Belarusian Customs Officers Check-up Journalists’ Laptops

04.12.2007. Tags: freedom of expression, political persecution, mass media, journalists.
Source: Belarusian Association of Journalists.

In the night of 1-2 December at the frontier point Tserakhava on the Ukrainian border the Belarusian customs officers took away for a check-up the laptop that belonged to the journalist of Radio Racyja Aliaksei Minchonak. Minchonak was returning from a press tour across the Ukrainian part of Chernobyl zone.

According to Radio Racyja, Minchonak was returning to Belarus by train Minsk-Kyiv together with other journalists who had also taken part in the abovementioned tour, but the customs officers paid interest only to his laptop. They said to him that they had received some operative information from their administration and had to check-up the laptop. Being asked how much it could take, the customs officers said – 10 15 days.

Meanwhile, the experience of other journalists witnesses that such check-ups can be protracted for quite a long time. In the middle of October the Belarusian customs officers took away the laptops from the moderators of the Belarusian internet-resource generation-by Volha Kuzmich and Yury Sidun, who were returning from the BlogCamp that had taken place in Kyiv. The computers were checked up by the technical supplies department of Homel customs office till the end of November.