TUT.BY journalists Volha Loika and Alena Talkachova added to “terrorist list”

As stat­ed in the list, Vol­ha and Ale­na are charged under Arti­cle 130 (incit­ing hatred) and Arti­cle 361 (encour­ag­ing sanc­tions and oth­er actions aimed at harm­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty) of the Crim­i­nal Code. These charges were not pre­vi­ous­ly known to the pub­lic.

Arti­cles 130 and 361 of the Crim­i­nal Code pro­vide pun­ish­ment for up to 12 years in prison.

Cur­rent­ly, there are 183 Belaru­sians on the KGB “ter­ror­ist” list, which includes 928 names. Among them are Svi­at­lana Tikhanouskaya, Pavel Latush­ka, Maria Kalesnika­va, Mak­sim Znak, and oth­ers.

Vol­ha Loi­ka, for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of the TUT.BY polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic news depart­ment, and jour­nal­ist Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va were arrest­ed on 18 May 2021 dur­ing the raid in the media office and detained togeth­er with the TUT.BY offi­cials (15 peo­ple in total) under the charges of tax eva­sion. Vol­ha Loi­ka was released in March 2022, and Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va – in July, both remain defen­dants in the crim­i­nal case.