Belarus Detains Around 20 Journalists Preparing to Cover Protest

Belarusian police detained around 20 journalists preparing to cover a protest in central Minsk on Thursday and confiscated their telephones and identity documents, a Reuters witness said.

"The Interior Ministry later said the journalists had been driven to a police station for officers to check they had valid accreditation allowing them to work as journalists.

"It said all those with official accreditation would be released. It denied the journalists had been detained," Reuters reports in an article by Andrei Makhovsky and Tom Balmforth.

The journalists had planned to cover a demonstration in which hundreds of anti-government protesters marched along a central Minsk street on Thursday evening.

"Recent reports about the new wave of detentions of journalists reporting from Belarus are just sickening. Yet more proof that de facto authorities simply do not care about any international commitments. Calling on OSCE_RFoM to act accordingly," the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius tweeted.

Alexander Lukashenko won the 2020 election in Belarus with a reported 80.23% of the vote, which was met with widespread protests throughout the country and violent repression by the Belarusian authorities. Protests in Belarus have been ongoing since the August 9 presidential election. Protesters say massive vote-rigging has taken place and the winner is not Alexander Lukashenko but the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Hundreds of people were injured in clashes with police during the protests, and 3 protesters were killed.

By Ana Dumbadze 

Source: REUTERS  

Image: REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

Related Story: MFA: More than 50.000 Lithuanians Joined Human Chain in Solidarity with Belarus