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on July 1, the Minsk city court continued to hear the case of Mikalai Dziadok. He is charged under three articles of the Criminal Code but pleads not guilty. Today Dziadok testified in court. Mikola Dziadok is an author in Novy Chas, blogger, and activist of the anarchist movement. Dziadok was detained on the night of November 11, 2020 by the officers of GUBOPiK (Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption) and Interior Ministry in a country house in the town of Sasnovy. The following charges were pressed against him: Article 342 of the Criminal Code — Organizing and preparing activities that breach public order or active participation in them;  Article 361 of the Criminal Code — calling to actions aimed at causing damage to the national security of Belarus;  and Article 295 of the Criminal Code — illegal actions in relation to firearms, ammunition and explosives

VIENNA, 24 June 2021 – The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, today stated that the recently adopted laws in Belarus seriously contradict international human rights standards on freedom of expression and freedom of the media, including the OSCE commitments of the country.

The Ministry of Justice has started a monitoring of the activities of the Belarusian Association of Journalists. The letter that BAJ received on Monday morning requires the NGO to present thousands of papers dated since January 1, 2018 to the Ministry's Non-profit organizations department. When we speak of thousands of documents, we really mean it.

BAJ letter with the request to hospitalize political prisoner, journalist Andrzej Paczobut, who has got Covid-19 in jail, and also has heart problems, was sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Health Care, the Department of Corrections and its structural subdivisions — Minsk and Minsk region office, and Zhodzina prison number 8, where the journalist is kept.

The hijacking of a plane and kidnapping of editor and blogger Raman Pratasevich is viewed by the free expression, press freedom and journalists’ community as the outrageous climax of a broader campaign against media freedom in Belarus that drastically intensified after the August 2020 election. Free Press Unlimited co-wrote a joint call to make respect for press freedom a cornerstone of all demands towards Belarus.