TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Journalists from Belarus’ leading independent media were attacked Monday in the country’s capital amid a relentless crackdown on voices in the former Soviet nation.
The editor-in-chief of the online news portal TUT. BY, Maryna Zolatava, and its executive director, Lyudmila Chekina, face charges of “endangering national security,” “inciting hatred” and tax evasion. Three TUT-BY bloodhounds who left the country are being tried in absentia in the same trial.
Defendants face up to 12 years in prison if convicted in a trial that began before the Minsk City Court closed its doors. Western diplomats and independent journalists were denied access.
Zolatava and 3 of his colleagues were included in a list of “terrorists” through the country’s Soviet-era name security company, the KGB.
Belarus has been rocked by large anti-government protests after President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed August 2020 re-election, which the opposition and the West denounced as a rigged farce. The government responded to the protests with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 others arrested, thousands beaten by police and dozens of media outlets and non-governmental organizations shut down.
GESTURE OF DISAPPROVAL. BY the most popular online medium in Belarus with more than 3. 3 million users and widely covered the protests before banning them in 2021.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists says 32 bloodhounds are lately in bars, awaiting trial or serving their sentences.
Many TUT journalists. BY fled Belarus and opened a new medium, Zerkalo. io, which it blocked in Belarus.