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  • Investigative Committee: BAJ appeal concerning detention of 47 journalists is “abstract”. Case will not be examined

    On August 28, after many journalists were detainedin Minsk and Brest, the Belarusian Association of Journalists addressed the Chairman of the Investigative Committee with a statement asking for initiation of a criminal case on the obstruction of the legitimate professional activity of journalists.

    The doc­u­ment described the cir­cum­stances of deten­tion in detail on 4 pages, and pro­vid­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the need to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings under arti­cle 198 of the Crim­i­nal Code.

    On Sep­tem­ber 10, the Head of the Depart­ment for deal­ing with appeals of cit­i­zens of the Cen­tral Office of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mitte respond­ed to the BAJ’ state­ment.

    — We would like to inform you that the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in the state­ment is essen­tial­ly abstract, there­fore, there are no grounds for the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee to exam­ine it or make a deci­sion in accor­dance with the pro­ce­dure estab­lished by the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure of the Repub­lic of Belarus, — the let­ter reads.

    On August 27, 47 jour­nal­ists were detained by law-enforce­ment offi­cers in Min­sk on Lib­er­ty Square, Inde­pen­dence Square, and Inde­pen­dence Avenue, as well as in Brest.

    The police offi­cers arbi­trar­i­ly destroyed the orig­i­nal footage, which was the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of jour­nal­ists and mass media. They also threat­ened the jour­nal­ists that they would dam­age or destroy their pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment.

     

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