Picks of the week Video
On August 27, courts in Minsk convicted 11 activists who picketed the building of the House of Justice on August 24, when Judge Maryna Fiodarava announced her ruling in the case of Henadz Fiadynich and Ihar Komlik. The protesters were arrested and detained before the trial, which resulted in heavy fines.
Editor of finance.tut.by Dzmitry Bobryk has been officially notified that he is suspected of illegally accessing the paid news feed of the government-owned news agency BelTA. Earlier, 7 more journalists were named suspects in the case. All of them, except for tut.by chief editor Maryna Zolatava, are banned from leaving the country.
- Police seize equipment from the Minsk office of tut.by news portal. August 7, 2018. Photo: svaboda.org
On August 30, personnel of a special police force broke into the Brest apartment of blogger Siarhei Piatrukhin right in the middle of a YouTube live stream (see video below). Masked men threw the blogger on the floor and searched the premises. The raid is said to be linked to a criminal investigation Piatrukhin has been under after he allegedly insulted a police officer.
- Mikhail Zhamchuzhny
Viasna continued to receive alarming news from the Horki-based penal colony No. 9, which holds political prisoner Mikhail Zhamchuzhny. The prisoner has received three 10-day penalties in a punishment cell since June 31, thus spending most of his time in solitary confinement. In total, Zhamchuzhny has been penalized 35 times since he was transferred to the penitentiary in August 2017. Meanwhile, both the District Court and the Mahilioŭ Regional Court sided with the prison authorities, saying that the penalties were legal.
