Jailed Belarusian Journalist Kuznechyk Faces Criminal Charges

Andrey Kuznechyk was not released from jail last week even though his sec­ond con­sec­u­tive jail term he was hand­ed on a con­tro­ver­sial hooli­gan­ism charge end­ed.

His rel­a­tives told RFE/RL that they were offi­cial­ly informed that the jour­nal­ist will be trans­ferred from the noto­ri­ous Akrestsi­na deten­tion cen­ter, where many inmates have said they were tor­tured, to anoth­er deten­tion cen­ter in Min­sk as a crim­i­nal case on unspec­i­fied charges had been launched against him.

Kuznechyk was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to 10 days in jail on Novem­ber 26 after a tri­al in which he refused to accept the guilty ver­dict.

On Decem­ber 6, when his sen­tence end­ed, he was not released and hand­ed anoth­er 10-day jail term, also on a hooli­gan­ism charge.

Kuznechyk’s rel­a­tives told RFE/RL at the time that the jour­nal­ist con­tin­ues to main­tain his inno­cence.

RFE/RL Pres­i­dent Jamie Fly has said the exten­sion of Kuznechyk’s sen­tence «on absurd­ly fab­ri­cat­ed charges» should be con­sid­ered a crime in itself.

«Andrey’s state-spon­sored kid­nap­ping con­tin­ues, all in fur­ther­ance of the Lukashen­ka regime’s efforts to block inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion from reach­ing the Belaru­sian peo­ple. Andrey should be allowed to return to his fam­i­ly imme­di­ate­ly,» Fly said in a state­ment on Decem­ber 6, refer­ring to author­i­tar­i­an ruler Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka.

Kuznechyk went for a bike ride on Novem­ber 25 and returned accom­pa­nied by four men dressed in civil­ian clothes, accord­ing to his wife, Alesya Rak.

The men, who did not show any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, then searched their apart­ment, Rak said, only avoid­ing the rooms of their two young chil­dren.

Kuznechyk was then led away by the group, who did not give a rea­son for his deten­tion.

Ten­sions have been run­ning high in Belarus since Lukashen­ka, in pow­er since 1994, was declared the win­ner of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in August 2020 that oppo­nents and the West say was rigged.

Many West­ern nations have since refused to rec­og­nize Lukashen­ka as the legit­i­mate leader of Belarus, leav­ing him more reliant than ever on Rus­sia, which ana­lysts say is using his weak­ened posi­tion to strength­en its hold over its small­er neigh­bor.

Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been detained, and human rights activists say more than 800 peo­ple are now in jail as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Inde­pen­dent media and oppo­si­tion social media chan­nels have been tar­get­ed as well.

Repressions against journalists in Belarus, 2021 (chart)