International human rights mission calls on Belarusian authorities to stop crackdown on journalists

The Observation Mission of the International Committee for Monitoring the Human Rights Situation in Belarus has called on the Belarusian authorities to stop their crackdown on journalists.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Mission said that the authorities should abandon the practice of denying accreditation to foreign journalists and deporting them from the country.

The accreditation requirement has ample room for power abuses on the part of the authorities that are quick to infringe on freedom of expression, Russian rights activist Andrei Yurov, leader of the Mission, said in an interview with BelaPAN.

The Belarusian government should respect its commitments under OSCE treaties that ban the deportation of journalists and the use of other restrictive measures against them for their professional activities, Mr. Yurov said.

Instead, the country’s authorities have detained and deported a number of foreign journalists in the last few months, he noted.

In the most recent incident, a Russian television channel's correspondent was ordered to leave Belarus within 24 hours and banned from entering the country for five years after he recorded an interview with journalist Iryna Khalip in Minsk on May 30.

In its statement, the Mission calls on the government to bring the Media Law in line with recommendations issued by the Office of the OSCE representative on freedom of the media in 2008, abandon the practice of deporting journalists and terminating their accreditation with no good reason, respect its international commitments and vow not to apply pressure on journalists any more. 

Belarus News