Accents

“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.

ARTICLE 19 is deeply concerned about the criminal charges pursued in Belarus against Belsat TV journalists Ekaterina Bakhvalova and Daria Chultsova. Both journalists were covering the peaceful protests taking place on 15 November 2020 that demanded a change of the ruling government and of the president, and accountability for the tortures and killings of protesters like Roman Bondarenka. Journalists are now facing criminal charges for organising actions that grossly violate public order, and active participation in them. ARTICLE 19 argues that journalists are simply prosecuted for carrying out their role – gathering and sharing important information about protests and ensuring accountability of public bodies for their actions. We call on the Belarusian courts to immediately and unconditionally drop these charges and refrain from bringing similar charges in the future.

BAJ receives Canada-UK Media Freedom Award  This was announced during the Global Conference for Media Freedom 2020. In his remarks, Andrei Bastunets, chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, stressed that the Award reflects the high opinion of the work of Belarusian journalists who are now working in extremely difficult conditions. During the ceremony, Dominic Raab, First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the UK, pointed out that the Award is a fitting tribute to courage, sacrifice and determination of Belarusian journalists. Below are BAJ acceptance remarks during the Global Conference for Media Freedom 2020.