OSCE Media Representative concerned about criminal verdicts for Belarus journalists

VIENNA, 26 June 2002 - The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve, is deeply concerned about a criminal court sentence of two Belarusian journalists, Nikolai Markevich and Pavel Mozheiko, for allegedly having insulted President Aleksandr Lukashenko during last September's presidential campaign.

The two journalists, working for the independent newspaper Pagonya in Grodno in western Belarus, were convicted on 24 June to respectively two and two and a half years of "restricted freedom."

"It is my firm conviction that journalists should not be prosecuted in a criminal court for what they write", Mr. Duve said. "This practice is absolutely unacceptable in an OSCE participating State. We call upon the Belarusian authorities to urgently reconsider this policy and encourage them to repeal the existing slander and libel legislation."

Mr. Duve also said that he believed libel laws should not be used to clamp down on opposition representatives and that heads of state should not receive undue protection from media reporting on their activities.

The OSCE Media Representative also noted with apprehension that prosecutors in Minsk had opened on 20 June yet another criminal case against an editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper. Like his colleagues at Pagonya, the editor of Rabochy, Viktar Ivashkevich, has been charged with defaming President Lukashenko during the presidential election campaign. If convicted, Mr. Ivashkevich could face up to five years in prison under the Belarusian Criminal Code.