BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

01/04/2006

Belarus: Scores Of Journalists Detained After Elections

In Belarus, at least 20 local and foreign journalists are being held in jail after covering opposition protests in the wake of the recent presidential elections, report Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the International Press Institute (IPI), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontieres, RSF) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).

The journalists were detained on 24 March 2006 when riot police entered October Square in the capital, Minsk, and removed a group of 200 opposition protesters. The protesters had been camped out on the square to challenge the results of the previous week's presidential elections, which gave Aleksandr Lukashenko an unprecedented third term in office. International observers criticised the elections as being deeply flawed.

Journalists from at least five foreign countries are among those being detained. They include Canadian reporter Frederick Lavoie, Nino Giorgobiani and cameraman Giorgi Laghidze of the Georgian Broadcasting Corporation, Ukrainian journalist Andrij Lubka, Polish journalist Dzmitry Hurnevich of Radio Polonia, and Oleg Kozlovsky and Eduard Glezin, who work for the Russian newspaper "Pravoye Delo".

Another journalist, Pavel Sheremet, who reports for Russia's Channel One television network, was handcuffed, blindfolded, and beaten by the police.

More than 150 opposition protesters have also been jailed in the wake of the election results. Most, including the detained journalists, have been sentenced to jail terms of between 10 and 15 days on charges of hooliganism.

Since coming to power in 1994, President Lukashenko has steadily eroded civil and political rights and waged an assault on independent media, notes Human Rights Watch. According to Freedom House, Belarus has one of the world's most repressive regimes.

Visit these links:

- WAN: http://www.wan-press.org/article9615.html

- IPI: http://www.freemedia.at/Protests2006/pr_Belarus15.03.06.htm

- CJFE: http://www.cjfe.org/releases/2006/28032006belarus.html

- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/europe/belarus24mar06na.html

- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16849

- IFJ: http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=3796&Language=EN

- Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/belaru12217.htm

- Freedom House: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=342

- Belarus Association of Journalists: http://baj.ru/indexe.htm

- OSCE Report on Belarus Elections: http://www.osce.org/documents/html/pdftohtml/18437_en.pdf.html

- Charter 97: http://67.18.131.22/eng/news/

Source:

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/73252/

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