Authorities demand $80 from journalist forcibly expelled from Belarus

The jour­nal­ist learned about his “debt” from a Viber con­ver­sa­tion with bailiff Kazlouskaya. How­ev­er, why exact­ly he owes the mon­ey was not spec­i­fied. Like­ly for prison work, Ihar Karnei assumes.

Ihar Karnei, Antwerp, Bel­gium, 2026. Cour­tesy pho­to

“How they cal­cu­lat­ed $80 is a mys­tery. At least this time they attached a pay­ment slip. With­out much hope of under­stand­ing, I again asked the over­seer to explain in sim­ple terms what I owe (…). I assume that this is how much the pen­i­ten­tiary design­ers val­ued their strict-style out­fits — and even then, retroac­tive­ly for what the Shk­lou prison’ admin­is­tra­tion hand­ed out. When they moved me to the ‘recidi­vists prison’ No. 20, I only received a sum­mer shirt at the ware­house — hard­ly worth 80 dol­lars despite all its exclu­siv­i­ty,” the jour­nal­ist wrote on Face­book.

Finan­cial claims against the for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er exist­ed ear­li­er: in Novem­ber 2025, a writ­ten demand was sent to his Min­sk address to imme­di­ate­ly pay $21 under threat of “forced sum­mons.”

Mean­while, Ihar Karnei notes, $168 remain in his account at his last place of impris­on­ment in Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 20: “An effort to con­tact the head of the facil­i­ty in order to return the funds to the intend­ed recip­i­ent (all trans­fers were made by my moth­er using her pen­sion to sup­port me) was unsuc­cess­ful. The lawyer’s reply rais­es doubts about his pro­fes­sion­al­ism: he sug­gest­ed that Ihar Karnei should sim­ply come in per­son, present his pass­port, and col­lect the mon­ey — as if there were no issue at all.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between agen­cies is poor­ly orga­nized, the jour­nal­ist believes, because the “frozen” funds in his account could com­plete­ly cov­er his “debts” to the Belaru­sian pen­i­ten­tiary sys­tem.

Pro­pos­als to “appear,” “col­lect,” and “pay” sound com­plete­ly absurd, because on June 21, 2025, after ear­ly release from the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, Ihar Karnei was deport­ed from Belarus and is now forced to live in exile.

Screen­shot of demand let­ter

The case of Ihar Karnei

Ihar Karnei was detained on July 17, 2023. On charges of “par­tic­i­pa­tion in an extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” in March 2024 the jour­nal­ist was sen­tenced to three years impris­on­ment and a $6,735 fine.

While already impris­oned, Ihar Karnei was charged with per­sis­tent fail­ure to com­ply with the require­ments of the admin­is­tra­tion of Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty No. 17 and received an addi­tion­al 10 months of impris­on­ment.

Ihar Karnei was released on June 21, 2025, along with 14 oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers fol­low­ing nego­ti­a­tions between Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka and U.S. admin­is­tra­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Coale. The jour­nal­ist spent near­ly two years behind bars on polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges.