Journalist Volha Chaichyts to be tried for collaboration with "BelSat"

She is charged under Article 22.9 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, “work for foreign media without accreditation”. The writ was not handed to her in person, but was sent by mail.

"In order to establish the circumstances I came to the Fanipaĺ District Police Department. The policemen refused to speak Belarusian. I asked to be provided with an interpreter, but was proposed to speak Chinese instead. They said that we officially had two state languages and anyone could talk as he please.

The summons to police is related to a publication at the website belsat.eu.

The police showed the journalist print-outs from the web-page with a report concerning the recent public discussion about the urban planning in Fanipaĺ.

“A policeman said they had nothing against me in person, and this could be even a good article. According to him, there would have been no violation if we had just prepared the report without uploading it to the Internet, to which we had no right. Therefore they needed to pass the case to court. The date of the trial is not known so far.”

Volha Chaichyts believes she will be judged together with Siarhei Krauchuk, who had received a similar write earlier.

This year, independent journalists have already been convicted 12 times of violating Article 22.9, and the total sum the imposed fines is over 60 mln rubles.