On April 13, Belsat TV journalists Zmitser Lupach and Alena Shabunya came to the town of Dokshytsy (Vitsebsk region).
They were about to be present at today’s hearing of administrative case against Roman Catholic priest Raman Murzich, but his defence lawyer asked journalists and civic activists to refrain from attending the court.
Then the crew started to film footage for a video story in the central square, but, according to eyewitnesses to the incident, Zmitser Lupach and Alena Shabunya were detained by the local police, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reports.
(UPD) Our colleagues had to spend three hours at the police station; the officers threatened to take them into custody for one day. After having a so-called preventive conversation and checking out the video materials the duo had managed to shoot, the policemen released the journalists without drawing a protocol upon them.
Since the beginning of the year, Zmitser Lupach has been fined six times for ‘cooperating with a foreign media outlet which is not accredited by the Belarusian Foreign Ministry’.
