Accents

The chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists says reporting is harder than ever because of government crackdowns and war in neighbouring Ukraine.

In less than three weeks since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of our country, there are already Ukrainian and international journalists killed and injured in Ukraine.

“It’s Dasha’s birthday on the 20th, she will celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday. Such a beautiful date! Too bad it will be a day off. The day passed quickly at work and maybe it wasn’t so sad,” Dasha’s mother Natalya Tserabilenka told.

Peter Limbourg, director-general of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), has condemned the blocking of the DW website and a number of other media outlets in Belarus, saying that it is an “act of desperation” on the part of the Belarusian authorities.

Nasha Niva journalist Katsiaryna Karpitskaya spent a month under arrest in a temporary detention center. During the time, she managed to catch several illnesses and witness the ongoing torture used against political detainees.

On August 27, according to the decision of the Supreme Court, BAJ representative "misunderstood the law", and all their arguments as to no legal grounds to sustain the liquidation claim should be considered unimportant. Judge of the Supreme Court Inesa Lazavikova.

"There is nothing impossible for her" — a story about the founder of the Press Club, Yulia Slutskaya. Four months after the Belarusian presidential elections, the founder of Press Club Belarus, Yulia Slutskaya, and three members of her team —  Financial Director Sergei Olshevsky, Programme Director Alla Sharko and Yulia's son Photographer Pyotr Slutsky — were arrested on charges of tax evasion and have been remanded in prison in Minsk since December 22, 2020.

A monthly chronology of repression and resistance in Belarus, based on the work of IFEX members and other international and domestic actors.

The President of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Andrei Bastunets and his Vice-presidents Aleh Aheyeu and Barys Haretski described how they were searched and what the organization is doing now. Early in the morning of 16 February, security forces raided the homes of heads of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ)- a registered non-governmental public organization that protects the rights of the journalists. The association’s office was also searched. Later it is revealed that other raids were conducted against human rights defenders, journalists and activists almost throughout the country. The Investigation Committee reported that the procedure was initiated “to establish the circumstances of funding for the protest activities”. Today BAJ works under extremely difficult conditions: the office was sealed, the bank account was arrested, equipment, financial documents and a seal were seized. The material was prepared within the framework of the Press Club Belarus project "Press under the press", which contains evidence of repressions against independent media and journalists in Belarus.