Former Tut.by employees to stand trial in absentia

On July 15 the Min­sk City Court began the tri­al in absen­tia of for­mer employ­ees of the Tut.by por­tal Vol­ha Loi­ka, Ale­na Tauka­cho­va and Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka. All defen­dants are cur­rent­ly out of Belarus.

Vol­ha Loi­ka, Ale­na Tauka­cho­va and Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka

Jour­nal­ists from the non-gov­ern­men­tal news por­tal Tut.by Vol­ha Loi­ka, Ale­na Tauka­cho­va and legal con­sul­tant Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka are charged under four crim­i­nal arti­cles:

• Part 3 of Arti­cle 130 of the Crim­i­nal Code (incite­ment to social enmi­ty or hos­til­i­ty);
• Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (in the old ver­sion of the Crim­i­nal Code – tax eva­sion);
• Part 1 of Arti­cle 342 (orga­ni­za­tion and prepa­ra­tion of acts seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ing pub­lic order, or active par­tic­i­pa­tion in them);
• Part 3 of Arti­cle 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code (calls for restric­tive mea­sures (sanc­tions) and oth­er actions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus).

Accord­ing to the sched­ule on the Min­sk City Court’s web­site, Judge Valiantsi­na Zianke­vich, known for her pre­vi­ous polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed rul­ings in absen­tia and in per­son, has been appoint­ed to pre­side over the case. It was she who hand­cuffed Tut.by edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va and Tut.by gen­er­al direc­tor Liud­mi­la Chek­ina dur­ing the tri­al. On March 17, 2023, they were sen­tenced to 12 years in a penal colony.

At the same time, the author­i­ties planned to try the edi­tor-in-chief of the Polit­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Bloc of the online edi­tion, Vol­ha Loi­ka, jour­nal­ist Ale­na Tauka­cho­va and legal advi­sor Kat­siary­na Tkachen­ka. How­ev­er, they did not appear in court as they were able to leave Belarus.

Journalists were put on the “terrorist list”

Today’s defen­dants were detained togeth­er with oth­er employ­ees of the edi­to­r­i­al office dur­ing the storm­ing of the office of Tut.by in Min­sk on May 18, 2021. At that time, a crim­i­nal case was opened on charges of large-scale tax eva­sion through the use of the High-Tech Park. The human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized them as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Vol­ha Loi­ka was released in March 2022, Ale­na Tauka­cho­va was released in July on bail with the oblig­a­tion to appear in court. They did not try their fate and left Belarus when the date of the tri­al of Tut.by man­age­ment was announced.

Lat­er, pro-gov­ern­ment TV chan­nels announced that the “escaped” defen­dants had been put on an inter­na­tion­al want­ed list and their case had been sep­a­rat­ed into a “spe­cial case”. In April 2023, the Min­sk City Court (the same Judge Zianke­vich) fined each of the guar­an­tors of the escaped employ­ees of the por­tal 500 basic units (at that time 18,500 rubles). Ale­na Taukachova’s guar­an­tors were polit­i­cal ana­lyst Yauheni Prei­her­man and State par­lia­ment deputy Valery Varanet­sky, Vol­ha Loika’s guar­an­tors were chair­man of the Repub­li­can Union of Indus­tri­al­ists and Entre­pre­neurs Ali­ak­san­dr Shvets.

In Octo­ber 2020, the KGB put the jour­nal­ists on the “ter­ror­ist list”. Vol­ha Loi­ka and Ale­na Tauka­cho­va are list­ed as per­sons involved in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties.

Volha Loika: There is no point in following this trial

Vol­ha Loi­ka is cur­rent­ly work­ing on her media project Plan B, which she found­ed last year in Poland. In her com­ment to BAJ, the jour­nal­ist said that she was not inter­est­ed in the tri­al against her and her col­leagues, and would not even fol­low it close­ly. Accord­ing to Vol­ha, first of all, she does not see any sense in tak­ing part in an obvi­ous­ly absurd action, and sec­ond­ly, no one “from the oth­er side” has con­tact­ed her. She has not attempt­ed to con­tact her pub­lic defend­er or any­one in the court sys­tem.

“I don’t see the point and I won’t be involved in any way,” Vol­ha Loi­ka said.

Tut.by, the largest and most pop­u­lar non-gov­ern­men­tal Inter­net por­tal in Belarus, was shut down by the author­i­ties in May 2021. Part of the team that remained at large was forced to leave the coun­try in July of that year and found­ed a media project in exile, Zerkalo.io. The new media out­let became Tut.by’s suc­ces­sor and it con­tin­ues the portal’s tra­di­tions. In Belarus and Rus­sia, access to the online edi­tion is blocked, while its con­tent is rec­og­nized as “extrem­ist mate­ri­als”. On June 9, 2023, the deci­sion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of Belarus declared Zerkalo.io web­site and oth­er Inter­net resources of the media project “extrem­ist for­ma­tion”.

On Decem­ber 3, 2020, the Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk deprived the Tut.by por­tal of the sta­tus of mass media. And on June 14, 2022, the same Eco­nom­ic Court of Min­sk rec­og­nized Tut.by Media LLC as an “extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion” – the web­site, pages in social net­works, as well as “sym­bols and attrib­ut­es” of Tut.by were found to be involved in extrem­ism.