Investigative television journalist Katerina Andreeva’s two-year prison sentence for “organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order,” a reference to a 2020 Minsk protest she covered, sparked global condemnation.
In April, with only five months left to serve, Belarus authorities added a new charge of treason, punishable with up to 15 years in prison, and transferred her 185 miles from the capital to a correctional facility in Gomel, a city close to the border with Ukraine.
“The situation itself is frightening,” Igor Ilyash, her husband and a journalist, told Capital News Service recently. “She is, apparently, too bright and famous of a journalist to let her go now.”
“The authorities are trying to prevent people from coming out of prison,” Barys Haretski, the deputy head of The Belarusian Association of Journalists, told Capital News Service in a recent interview.
Haretski said the practice of bringing new criminal charges against journalists is new although it has been used often against other political prisoners.
“The reason they’re doing this….they’re sending a message that they do not want her released,” said Tim O’Connor, information officer at Belarus Affairs Unit for the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania in an interview with CNS.
The Embassy of Belarus in Washington did not respond to numerous requests for comment on Andreeva’s case.
Unprecedented crackdown on media freedom
Belarus, once part of the Soviet Union, and now a key Russian ally, is an authoritarian state sharing a border with Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
The United States closed its embassy in Minsk after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Most journalists have left the county. Those who stayed work underground, according to analysts and journalists interviewed recently.
Belarus president Alyaksander Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994, intensified the persecution of independent media organizations ahead of the 2020 presidential elections, accusing them of organizing mass protests.
Belarus leads Europe in the number of imprisoned journalists. According to The Belarusian Association of Journalists, 480 reporters and bloggers were detained by police in 2020. In 2021, about 115 journalists were detained and 25 still remain in jail today.
Hundreds of journalists were detained leading up to the elections. Most faced up to 15 days of arrest and administrative charges, after which they were released.
“When the journalists are saying, ‘Oh, I only got arrested for four hours, so that doesn’t even count’ – that’s a bad situation,” O’Connor said.
In May 2021, Lukashenko signed a new law banning the media from broadcasting events live and allowing the Ministry of Information to shut down media organizations without a court order. The government blocked news websites, including RFE/RL, Belsat, Belarussian media Tut.by and many others.
“This is a prohibited profession in Belarus,” Dmitriy Egorov, Andreeva’s co-worker at the Poland-based satellite channel Belsat TV, said in an interview with CNS.
“All the camera workers and photojournalists, they can’t work at all. Because as soon as they go outside with their equipment, they are targeted by the police,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk in an interview with CNS.
Chronology of Andreeva’s arrest
During the 2020 protests, the government shut down the mobile internet in order to prevent media coverage of the unprecedented events. In response, journalists would record their broadcasts in the streets and then rush to nearby apartments to upload them on the web, which also provided them a brief hideout from police.
But on Feb. 15, 2020, Andreeva and her colleague, camerawoman Darya Chultsova, covered a protest and for a short time were able to broadcast live by connecting to Wi-Fi in neighboring apartments, her husband, Illyash, said.
The rest of the broadcast was done from one of the nearby apartments, where Andreeva and Chultsova had the owner’s permission to set up by the window, connect to the internet and go live on air, according to the American Bar Association investigation of her case.
Soon afterward, security forces burst through the door of the apartment where the journalists were working and arrested them.
“The cops shouted, “You’re not going to do your live broadcasts again! Never again!” Andreeva later recounted in a letter to her husband from prison published by Index on Censorship, a non-profit organization.
“Katya was absolutely professional in conveying information about what was happening… she simply said that the security forces were approaching from this side,” said her colleague Dmitriy Egorov. “But the prosecutor considered this evidence… of her coordinating the protests in this way, and the court agreed with this.”
The new trial will most likely take place in May, said Ilyash, who has not been able to see his wife since before the new charges were announced.
Before the new charges “there were no signs of trouble.” The couple kept close during her two years behind bars “through glass, using a telephone,” he said. Facing a much longer imprisonment is still shocking. “At that moment, of course, neither I, nor she, imagined that this would really happen.”