According to the latest information, 31 journalists and media workers are now behind bars in Belarus. To put that in context, there are more imprisoned journalists in China (50 persons), but China’s population is 155 times as that of Belarus.
Eight Belarusian human rights watchdogs issued a joint statement recognising Syarhei Satsuk, editor-in-chief of the online business daily Ezhednevnik (ej.by), as a political prisoner. Syarhei Satsuk is the author of a number of journalistic investigations, including those about corruption in the Belarusian Health Ministry. He repeatedly mentioned receiving death threats related to his professional activity.
On December 8, the officers of the Investigative Committee searched Syarhei’s flat and arrested him as part of the old ‘bribe’ case (Article 430 of the Criminal Code). A bit later, the journalist was reported to have been taken into custody. He was placed in pre-trial detention centre Nr 1 on Valadarski Street in Minsk.
In March 2020, Satsuk was detained on suspicion of accepting bribes for his publications; the authorities also tried to charge his with fraud. As a result, however, Syarhei was released but his status of a suspect remained.
The human rights defenders consider the actions in relation to journalist Syarhei Satsuk as a ‘continuation of the targeted policy of the authorities to limit the dissemination of uncensored information in the country and a continuation of the attack on freedom of speech’ and believe that criminal prosecution of Syarhei Satsuk is politically motivated and ‘aimed at stopping or changing the nature of his legitimate public activities in the sphere of non-violent exercise of freedom of expression and dissemination of information’.
The Belarusian human rights community call on the Belarusian authorities to immediately release all political prisoners, as well as other individuals detained in connection with their exercise of freedom of peaceful assembly in the post-election period; refrain from using criminal prosecution as an instrument of pressure on freedom of expression, or other rights and freedoms; stop political repression in the country.
To date, 909 jailed Belarusians have been listed as political prisoners. At the same time, human rights activists continue to consider numerous criminal cases for compliance with the definition of political prisoner, but they do not always keep up with the repressive machine.
