EFJ strongly condemns a court decision in the case of Katerina Borisevich and Artem Sorokin

The court sen­tenced Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich, from the local news out­let TUT.BY, to six months in prison on Tues­day for divulging med­ical secrets, after she had con­tra­dict­ed offi­cial state­ments about the death of a pro­test­er who the author­i­ties sug­gest­ed was drunk at the time. She had report­ed that there was no alco­hol in the blood­stream of pro­test­er Roman Bon­darenko when he died. Offi­cials said he had suf­fered fatal injuries in a drunk­en brawl, while his allies said he had been beat­en by secu­ri­ty forces.

The death of Roman Bon­darenko became a flash­point in months of mass protests against ille­git­i­mate Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko, who launched a vio­lent crack­down. The Belaru­sian author­i­ties said that reveal­ing infor­ma­tion about Bon­darenko posed a threat to pub­lic safe­ty.

Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich (37) has been a jour­nal­ist for almost 15 years. She has spe­cialised in legal sub­jects: she writes about high-pro­file crim­i­nal cas­es and court pro­ceed­ings. Kate­ri­na has been the win­ner of numer­ous jour­nal­ism awards. In 2015, the Office of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al award­ed her the Lau­re­ate Diplo­ma “for her pro­fes­sion­al­ism and jour­nal­is­tic skills”.
Belaru­sian human rights organ­i­sa­tions have recog­nised Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich and Arty­om Sorokin as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers; Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al has described them as “pris­on­ers of con­science”.

“The EFJ joins its affil­i­ate the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) in strong­ly con­demn­ing this out­ra­geous sen­tence. We call on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to take sanc­tions against the judge Svet­lana Bon­darenko and the state pros­e­cu­tor Lyud­mi­la Iva­nenko,” said EFJ Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ricar­do Gutiér­rez. “All those who vio­late the rule of law in Belarus must be held account­able. Once again, we call on the Euro­pean Union, the Coun­cil of Europe and the OSCE to take action against the dic­ta­tor Lukashenko and his hench­men. To allow this bar­bar­ic repres­sion to take place in Europe is out­ra­geous.”