Belarus: EFJ Demands Release of Journalist Denis Ivashin
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Denis Ivashin is the 11th journalist under arrest in Belarus. He was arrested on the evening of Friday 12 March in Grodno, in the west of the country. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joins its Belarusian affiliate, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), in calling for his immediate release and that of the other ten journalists detained in Belarus.
A journalist with the weekly newspaper Novy Chas, Denis Ivashin published his latest investigation into former members of the “Berkut”, the Ukrainian riot police, who were recruited into the Belarusian police. He also contributes to the Belarusian service of the InformNapalm news website.
Five officers of the Belarusian intelligence service (KGB) searched his home and his parents’ house, in the suburbs of Grodno. Particularly interested in the journalist’s links with Ukraine, they seized computers, telephones, SIM cards, bank cards, books, notebooks and various objects. According to his wife, Denis Ivashin”s arrest warrant is for two months.
“As BAJ predicted, the regime of dictator Lukashenko is intensifying its repression of journalists,” said EFJ President Mogens Blicher Bjerregård. “We call on all journalists’ organisations in Europe to mobilise with their governments to call for an end to these repeated human rights violations and for the immediate release of the 11 journalists imprisoned in Belarus.”
The EFJ demands the immediate release of the eleven journalists detained in Belarus just for doing their job:
- Ekaterina Andreeva
- Daria Chultsova
- Ekaterina Borisevich
- Julia Slutskaya
- Alla Sharko
- Sergey Alshevsky
- Peter Slutsky
- Ksenia Lutskina
- Andrey Alexandrov
- Denis Ivashin
- Sergey Gordievich (under house arrest)