RSF urges Belarus authorities to release arrested blogger. Trial to start tomorrow
Eduard Palchys
Eduard Palchys, also known by the blog name of ‘Jhon Silver’, is due to go on trial before a Minsk municipal court on 14 October on charges of ‘inciting racial, national or religious hatred’ and ‘distributing pornographic material’.
In the light of a recent independent expert analysis of his posts, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) accuses the Belarusian authorities of bringing baseless charges against the blogger and calls for his immediate and unconditional release.
Palchys will be tried behind closed doors. Only judges, a prosecutor and trial participants will be present at the courtroom.
“They will find him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred for caling Russia an aggressor and a potential threat to the independence of Belarus. They will also account him guilty of porno peddling. There is no need to say that they just want to lock him up, that is why this ‘porn’ article has popped up,” the blogger’s wife Viktoryia Shchukevich said.
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.
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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. Nine articles were recognised extremist. The charges are pointless and artificial, Belarusian human rights defenders say. According to them, Eduard Palchys is another political prisoner of Lukashenka’s regime.
