Former Director of Belorusy i Rynok Kanstantsin Zalatykh released from prison

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has learned that for­mer direc­tor of the inde­pen­dent eco­nom­ic news­pa­per Belorusy i Rynok, Kanstantsin Zalatykh, was released on Octo­ber 23 after serv­ing his full prison term.

Kanstantsin Zalatykh. Pho­to: Social media

Zalatykh was detained on May 18, 2022, fol­low­ing search­es in the homes of the newspaper’s employ­ees and in the edi­to­r­i­al office. After ques­tion­ing, the edi­tor-in-chief Andrei Alek­san­drovich (who sud­den­ly passed away in ear­ly 2024) and the newspaper’s accoun­tant were released, while Zalatykh was kept in cus­tody.

He was charged with sev­er­al polit­i­cal arti­cles, most of which were of a defam­a­to­ry nature, name­ly the pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion bring­ing into dis­re­pute the hon­or and dig­ni­ty of a pub­lic offi­cial. On 6 April 2023, he was sen­tenced to four years in prison.

The Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized Kanstantsin Zalatykh as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er and demand­ed an end to his unjus­ti­fied per­se­cu­tion.

On July 13, 2023, the KGB of Belarus added Kanstantsin Zalatykh to its list of indi­vid­u­als involved in “ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties,” and on July 21, 2023, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs placed him on its “extrem­ists” list.