The most dangerous country in Europe for journalists

Iry­na Novik fled to Lithua­nia in June 2021, a week after she was released from prison.

Her crime, in the eyes of the Lukashenko regime, is so pre­pos­ter­ous it is scarce­ly believ­able.

Steve Can­nane, Unit­ed King­dom

Steve Can­nane is the ABC’s Europe bureau chief in Lon­don. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was a reporter with the ABC’s Inves­ti­ga­tions Unit and had been a Europe cor­re­spon­dent from 2016–2018. Pri­or to that post­ing, Steve was the host of The Drum and a reporter at Late­line. He is the author of Fair Game: The Incred­i­ble Untold Sto­ry of Sci­en­tol­ogy in Aus­tralia. 

Ms Novik, was work­ing as an edi­tor at the news web­site Hrod­naL­ife on the day that Belaru­sian air traf­fic con­trol told a pilot fly­ing a Ryanair plane from Athens to Vil­nius that there had been a bomb threat and the flight need­ed to land in Min­sk.

The inci­dent would lat­er be con­demned by the US Jus­tice Depart­ment as an act of inter­na­tion­al air­craft pira­cy.

Belaru­sian author­i­ties want­ed the flight divert­ed so they could arrest the anti-gov­ern­ment blog­ger Roman Pro­ta­se­vich who was on board.

Mr Pro­ta­se­vich was arrest­ed, detained and is cur­rent­ly fac­ing tri­al. He and two oth­ers were accused of over 1,500 crimes includ­ing insult­ing the pres­i­dent and set­ting up a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion.

When the sto­ry broke, Hrod­naL­ife ran an arti­cle and Ms Novik became col­lat­er­al dam­age.

«All that was nec­es­sary to imprison me was a pho­to of a Ryanair air­plane,» she tells the ABC.

The pho­to that accom­pa­nied the sto­ry includ­ed a water­mark of Nex­ta – a media out­let run from Poland that helped co-ordi­nate protests against the Lukashenko pres­i­den­cy. The Supreme Court of Belarus had des­ig­nat­ed it a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion.

As one of the edi­tors, Ms Novik was held respon­si­ble for pub­lish­ing the pho­to with the for­bid­den water­mark. It was only up for five hours before it was tak­en down.

She was charged with the «dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist mate­ri­als, con­tain­ing calls to extrem­ist activ­i­ty,» and fined around $400. She left the coun­try soon after.

«Prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, nowa­days it’s impos­si­ble to be a jour­nal­ist in Belarus,» she says.

Ms Novik describes the con­di­tions she expe­ri­enced in prison as inhu­mane. She was placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment and denied med­ical treat­ment.

She despairs at the thought of so many of her col­leagues being impris­oned, some of them for up to 15 years.

«Every minute spent there sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­ages a per­son­’s health and it destroys my col­league’s tal­ents,» she says.

«The real­i­sa­tion that I can’t do any­thing to help them is very hard for me.»

It’s a feel­ing that is famil­iar to Barys Haret­s­ki. He is the deputy chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists and also fled Belarus in 2021.

«We were forced to leave when the regime searched our offices for the sec­ond time,» he tells the ABC.

«If we did­n’t leave — we would have been impris­oned like our col­leagues from the human rights organ­i­sa­tion Vias­na.»

As we spoke out­side the Belarus Embassy in Vil­nius, Mr Haret­s­ki noticed cam­eras from inside the build­ing begin to film us. He is used to being mon­i­tored by Belarus’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

In Feb­ru­ary, the KGB des­ig­nat­ed the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists as an extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion. Being a mem­ber of the jour­nal­ist’s union in Belarus is akin to be a part of a ter­ror­ist group.

«Every per­son in Belarus, who calls him­self a mem­ber of the «Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists is now at risk of being impris­oned for up to 6 years because of his con­nec­tion with an extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion,» Mr Haret­s­ki says.

«All of them are still our friends and of course, we’ll try to help them in any way pos­si­ble.»

Read the entire arti­cle here

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