EU, UK diplomats show solidarity with Belarusian journalist being tried for giving interviews

Diplo­mats from the EU gath­ered out­side the Min­sk City Court today in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty with jour­nal­ist Ihar Iljaš cur­rent­ly on tri­al on charges of sup­port­ing extrem­ism and dis­cred­it­ing Belarus.

Pho­to: Ger­man embassy in Min­sk

“Today we came to sup­port Ihar Iljaš. He is being tried for his remarks about the polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed arrest of his wife Kacia­ry­na Bach­vała­va and Belarus’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in Russia’s ille­gal war of con­quest against Ukraine. The right to free­dom of speech and expres­sion must be respect­ed,” the Ger­man embassy stat­ed.

Diplo­mats from Aus­tria, Bel­gium, the Czech Repub­lic, the Euro­pean Union, Fin­land, Ger­many, Italy, the Nether­lands, Slo­va­kia, Swe­den and the Unit­ed King­dom took part in the gath­er­ing.

Judge Siarhiej Kacar, noto­ri­ous for ver­dicts in polit­i­cal­ly-moti­vat­ed cas­es, pre­sides over the pro­ceed­ings that are open to the pub­lic.

Iljaš was arrest­ed in late Octo­ber 2024 over inter­views for media labeled by the gov­ern­ment as extrem­ist. Pro-gov­ern­ment Telegram chan­nels claimed he col­lect­ed infor­ma­tion for for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vices, cit­ing his com­ments to Ukrain­ian media out­lets.

His wife, jour­nal­ist Kacia­ry­na Andreje­va, has been held behind bars since Novem­ber 2020, after being arrest­ed while cov­er­ing an oppo­si­tion protest. Andreje­va was lat­er charged with high trea­son and giv­en eight years in prison.

Rights groups con­sid­er the per­se­cu­tion of Andreje­va and Iljaš to be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.