New sentences handed down against journalists in Belarus
New convictions against journalists were handed down in Belarus. The Minsk City Court sentenced Gennady Mozheiko, a former employee of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in Belarus, to 3 years in prison, state news agency BelTA reported on Thursday, March 23. He was found guilty of insulting the country’s ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, as well as inciting racial, national, religious or other social hatred. He will serve his sentence in a penal colony.
On the same day, a court in Minsk sentenced the former journalist of the Belarusian TV channel ONT and the former head of the presidential group Dmitry Semchenko to three years in prison. “The accused was found guilty of deliberate actions designed to incite social enmity and discord on the basis of a different social affiliation. He will serve his main sentence in a general regime colony”, informs BelTA.
Mozheiko and Semchenko cases
The trial of Gennady Mozheiko was conducted because of his brief note, which refers to IT specialist Andrei Zeltser, who shot the KGB officer. In the article, his colleague talks about him, the material hung on the site for just a few minutes. Gennady Mozheiko was detained by Russian special services in the fall of 2021 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport when he was trying to fly to Warsaw. After his arrest, he was forced to return to Minsk, where he was met by members of the Belarusian KGB. Mozheiko was charged with incitement to hatred (Article 130 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus) and of insulting a representative of the authorities (Article 369 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus). First, Mozheiko was placed in an isolation ward on Akrestina Street in Minsk and then transferred to a pre-trial detention center in the city of Zhodino.
Proceedings in the case of Dmitry Semchenko began in court on March 21. He pleaded not guilty and stressed that he “has always been a supporter of dialogue and has never called for violence”. Prosecutor’s materials indicate that in 2020-2022, the journalist posted publications on social networks VKontakte and Instagram three times, “with the aim of creating a negative attitude in society towards law enforcement bodies, military and representatives of state power in general, speaking for the preservation of Belarus’ current constitutional order”. After the 2020 elections, the journalist left the station. In September 2022, he was arrested.
Source: DW
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