Rehijanalnaja Hazeta chief editor to be tried on September 27

Alleged­ly, Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich, who was the leader of the edi­to­r­i­al board of Rehi­janal­na­ja Haze­ta, and some oth­er peo­ple, spread false infor­ma­tion that dis­cred­it­ed the Belaru­sian gov­ern­ment and its pow­er. This was done through the news­pa­per and social media plat­forms over a peri­od from 1 Jan­u­ary 2020 to 15 March 2023.

The pros­e­cu­tion asserts that the arti­cles con­tained incor­rect infor­ma­tion that was intend­ed to cause sig­nif­i­cant harm to the state, pub­lic wel­fare, and nation­al inter­ests. This infor­ma­tion degrad­ed the author­i­ty of the coun­try and its offi­cials. It also caused unrest among cit­i­zens of Belarus since it pro­vid­ed false ideas about the vio­la­tion of their rights and free­doms.

The Belaru­sian rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized Ali­ak­san­dr Mant­se­vich as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. They point­ed out that the editor’s arrest and tri­al were a part of the government’s plan to restrict the dis­tri­b­u­tion of unbi­ased infor­ma­tion in the coun­try.

More­over, it is anoth­er attempt to sup­press free speech. Rehi­janal­na­ja Haze­ta was com­pelled to dis­con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing the print ver­sion in July 2021 and pri­or­i­tize the online issue. In Jan­u­ary 2023, fol­low­ing a Mal­adzech­na Dis­trict Court rul­ing, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion added the newspaper’s web­site and Telegram chan­nel to the Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als. After police raid­ed the news­room and arrest­ed the chief edi­tor, the court deemed the Vkon­tak­te social media page of the pub­li­ca­tion as “extrem­ist.”

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