Belarus: Censorship Attempts Continue As Foreign Journalists Are Detained And Deported

Location: Belarus, Minsk
Date: August 24, 2020

Belarus has been grabbing the world’s attention in a notorious way for the past month as citizens rejected the suspicious election results and took to the streets. The country has been on the headlines for torture and mistreatment of protestors, including journalists.

In the past three weeks, The Coalition For Women In Journalism documented at least 15 journalists getting unlawfully detained while working on the ground and who were subjected to ill-treatment. 

Yesterday the authorities deported two journalists from Radio Liberty's Russian-language service, who were detained in Minsk on Friday.

"The journalists from the Radio Liberty Russian service who were held in Minsk, Yulia Vishnevetskaya and Andrei Kiselyov, have been released from the Partizansky district police station and are being deported," the Radio Liberty Belarusian bureau reported.

Yulia told the bureau on August 22, that they were traveling in a Russian Embassy vehicle to collect their belongings and after that will be driven to Smolensk. "Deportation with a five-year entry ban," she said.

The journalists had been held outside the entrance to the Tractor Plant while filming volunteers distributing leaflets among workers.

The editorial office said it had requested from the Belarusian Foreign Ministry official permission for the journalists' accreditation to work on the territory of the republic before Vishnevetskaya and Kiselyov left for Minsk.

Belarus has been treating foreign correspondents like agents of foreign services since the electoral campaign began, which points out to the attempts of hindering transparency by the Lukashenko government which has been ruling the country with an iron fist for 26 years. 

The Coalition For Women In Journalism follows the deterioration of freedom of the press in the country with utmost concern and urges the authorities to put an end to arbitrary detention and mistreatment of journalists.

The CFWIJ strongly condemns the police brutality against journalists. We demand the immediate return of the press cards seized from the security forces. Policies to intimidate journalists should be abandoned, and journalism should be practiced under the criteria of freedom of the press.

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