News

A letter requesting airtime on the Belarusian Television was signed by influential media managers, including Maryna Zolatava, chief editor of TUT.by; Andrey Dynko, chief editor of Nasha Niva newspaper, Sviatlana Kalinkina, editor of Narodnaya Volya newspaper, Aliaksandr Starykevich, chief editor of Solidarity online newspaper, and Andrei Bastunets, the chairperson of BAJ.

Ales Bialiatski, Chairman of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" and Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights, together with Zhanna Litvina, ex-chair and Board member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, have met in Brussels with Helga Schmid, Deputy Secretary General for the European External Action Service, and Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights, as well as a number of ambassadors of European countries to the European Union and other EU representatives in charge of human rights issues and European neighborhood policy.

On January 25, the media reported that the criminal case against the journalist Aliaksandr Alesin had been suspended. It turned out that probably the case was suspended due to the fact that article 356.1, with which he had been charged (establishing cooperation with special services, security or intelligence services of a foreign state), was eliminated from the Criminal Code by the Law dated January 5, 2016.

Paul Dabravolski, a reporter working for the Belarusian news website TUT.BY was arrested and given a fine of 9.450.000 Belarusian rubles (420 EUR) for filming police beating two protesters during a court hearing on a graffiti case on 25 January. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) have today condemned the arrest and urged the authority to withdraw all charges against Dabravolski.