Lukashenka awards investigators involved in case against independent media

The decree has been pub­lished on president.gov.by.

Syamy­onik and Makushen­ka are offi­cers of the Belaru­sian Inves­ti­ga­tion Com­mit­tee, they work at the depart­ment of crimes against infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty. The both awardees were engaged in the co called BelTA copy­right infringe­ment case. Syamy­onik is in charge of the cor­re­spond­ing inves­ti­ga­tion team; Makushen­ka par­tic­i­pat­ed in the inter­ro­ga­tion of sus­pects, TUT.BY reports.

On August 7, an unprece­dent­ed wave of media work­ers’ arrests start­ed in Belarus.

After Iry­na Akulovich, Head of state-con­trolled news agency BelTA, had report­ed ‘ille­gal access to their pre­mi­um con­tent’, the Belaru­sian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee ini­ti­at­ed a crim­i­nal case under the arti­cle ‘unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion, made out of per­son­al inter­est, which caused sig­nif­i­cant harm’. Accord­ing to the author­i­ties’ ver­sion, some employ­ees of the above-men­tioned media out­lets have used anoth­er person’s pass­word and got infor­ma­tion owned by the Lukashen­ka mouth­piece over the past two years.

Tut.by jour­nal­ists Hali­na Ulasik, Mary­na Zolata­va, Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Ulyana Babayed, Dzmit­ry Bobryk, Han­na Yer­ma­chonak, Bela­PAN edi­tors Tat­syana Kar­avyanko­va, Iry­na Leushy­na and Andrey Ser­a­da, Deutsche Welle cor­re­spon­dent Paulyuk Byk­ous­ki and the Belaru­sians and Mar­ket jour­nal­ist Alyak­sei Zhukau also detained. Lat­er Bobryk, Ser­a­da and Babayed were lat­er released. As part of the case, four jour­nal­ists of the prop­er­ty por­tal realt.by were inter­ro­gat­ed.

A few days lat­er, all the jour­nal­ists were released from cus­tody, but they are still under gag order. All the sus­pects in the BelTA case are banned from leav­ing the coun­try.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists called the sit­u­a­tion a ‘fla­grant vio­la­tion of free­dom of expres­sion and media free­dom’. Accord­ing to the BAJ, the actions of law enforce­ment agen­cies were ‘exces­sive’.
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