces.  

“It is cru­cial that the Belarus gov­ern­ment stops the harass­ment of jour­nal­ists as well as media out­lets and orga­ni­za­tions”, says von Nah­men. “The peo­ple of Belarus need inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion to make free, edu­cat­ed deci­sions. Jour­nal­ism is not a crime but a vital ser­vice for demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties.”  

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) reports that jour­nal­ists this year have had more than 130 encoun­ters with secu­ri­ty forces, includ­ing attacks and deten­tions. In 2020, media pro­fes­sion­als were detained 477 times and spent a total of 1,200 days behind bars. Among those ini­tial­ly detained was Alexan­der Burakov, a DW cor­re­spon­dent. In May 2021 he was sen­tenced to 20 days in prison.