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The Supreme Court of Belarus on May 23 sentenced Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Sharoiko to eight years on espionage charges.
The Sharoiko case appears to be part of yet another crackdown by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on media and civil society.
Currently, Sharoiko is being held at a jail of the Belarusian KGB.
Sharoiko, a Ukrainian Radio reporter, was arrested in Belarus in November. His subsequent trial was closed to the press.
Sharoiko is not the only Ukrainian journalist facing years behind bars in Belarus.
Dzmitry Halko, a Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist, a former freelancer for the Kyiv Post and ex-fixer for the Times of London, was arrested by Belarusian authorities in April when crossing the border into Belarus from Ukraine and faces up to six years in jail in Belarus.
Halko left Belarus for Ukraine in December after Belarusian authorities opened a criminal case against him. He is accused of using violence against police officers, but denies the accusations.
In November Halko celebrated his son Yan’s birthday in Minsk, and police officers arrived at Halko’s apartment, claiming that they had received a complaint about noise. Halko and his son then argued with the officers, and a police squad broke into the apartment and stormed it.
Several teenagers jumped out of the windows during the raid, causing one of them to break his leg and another, 18-year old Arseny, to break his spine.
Now, several months later and after spinal surgery, the police have opened a criminal case against Arseny, accusing him of marijuana possession. He said he had been pressured to give false testimony on Halko and refused, which resulted in the police fabricating the case against him, according to Halko’s ex-wife Olga Kravchuk.
Earlier, Halko told the Kyiv Post the police raid was connected to Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissent.
Olga Kravchuk still worked as the webmaster of the Belarusian Partisan publication at the time of the raid on his apartment. The police were most likely hoping to gain access to the publication’s site from his apartment as part of a crackdown on the news site before it was shut down by local authorities in December, according to Halko.
Halko became an editor and journalist at the Belarusian Partisan online newspaper in 2016 and transformed it into one of the most opposition-minded and critical media outlets in Belarus. The Belarusian Partisan was founded by Pavlo Sheremet, a Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist who was killed by a car bomb in Kyiv in 2016.
Halko resigned from the Belarusian Partisan in 2017 in what he described as part of a government crackdown on independent media.
Meanwhile, recently Halko’s friend and independent economist Sergei Chaly was beaten by unknown assailants.
Dzmitry’s son Yan may be sent to a juvenile detention facility if the authorities press charges against him. Yan was beaten about two months ago by unknown assailants.
The administration of Yan’s school had constantly harassed him due to his opposition views prior to the November police raid, which also included another case brought against him by the authorities who accused Yan of spreading pornography, according to Kravchuk.
The Belarusian authorities have threatened to take Yan from his family and send him to a state orphanage, Kravchuk said. Two friends of Yan’s, who used to live in her apartment, had already been taken from their parents by force and sent to a Belarusian state orphanage.
Dzmitry’s elder son, Andrey, has been extradited from Russia and will now be tried in a Belarusian court on exhibitionism charges. Kravchuk believes this is part of the Belarusian dictatorship’s revenge on Dzmitry’s whole family and friends.
Halko has always been an active participant in protests against Lukashenko’s dictatorship. He had been arrested on numerous occasions for his opposition activities – most recently in 2017.
Independent news sites BelaPAN, naviny.by, onliner.by, and Khartia 97 have all been blocked by Belarusian authorities in recent years. Meanwhile, many journalists have been arrested, jailed, or killed under Lukashenko’s rule.
