Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for more transparency in the judicial proceedings against detained Belarusian blogger Eduard Palchys aka Jhon Silver and for a revision of Belarus’ legislation on media offences.
“We call for the conditional release of Eduard Palchys, whose preventive imprisonment is out of all proportion to what he is alleged to have done,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
“The posts and illustrations should be examined by independent entities, such as the Association of Belarusian Journalists. At the same time, Belarus’ legislation on media offences needs to evolve. The penalties that can be incurred, up to five years in prison, are utterly disproportionate,” the statement reads.
Jhon Silver created 1863x.com, a blog dedicated to the current political developments in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, as well as Belarusian history and culture. The unsigned materials sharply criticized the regimes of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin.
According to Silver, two criminal cases were brought against him in 2015 for his activities in the blog – for allegedly inciting ethnic strife (in particular, for the article ‘Kill the Russian World’) and spreading pornography.
The blogger decided to hide in Ukraine. All the while he lived in Kyiv, from where he continued to work on the blog. But when the blogger went to a meeting in Russia in January 2016, he was arrested and put in jail. At the beginning of 2016 Sputnik i Pogrom, an extreme right-wing Russian organization, reported that the real name of the ‘Russophobe from Belarus’ is Eduard Palchys.
Then Palchys was transferred from Russia’s Bryansk jail to Belarus.
The blogger may face up to five years of imprisonment for ‘inciting hatred’ and up to two or for years in jail – for allegedly distributing pornography. The charges are pointless and artificial, Belarusian human rights defenders say.
Belsat.eu, following RSF
