MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd March, 2021) The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the sentencing of a Belarusian reporter from the tut.by news portal, Katerina Borisevich, and called for her release.
On Tuesday, a court in the Belarusian capital of Minsk sentenced Borisevich to six months in prison and a fine, and anesthesiologist Artyom Sorokin to two years in prison with a one-year suspended sentence and a fine for divulging medical secrets regarding the health of deceased opposition activist Roman Bondarenko. The trial was held behind closed doors.
"CPJ condemns the sentencing of Belarus journalist Katsiaryna Barysevich to 6 months in jail," the committee said.
"Today's sentencing of journalist Katsiaryna Barysevich is yet another example of how the Belarusian authorities will bully into silence any journalist who would dare to report independently. Barysevich should be released immediately and allowed to continue her work freely and safely," Gulnoza Said, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, said.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's representative on freedom of the media, Teresa Ribeiro, qualified the sentence as "another blow to media freedom."
"I am saddened by today's court ruling, convicting journalist Katerina #Borisevich to 6 months imprisonment. This is yet another blow to media freedom in #Belarus. There must be no criminal prosecution for providing information of legitimate public interest," Ribeiro wrote on Twitter.
Borisevich and Sorokin were detained and remanded in custody in the fall of 2020 over a tut.by article on the death of opposition activist Bondarenko. The activist, aged 31, died in an emergency hospital in Minsk on November 12. He was admitted to the hospital from a police department, after he was detained following a scuffle. Opposition supporters put the blame on the authorities, while the police insisted the activist was in a state of alcoholic intoxication. The tut,by portal released medical records showing that no alcohol was found in Bondarenko's blood, but the Belarusian prosecution said these were just preliminary conclusions. Borisevich was accused of persuading Sorokin to disclose information that constitutes a medical secret without consent of the patient or other authorized persons.
