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  • Journalist Ales Asiptsou goes on hunger strike, gets 10 days of jail. Alexander Burakou to spend 10 days in jail, too

    Today judge of the Leninsky district court of Mahiliou Viktoria Paliakova sentenced journalist Alexander Burakou, BAJ member, to 10 days in jail for participation in an unauthorized mass protest on May 6 outside of the detention center in Mahiliou.

    Alexander Burakou

    Yes­ter­day dur­ing the hear­ing Burak­ou pro­vid­ed con­vinc­ing evi­dence that he had been present there as a reporter and a human rights defend­er, per­form­ing his pro­fes­sion­al duties.

    The rul­ing for vio­la­tion of Art. 23.34 Part 1 («vio­la­tion of the order of orga­ni­za­tion or hold­ing mass events») based on the reports drawn up by the Lenin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment.

    Imme­di­ate­ly after he heard the rul­ing, Burak­ou made a cas­sa­tion­al appeal to Mahil­iou Region­al Court. Right after he left the court room, he was tak­en to jail, where he is to serve his sen­tence, by police offi­cers who had been wait­ing for him in the lob­by.

    At 9.30 a.m. Kas­trych­nit­s­ki dis­trict court of Mahil­iou began the hear­ing of the case against Bela­PAN news agency reporter Ales Asipt­sou .

    Ales Asiptsou Photo credit: RFE/RL

    Only one jour­nal­ist was able to enter the court­room, aside from Asip­tou and his lawyer.  Judge Natalia Yasen­ka did not let oth­er jour­nal­ists and human rights defend­ers in the court­room, refer­ring to the small size of room and the risk of COVID-19.

    Judge without a mask. Photo credit: RFE/RL

    Ales Asipt­sou went on hunger strike right after his arrest.

    He will con­tin­ue the hunger strike through 10 days of his jail sen­tence.

    Jour­nal­ist Ales Asipt­sou dis­ap­peared after the «Anti-parade» protest on Sat­ur­day, May 9, and did not return home.

    Mary­na Malchana­va, jour­nal­ist from Babruisk, says they were in touch in the morn­ing, they exchanged infor­ma­tion of what was going on in the city. At 12:38 Mary­na called him again. Asipt­sou told her he was in the car with one of the protest par­tic­i­pants dri­ving around the city. After some time, the jour­nal­ist stopped answer­ing the calls.

    Ales Asipt­sou is a free­lance reporter of Bela­PAN. Locat­ed in Mahil­iou, he arrived in Babruisk to cov­er the «Anti-Parade» dri­vers’ protest planned for the Vic­to­ry Day. The police arrest­ed about 20 par­tic­i­pants of the protest.

    Asipt­sou’s wife and col­leagues phoned the Babruisk police depart­ment, as well as traf­fic police, but were not giv­en any reli­able infor­ma­tion about Ales. Instead, the police rec­om­mend­ed his wife to report his disappearance.Only about 7 p.m. they informed his wife that he was in a tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter in Mahil­iou. No rea­sons for deten­tion were giv­en.

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