New York, February 27, 2025— Belarusian authorities should immediately release Belarusian journalist Palina Pitkevich, whose trial on charges of participating in an extremist organization is set to start on March 7, and stop jailing the press for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
“Palina Pitkevich’s detention is yet another grim reminder that President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s government is the worst jailer of journalists in Europe and Central Asia,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York. “Belarusian authorities must drop all charges against Pitkevich and repeal the country’s extremism legislation instead of using it to silence dissent.”
Pitkevich was arrested in June, shortly after authorities designated the Press Club Belarus’ media literacy project Media IQ as an extremist group and listed her among its members, a representative of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an exiled advocacy and trade group, told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
If found guilty, she could be jailed for up to six years, according to the Criminal Code, which was amended to comply with a package of extremism legislation in 2021. Since then, the law to combat extremism has been used to ban more than 35 media outlets, according to BAJ.
CPJ is also investigating the case of freelance journalist Aleh Supruniuk, who has been missing since late January, and the detention of seven former journalists with the shuttered independent outlet Intex-Press, including reporter Ruslan Raviaka, on extremism charges in late 2024.
The BAJ representative confirmed to CPJ that Supruniuk was in detention. In 2021, Supruniuk was also briefly detained and his home was searched.
Belarus is the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 journalists behind bars, on December 1, 2024, when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census. Pitkevich was not included at the time due to a lack of publicly available information on her detention.
CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee, the country’s law enforcement agency, for comment but did not receive any response.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.
CPJ Staff | Radio Free (2025-02-27T13:55:14+00:00) Belarusian journalist Palina Pitkevich’s extremism trial set to open. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/27/belarusian-journalist-palina-pitkevichs-extremism-trial-set-to-open/
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