New York, December 12, 2024—A Belarusian court in Minsk, the capital, convicted freelance reporter Volha Radzivonava of discrediting Belarus, “incitement to racial, national, religious, or other social hostility or discord,” and defaming and insulting the president of Belarus, sentencing her to four years in jail on Tuesday.
“Journalist Volha Radzivonava’s four-year prison sentence is yet another example of the Belarusian authorities’ continued persecution of members of the press,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Authorities should immediately release Radzivonava, along with all imprisoned journalists.”
Authorities detained Radzivonava, a freelance journalist, on March 7, 2024. During her pretrial detention, she was sent to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation in Novinki, in the Minsk region, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and press trade group operating from exile.
Radzivonava’s trial started in Minsk on November 16, according to the banned human rights group Viasna.
There is no information regarding the grounds for the charges against Radzivonava but BAJ believes she was prosecuted in connection with her work.
CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee, the country’s law enforcement agency responsible for investigating crimes, for comment but did not receive a reply.
Belarus is the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 28 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.