KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Authorities in Belarus raided the homes and offices of journalists and human rights activists on Tuesday in the latest attempt to crack down on protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The police searched the offices of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and the human rights center Viasna, as well as the members’ apartments, confiscating their equipment. More than 30 people were briefly detained and at least three remained in police custody, according to activists.
Europe’s leading human rights envoy denounced the searches and arrests in Belarus as unacceptable.
“Freedom of expression, association and assembly must be guaranteed in accordance with international human rights standards,” said Council of Europe human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, on Twitter.
The leader of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, Andrei Bastunets, was one of those arrested and later released.
“This is the biggest operation against journalists and human rights activists that Europe has ever seen,” said the association’s vice president, Boris Goretsky, whose home was also searched. “There have been more than 400 arrests of journalists in the past six months and the authorities are not going to stop there.”
At least 10 of them faced criminal charges and remained in custody.
Authorities also raided the headquarters of the human rights center Viasna in Minsk on Tuesday and searched the apartments of several of its activists, including the group’s head, Ales Bialiatski.
“This is an attempt to intimidate journalists and human rights activists who have been speaking to the world about the incredible scale of repression,” said Viasna’s deputy chief, Valiantsin Stefanovic.
At least three Visna activists remained in police custody after their arrest on Tuesday.
Belarus has been shaken by protests since the official results of the August 9 presidential election gave Lukashenko a sixth term with an overwhelming victory. The main opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and her supporters considered the result to be fraudulent, and some election officials also described vote rigging.
The authorities responded to the protests, the largest of which attracted up to 200,000 people, with radical repression. According to human rights defenders, more than 30,000 people have been detained since the protests began and thousands have been brutally beaten.
The United States and the European Union responded to the election and repression by introducing sanctions against the Belarusian authorities.
The Investigation Committee, the country’s top state investigation agency, said Tuesday’s searches were part of an investigation into the funding of the protests.
Tsikhanouskaya denounced the raids and arrests of journalists and rights activists, saying that “the regime is unleashing repressions against those who defend human rights”.
Amnesty International denounced the attacks as a new escalation of reprisals against dissidents.
“This is clearly a centralized and targeted attempt to decimate the country’s independent media and human rights organizations through terrible home invasions, harassment and harassment,” said Aisha Jung, senior group activist in Belarus, in a statement. . “The authorities are committed to stopping them and discouraging others from carrying out their critical and legitimate human rights and journalistic work.
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) demanded that the Belarusian authorities stop the persecution of journalists.
“We strongly condemn this outrageous act of violence and repression and demand that the Lukashenko government stop the harassment against our colleagues,” IFJ President Younes Mjahed said in a statement.