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  • “Rewarding the brave efforts of journalists from Belarus.” BAJ receives Eastern Partnership Prize

    On November 14, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum held an award ceremony in Brussels, where the Belarusian Association of Journalists was announced as this year’s prize winner.

    Since 2018, the East­ern Part­ner­ship Civ­il Soci­ety Forum has been giv­ing awards to out­stand­ing orga­ni­za­tions in the region for their excep­tion­al and ded­i­cat­ed efforts to con­sis­tent­ly defend fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

    The prize was received by BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets.

    “We live in this crazy world of wars and con­flicts and it’s cru­cial that we remem­ber jour­nal­ists impris­oned in Belarus and the rest of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers there. We must keep Belarus in the inter­na­tion­al spot­light,” he stat­ed in his address.

    Andrei Bas­tunets also not­ed that more than 1400 non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, such as BAJ, were shut down in Belarus over the last three years. How­ev­er, the asso­ci­a­tion per­sist­ed in its activ­i­ties from abroad, despite being lat­er declared an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. Even their infor­ma­tion­al chan­nels, such as the web­site, social media accounts, and logo, were deemed extrem­ist. Nonethe­less, accord­ing to the BAJ chair­man, the most chal­leng­ing predica­ment is that 33 jour­nal­ists remain incar­cer­at­ed, with rough­ly 1,500 indi­vid­u­als being rec­og­nized as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

    “Civ­il soci­ety groups are com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues despite chal­lenges and oppo­si­tion,” the award com­mit­tee empha­sized in their state­ment. “Your unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to advanc­ing free expres­sion and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Belarus is admirable.”

    Valer Kavaleus­ki, For­eign Affairs Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Unit­ed Tran­si­tion­al Cab­i­net of Belarus com­ment­ed on the award.

    “Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists have brave­ly worked in unsafe and oppres­sive sit­u­a­tions and have been appro­pri­ate­ly acknowl­edged and com­mend­ed for their efforts”.

    Read more:

     

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