Freelancer Fined in Homel

The case was heard on Jan­u­ary 14. The jour­nal­ist was absent, so he received the court rul­ing by post on Jan­u­ary 18. Accord­ing to the let­ter, “on Novem­ber 20, 2015, Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki, while being in the yeard of house No8 in the Street of 60 years of BSSR in the town of Kalinkavichy, with­out being accred­it­ed as a jour­nal­ist of a for­eign mass medi­um in the Repub­lic of Belarus, inter­viewed cit­i­zens, as a result he pro­duced mass media prod­ucts, name­ly the video report “Paho­nia as a sam­bal of a person’s inde­pen­dence” which was broad­cast on Novem­ber 24, 2015 on the satel­lite TV of the Repub­lic of Poland Bel­sat in the pro­gram Abjek­tyu.

This is the sec­ond fine under art, 22.9 this year; the first one was hand­ed in to Larysa Shchyrako­va on Jan­u­ary 13.

There are two more tri­als expect­ed on Jan­u­ary 20, also in the Homel region, against Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki and Arkadz Malysh. 

BAJ Appeals to President’s Administration Regarding Persecution of Freelancers

EFJ president: It is worrying that the government is renewing this bad practice with a new wave of prosecution against freelance journalists”