Accents

On Human Rights Day, December 10, 2021, the Seimas of Lithuania hosted the Lithuanian-Belarusian forum “Human Rights and Journalism” attended by representatives of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and international human rights organizations. The forum participants discussed the human rights situation in Belarus, ways to influence the situation and provide assistance to the media community.

"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.

Three Belarusian journalists — Katsiaryna Barysevich from TUT.BY, Daria Chultsova and Katsiaryna Andreyeva from "Belsat" are in custody now, on criminal charges. Barysevich quoted an emergency hospital doctor and medical records when reporting that Raman Bandarenka was sober when taken to hospital — and was charged with disclosing medical secrets, "which led to serious consequences". Andreyeva and Chultsova were livestreaming from the Square of Change — and have been charged with organizing and preparing actions that seriously breach public order. TUT.BY is telling their stories, what their criminal cases are about, where they are now and what their colleagues know them for.

In light of recent findings on Belarus by both the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, organisations express concern about ongoing abuses carried out by agents and supporters of the government of President Alexander Lukashenko and call for immediate investigations and redress.