Photographs of Vitsebsk journalists appear on police “wanted” posters

Pho­tographs of Vit­seb­sk jour­nal­ists Ale­na Shabunia, Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau, and human rights activist Pavel Lev­in­au have appeared on police posters list­ing indi­vid­u­als want­ed “for com­mit­ting crimes.”

Pho­to: BAJ.

The pho­to­graph of jour­nal­ist Ale­na Shabunia is accom­pa­nied by the descrip­tion of her charges  — “Encour­ag­ing actions aimed at harm­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Repub­lic of Belarus.”

The pho­to­graph of human rights activist Pavel Lev­in­au is also dis­played at Per­shamais­ki PD in Vit­seb­sk. Lev­in­au has fre­quent­ly assist­ed inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists with legal advice. Accord­ing to the cap­tion beneath his pho­to, he is accused  of orga­niz­ing and prepar­ing actions that dis­rupt pub­lic order.

A pho­to­graph of the edi­tor of the online pub­li­ca­tion Viteb­skiy Kuri­er News, Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau, is only accom­pa­nied with his per­son­al infor­ma­tion.

The crim­i­nal case against Kornyshau is pre­sum­ably relat­ed to his involve­ment in “extrem­ist” activ­i­ties. On May 10, 2024, the coali­tion “Euro­pean Choice” was declared an “extrem­ist for­ma­tion,” and Kornyshau’s was list­ed as its mem­ber. He also report­ed that his par­ents had been repeat­ed­ly searched, with secu­ri­ty ser­vices inquir­ing about his edi­to­r­i­al work and details of an inter­view he gave last year on the Bel­sat TV chan­nel.

Ale­na Shabunia, Pavel Lev­in­au, and Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau were forced to leave Belarus after the protests fol­low­ing the 2020 elec­tions due to polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and pres­sure from the author­i­ties for their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. Last year, it was revealed that all three were added to an inter­na­tion­al want­ed list shared by Belarus and Rus­sia.

While abroad, admin­is­tra­tive cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed against Ale­na Shabunia and Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau. Shabunia was fined for a pho­to­graph post­ed on Face­book, which the Per­shamais­ki Dis­trict Court of Vit­seb­sk rec­og­nized as “unau­tho­rized pick­et­ing.” She was also found guilty of fol­low­ing a page that was rec­og­nized in Belarus as con­tain­ing “extrem­ist infor­ma­tion­al prod­ucts.”

Under the same admin­is­tra­tive arti­cle, Ali­ak­san­dr Kornyshau was found guilty and fined for shar­ing posts from the pub­li­ca­tion he worked for. Viteb­skiy Kuri­er News was includ­ed in the Repub­li­can List of Extrem­ist Mate­ri­als in Jan­u­ary 2022.