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  • Solidarity Marathon for Imprisoned Belarusian Journalists held in Canada

    The solidarity marathon, initiated by BAJ in May 2023, reached North America. Representatives of the global network for the protection and promotion of freedom of expression, IFEX, held a rally near Toronto City Hall. They came out with portraits of imprisoned Belarusian journalists. Thus, despite censors and dictators’ efforts, the truth thrives around the world.

    “Over the past three years, IFEX has observed a rise in attacks on free­dom of expres­sion and access to infor­ma­tion in Belarus. Civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions have been sup­pressed, human rights defend­ers have fled the coun­try, and jour­nal­ists are being unjust­ly impris­oned. There are no signs of repres­sion slow­ing down,” the network’s staff stat­ed in a com­men­tary for BAJ.

    IFEX was found­ed in 1992 in Mon­tre­al. Mul­ti­ple non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions agreed to work togeth­er to sup­port free­dom of expres­sion. Today, over 100 net­work mem­bers in 70 coun­tries col­lab­o­rate to pro­tect and pro­mote these val­ues. The UN rec­og­nized Novem­ber 2 as the Inter­na­tion­al Day to End Impuni­ty for Crimes against Jour­nal­ists, thanks to IFEX’s efforts.

    Dur­ing the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon, par­tic­i­pants held por­traits of their impris­oned col­leagues, includ­ing Andrzej Poc­zobut, Mary­na Zolata­va, Ihar Losik, and Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich.

    “We gath­ered to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with over 30 jour­nal­ists who are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Belarus. Women jour­nal­ists, in par­tic­u­lar, are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to vio­lence,” empha­sized the Marathon par­tic­i­pants.

    IFEX aims to increase aware­ness and gain sup­port from the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. It is impor­tant to have civic space for a healthy and pros­per­ous democ­ra­cy. They encour­age oth­ers to join the cam­paign and spread the word.

    BAJ calls on jour­nal­ists around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers, take pic­tures with them in out­stand­ing places in your city (out­side Belarus) and post them on social media using the hash­tags #СвабодуЖурналістам and #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist. Don’t for­get to send them to intercomm@baj.media.

    #СвабодуЖурналістам
    #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist

    Read more:

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