KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Authorities in Belarus raided homes and offices of journalists and human rights activists on Tuesday in the latest effort to quell protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Police searched the offices of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and the Viasna Human Rights Center, as well as the apartments of its members and confiscated their equipment. Activists said more than 30 people were briefly detained and at least three remained in police custody.
Europe’s main human rights envoy denounced the searches and detentions in Belarus as unacceptable.
“Freedom of expression, association and assembly must be guaranteed according to international human rights standards,” said Dunja Mijatovic, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe.
The leader of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, Andrei Bastunets, was one of the prisoners and was later released.
“This is the biggest crackdown ever against journalists and rights activists Europe has ever witnessed,” said Boris Goretsky, vice president of the association, whose home was also searched. “There have been more than 400 arrests of journalists in the last six months, and the authorities will not stop there.”
At least 10 of them were criminally charged and remained in custody.
Authorities also raided the headquarters of the Viasna human rights center 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 told the world about the incredible extent of the repression,” said Valiantsin Stefanovic, deputy head of Viasna.
At least three Visna activists remained in police custody after their detention earlier Tuesday.
Belarus has been rocked by protests since the official results of the August 9 presidential elections gave Lukashenko a sixth term due to a landslide. The main opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and her supporters have dismissed the result as falsified, and some pollsters have also described the vote manipulation.
Authorities have responded to protests, the largest of which attracted up to 200,000 people, with sweeping repression. Human rights activists say more than 30,000 people have been detained since the beginning of the protests, and thousands of them have been brutally beaten.
The United States and the European Union have responded to the elections and crackdown by introducing sanctions against Belarusian officials.
The commission of inquiry, the nation’s highest investigative body, said Tuesday’s searches are part of an investigation into the funding of the protests.
Tsikhanouskaya denounced the raids and detentions of journalists and rights activists, saying, “The regime is carrying out repression against those who defend human rights.”
Amnesty International denounced the raids as another escalation of reprisals against dissent.
“This is clearly a centrally organized and targeted effort to decimate the country’s independent media and human rights organizations through terrifying searches, intimidation and persecution,” Aisha Jung, the group’s senior campaigner for Belarus, said in a statement. . “The authorities are determined to prevent and discourage 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 prosecution of journalists.
“We strongly condemn this shameful act of violence and oppression and demand that the Lukashenko government stop harassing our colleagues,” IFJ President Younes Mjahed said in a statement.