BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Another Belarus journalist killed

Written by Brussels journalist David Ferguson

Thursday, 20 October 2005

The funeral took place today in Minsk's Northern Cemetery of Narodnaya Volya journalist Vasil Hrodnikau. The opposition daily journalist was found dead at his home in Zaslaue, nearby Minsk, on Tuesday with signs of head injuries.

The exact circumstances of the 67-year old journalist's death are unknown although Hrodnikau's newspaper 'Narodnaya Volya' was refused distribution and fined some ?38,000 last month. Since then Narodnaya Volya has been using a printer in the Russian city of Smolensk. Following the autopsy, Nikolai Hrodnikau, the journalist's brother, told state news agency Belapan that Vasil died of cranium injuries received from a blunt heavy object.

"We are very worried by the constant harassment of journalists and news media in Belarus as the 2006 presidential election approaches," commented Reporters Without Borders. "The many arrests, the banning of news media and above all the death of two journalists within one year are clear evidence of the desperate plight of press freedom in this country."

Hrodnikau's funeral today takes place one year to the day after Solidarnost journalist Veranika Charkasava was found stabbed to death in her Minsk appartment. She had been working on various government-critical issues including the possibility of Belarus arms sales to Iraq during Saddam Hussein rule. A recent article by Narodnaya Volya on that same issue resulted in the latter being fined.

"The investigations into Charkasava's death on 20 October 2004 and the disappearance of cameraman Dmitri Zavadski on 7 July 2000 have gone nowhere. We hope the same will not happen with the Grodnikov investigation and we call on the authorities not to rule out the possibility that he was killed because of his work," stated Reporters Without Borders.

Source:

http://euro-reporters.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=232&Itemid=1