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Chair of Belarusian Association of Journalists prohibited from leaving Belarus

Zhanna Litvina, chair of the Belarusian Association Journalists (BAJ), was not allowed by Belarusian border guards to leave Belarus on March 15.

Ms. Litvina was scheduled to take a plane at Minsk National Airport in the morning.

Belarusian border officers told her that she had been placed by the country`s police on a list of individuals under a foreign travel ban and handed her the passport back with an “Exit Denied” stamp.

“As a matter of fact, it is outrageous,” Ms. Litvina told BelaPAN. “On March 15, the country’s Constitution Day, they give me a stamp that violates my constitutional right to travel abroad. I believe that they did not use the stamp previously at all.”

Reports have had it that one more journalist, Mikhail Yanchuk of the Polish-based Belsat TV targeting audiences in Belarus, was prohibited from crossing the Belarusian border in the early hours of Thursday.

Speaking to reporters on March 1, a few days after the European Union imposed travel bans and asset freezes on new Belarusian officials, Pavel Radzivonaw, a departmental chief at the Prosecutor General’s Office, said that persons calling on foreign states and international organizations to impose economic and other sanctions against Belarus might be subjected to a temporary ban on foreign travel and even to criminal prosecution.

After that, human rights defender Valyantsin Stefanovich, Nasha Niva Editor-in-Chief Andrey Dynko and several opposition politicians, including Anatol Lyabedzka and Alyaksandr Dabravolski of the United Civic Party, Syarhey Kalyakin of the “Spravedlivy Mir” (Just World) Belarusian Party of the Left, and Viktar Karnyayenka of the Movement for Freedom, were denied permission to cross the Belarusian border without being given an explanation. Belarusian Helsinki Committee Chairman Aleh Hulak was told at a district citizenship and migration office in Minsk that he was under a foreign travel ban. //BelaPAN