Former BT journalist Dzmitry Luksha and his wife Palina Palavinka released from prison

The cou­ple was released from prison on par­don. Both were released from prison on July 3, but human rights activists report­ed only the release of Pali­na Palavin­ka. No infor­ma­tion about Dzmit­ry Luk­sha was report­ed.

Dzmit­ry Luk­sha and Palina Palavin­ka

In Decem­ber 2022, Min­sk City Court sen­tenced the for­mer Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny jour­nal­ist and free­lance cor­re­spon­dent for Kazakhstan’s Khabar 24 TV chan­nel, Dzmit­ry Luk­sha, to four years in prison and his wife, Pali­na Palavin­ka, to two and a half years behind bars.

Dzmit­ry Luk­sha served his sen­tence in Škloŭ Penal Colony No. 17, his wife was in Wom­en’s Colony No. 4. Both were released ear­ly: Dzmit­ry had 1 year and 2 months to serve, Pali­na — only two weeks.

Dzmit­ry Luk­sha, Pali­na Palavin­ka, as well as Dzia­n­is Yarous­ki and Kanstantsin Nikanorau were accused of «dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus» and «par­tic­i­pat­ing in mass protests».

Accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tion, from Novem­ber 2021 to March 2022, Luk­sha «reg­u­lar­ly deliv­ered mate­ri­als about the events in the Repub­lic of Belarus to a for­eign TV chan­nel for remu­ner­a­tion». Accord­ing to the mate­ri­als of the crim­i­nal case against the jour­nal­ist, «in order to dis­cred­it the coun­try, with the help of the cam­era­man he pre­pared a num­ber of videos con­tain­ing false infor­ma­tion and sent them to a cer­tain TV chan­nel”. The jour­nal­ist’s wife, Pali­na Palavin­ka, was found guilty of help­ing her hus­band in his «ille­gal» jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties.

In addi­tion, accord­ing to the pros­e­cu­tion, Luk­sha and Palavin­ka active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in mass protests in Min­sk in 2020.

Dzmit­ry Luk­sha was found guilty under Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus) and Part 1 of Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (active par­tic­i­pa­tion in group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order).

Pali­na Palavin­ka was charged under Part 6 of Arti­cle 16 and Arti­cle 369–1 of the Crim­i­nal Code (con­tribut­ing to dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus) and Part 1 of Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code (active par­tic­i­pa­tion in group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order).

Dzmit­ry was arrest­ed on March 11, 2022, fol­low­ing a search of the fam­i­ly’s apart­ment in Min­sk. On May 18, 2022, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized the for­mer jour­nal­ist as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

Pali­na Palavin­ka was arrest­ed on June 2, 2022, three months after her hus­band’s arrest.  Human rights activists rec­og­nized her as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022.

On March 27, 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs includ­ed Dzmit­ry Luk­sha and Pali­na Palavin­ka in the «list of Belaru­sian cit­i­zens, for­eign cit­i­zens and state­less per­sons involved in extrem­ist activ­i­ties».