Brutal detention, protocol, strip-to-underwear: Authorities give no peace to Belsat TV journalist

Belsat TV journalist Katsyaryna Andreyeva was detained at about 16:00 on Wednesday not far from the Stalin-era executions site in Kurapaty near Minsk.

The reporter was covering the public protests against opening the restaurant Let’s Go and Eat in the close vicinity of the mass grave.

When Andreyeva was livestreaming, a plainclothes policeman grabbed her and dragged into a police car. The officer who refused to introduce himself or show any ID told the Belsat TV correspondent that her activity was illegal in Belarus.

Andreyeva was taken to a police department in Baraulyany where she spend about an hour. A protocol was drawn upon her under Art. 22.9 of the Administrative Code (illegal production and distribution of media products).

“I was outraged by the fact that I was brutally detained by a man in civvies, who failed to give his name. Then, even police officers at the station acknowledged that he should not have put his arm on me during the arrest. I asked him to make the protocol on the spot, but I was still taken to the police station. There they told me they held information that I was having a recording device on me. I said that was not true, but they insisted on my being frisked by a female officer. I was forced to strip down to my underwear, their employee inspected me and naturally, no device was found. But I should say that in general, the officers of the police station behaved correctly,” Andreyeva said.

According to her, the detention was ‘politically motivated persecution’.

It is the eighth protocol that has been drawn upon Andreyeva since she started contributing to Belsat TV in 2017. Interestingly, on Wednesday she also got to know that Savetski district court of Minsk imposed another fine on her.

ІІ, belsat.eu