News

At the beginning of the month, over 200 journalists sent a petition to the Ministry of Information and to the General prosecutor’s office asking to hold a full and impartial investigation into the beating of journalist Pavel Dabravolski in a building of court.

A letter requesting airtime on the Belarusian Television was signed by influential media managers, including Maryna Zolatava, chief editor of TUT.by; Andrey Dynko, chief editor of Nasha Niva newspaper, Sviatlana Kalinkina, editor of Narodnaya Volya newspaper, Aliaksandr Starykevich, chief editor of Solidarity online newspaper, and Andrei Bastunets, the chairperson of BAJ.

Ales Bialiatski, Chairman of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" and Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights, together with Zhanna Litvina, ex-chair and Board member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, have met in Brussels with Helga Schmid, Deputy Secretary General for the European External Action Service, and Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights, as well as a number of ambassadors of European countries to the European Union and other EU representatives in charge of human rights issues and European neighborhood policy.

Ales Bialiatski, Chairman of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" and Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights, together with Zhanna Litvina, ex-chair and Board member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, have met in Brussels with Helga Schmid, Deputy Secretary General for the European External Action Service, and Stavros Lambrinidis, EU Special Representative for Human Rights, as well as a number of ambassadors of European countries to the European Union and other EU representatives in charge of human rights issues and European neighborhood policy.

Journalists filed a collective petition to the Ministry of Information and the General prosecutor’s office demanding to consider the incident of beating of Pavel Dabravolski, identify and bring to liability the policemen involved in the beating, and to take measure to prevent such incidents in future.

On January 25, the media reported that the criminal case against the journalist Aliaksandr Alesin had been suspended. It turned out that probably the case was suspended due to the fact that article 356.1, with which he had been charged (establishing cooperation with special services, security or intelligence services of a foreign state), was eliminated from the Criminal Code by the Law dated January 5, 2016.