Journalist Tatsiana Bublikava warned by procuracy
The journalist
was issued with an official warning for covering the events of 19 December in the
Nezalezhnastsi Square in Minsk without an accreditation, though earlier the
court had punished her with ‘participation in unauthorized action’.
As said by the journalist, prosecutor Pavel Yeliseyeu referred to the report of
her detention at the protest action while issuing the warning. In this report
she wrote that she had been there on a journalist mission. Bublikava was also
shown photos in which she could be seen taking interviews from participants of
the action, and print-outs from the internet materials, where the phrases that
she works for the BelSat TV channel
were underlined with a marker.
‘On 20 December the court didn’t believe to my testimony and sentenced me to 10
days of arrest for the alleged chanting of anti-state slogans. By this warning the
prosecutor actually confessed that the court had punished me groundlessly,’
commented Tatsiana Bublikava.
At the same time, the journalist also disagrees with the warning. Tatsiana says
that she tried to explain to the prosecutor that she was working as a non-staff
journalist for the Polish firm N.E.W.S.
Informacja, which is not a mass media. ‘But these nuances seem to be beyond
his comprehension’, she added.
Tatsiana Bublikava informed the BelSat about
her intention to appeal both the court verdict and the prosecutorial warning,
because the formulation that she worked for a foreign media didn’t meet the
reality.
