JURIST Belarus correspondent Ulyana Belaya is a student in the International Law and European Union Law program at the European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania. She left Belarus in September.
Charter97.org, spoke about this in an interview with kyky.org.
- You left the country in 2011, fearing persecution by the KGB because of the charges of organizing riots. Already then, they began to test this scheme of pressure on journalists, or did it happen before that?
- It started from the first days of Lukashenka s coming to power. Any dictatorship begins with the destruction of freedom of speech. Back in 1994, television was taken under control in Belarus; in 1996, the last independent FM radio station, Radio 101.2, was closed, and then they began to pressure the media. For the first time, the authorities ransacked the Charter’s office in 2001. In 2010, several criminal cases were initiated against the site, searches were carried out, all employees were arrested, including me under a criminal offense.