The Belarusian Association of Journalists has declared it unlawful to prosecute reporters whose names and materials appear in foreign mass media. Pressure on these journalists bears clear characteristics of threat and blackmailing, and contradicts national legislative norms as well as to obligations of the Republic of Belarus to ensure freedom of information under international agreements, it said...
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) have welcomed the release of prominent Belarusian journalist and human rights activist, Ales Bialiatski, but have condemned the long and unjust period he has endured in prison. According to IFJ/EFJ affiliate, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), Bialiatski, head of the human rights center...
Harassment of the independent newspapers Narodnaya Volya and Nasha Niva continues despite last month’s withdrawal of a legal bid to have them closed. They have each been fined 14 million roubles (2,000 euros) for the warnings they had received from the information ministry in recent months. Narodnaya Volya has said it intends to appeal. “Two weeks after giving the two newspapers encouraging signs...
The Belarus information ministry has withdrawn two complaints against independent dailies Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya under which they had been threatened with closure since April 25. The complaints were withdrawn during hearings before the Supreme Economic Court on July 12 and 13, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). The move was a “rare example of good...
In a new crackdown against the independent press, Belarusian police briefly detained and beat more than a dozen reporters, and broke their equipment at a Wednesday protest rally in Minsk and Brest, according to news reports and CPJ sources in Belarus. According to the Minsk-based Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), among the reporters and photojournalists detained and beaten by police and...
Belarusian authorities must end the retaliatory prosecution of Andrzej Poczobut, a Grodno-based correspondent for the largest Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, and release him immediately, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has demanded. Authorities put Poczobut on trial today in the western city of Grodno, local and international press reported. The trial is a...
Rodion Marinichev, a special correspondent for the Moscow-based online broadcaster Dozhd (The Rain), has been deported from from Belarus, according to New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Police in Minsk detained Marinichev on Monday, after he interviewed Irina Khalip, a prominent Belarusian journalist who had been handed a suspended two year prison term...
Russian TV reporter Rodion Marinichev was given 24 hours to leave the country after his arrest May 30 in Minsk and was banned from returning for five years. His deportation came just days after President Alexander Lukashenko urged his government to rein in news media which, in his view, have been “creating the panic” that is the cause of the country’s current economic crisis. “We condemn the...
New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the conviction and sentencing of Irina Khalip, the Minsk-based correspondent for the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and called on Belarusian authorities to acquit her on appeal. The Zavodskoi District Court in Minsk May 16 declared Khalip guilty of "organising and preparing activities severely...
The Belarus Information ministry on April 25 requested the Supreme Economic Court to shut down two prominent weekly newspapers, Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya, under article 51, subsection 2.2, of the mass media law. This article says that any media organization can be closed after receiving two warnings from the information ministry in a single year. “The closure of Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya...
