Index on Censorship’s Mike Harris was due to meet Charter 97‘s Aleh Byabenin in Minsk, Belarus last week. Instead he ended up attending his funeral. As Index reported on Saturday, Byabenin was found dead on Friday evening, apparently hanged.
Mike explained the situation in Belarus to BBC World Service’s Europe Today yesterday (6 September). Click here to listen (from 40 mins in).
Mike was also interviewed for Russian television after Aleh’s funeral, along with members of Charter 97 and the Belarus Free Theatre.
Index on Censorship is deeply concerned by the reported suicide of one of Belarus’s leading journalists and human rights activists, Aleh Byabenin. Byabenin was found dead in his country house on the outskirts of Minsk yesterday (Friday 3 September) at 5.30pm local time by a family friend. No suicide note was found. (more…)
Armed police raided the offices of opposition magazine the New Times on 2 September. The magazine’s editor Yevgenia Albats was repeatedly asked to hand over interview recordings that were used in a report on alleged abuses of power by OMON riot police. The report, which cited police sources making accusations about their superiors, prompted the force to launch a libel case in February. Albats gave police an interview transcript, but withheld any information concerning the identities of sources. OMON police are frequently deployed to break up demonstrations, and were involved in detaining 100 protesters at Strategy 31’s rally in Moscow on 31 August.
Concerns for press freedom have also been raised in Belarus this week, when the country’s oldest independent newspaper said that it faces closure due to interference from the government. The editor of Babruiski Kurier, Anatol Sanatsenka, said that the publication is in a difficult financial situation after authorities banned any advertising in the newspaper. He added that local officials told him that Babruiski Kurier “does not write about the right things”.
The Belarusian government has continued with its crackdown on opposition groups by arresting Mikhas Bashura on charges of forgery. Bashura, who denies the charges, is an outspoken member of the Tell the Truth campaign. In May 2010 three of his campaign colleagues were arrested. Two months later his car was searched and campaign documents containing the signatures of 20,000 people were seized. The arrest is the latest in a series of actions against opposition campaigners.
