Supreme Court to consider appeal of ex-journalist Alena Tsimashchuk

The con­sid­er­a­tion of the appeal of Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk, a jour­nal­ist from Brest, sen­tenced to 5 years in prison and fined $14,000, is sched­uled for August 16. The hear­ing in the Supreme Court will begin at 9:30 a.m. Judge Siarhei Hurau will pre­side.

Jour­nal­ist Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk. Pho­to: Jour­nal­ist’s Face­book page

The jour­nal­ist is appeal­ing against the sen­tence passed on June 3 this year by the Brest Region­al Court. Back then, Judge Karasin­s­ki deter­mined that the jour­nal­ist was guilty of dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus, incit­ing hos­til­i­ty or dis­cord, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk was a free­lancer for sev­er­al region­al pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Vech­erny Brest, Brest­sky Kuri­er, Brest­skaya Gaze­ta, Vir­tu­al­ny Brest, and Brest­sky Zele­ny Por­tal.

The specifics of the crim­i­nal case against the jour­nal­ist remain large­ly undis­closed. A few days after the ver­dict, on June 12, a pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram chan­nel pub­lished an insult­ing post about her. The post claimed that she «worked in state media for some time,» but then «became involved with the extrem­ist for­ma­tion RFE/RL Belarus, and sub­se­quent­ly enrolled in the train­ing pro­gram of the Vaclav Hav­el Cen­ter.»

Fel­low jour­nal­ists have con­firmed that Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk did not write polit­i­cal arti­cles dur­ing her tenure with inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. She occa­sion­al­ly con­tributed adver­tis­ing arti­cles and pieces on psy­chol­o­gy, as she holds a degree in this field.

On June 13 of this year, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty des­ig­nat­ed Ale­na Tsi­mashchuk as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.