Lengthy prison term for journalist indicative of intensifying political terror, husband says

July 14, BPN. The eight-year prison sentence handed down on journalist Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachvałava) shows “how the degree of political terror is growing in Belarus,” said husband Ihar Iljaš, a political analyst.

Iljaš attended the closing session. He noted that his wife “took the verdict with calm dignity. She smiled ironically when the sentence was announced. Then she sadly joked that she was given longer sentence than Solzhenitsyn had received under Stalin,” he noted.

He does not know on what the high treason charge against his wife was grounded. The judge declared the journalist “guilty of transferring state secrets to a foreign country.”

Andrejevaa worked for a foreign media outlet, specializing in investigative journalism, Iljaš said, noting that the charge stemmed from one of her old reports. “Two years ago, these actions were not perceived as a crime of revealing state secrets, otherwise she would have been charged several years ago, not now.”

According to him, state media journalists were not present in the courtroom. Authorities may have decided to maintain information vacuum from the start, because “propaganda would find it hard to cast Kacia as an enemy, no matter how much they wanted it.”

Iljaš noted that the judges and prosecutors “understood perfectly well” that they were involved in illegal politically motivated persecution, noting that their names were not mentioned as the judge read the verdict. “I don’t know if it is a common practice, but as a journalist I have never encountered anything like that,” he added.

“A few years ago, Belarusians joked that judges would soon conduct trials in balaclavas,” he said. “So far it hasn’t come to that. But they have learned how to hide the protagonists as much as possible during political trials.”

Andrejeva intends to appeal the verdict. Her husband described it as “retaliation for her professional activities.” “We’re in hell, but we’re not going to give up. We will stand up to it,” he added.

On July 13, Andrejeva was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of high treason. She is currently serving a prison sentence on charges widely believed to be politically motivated and may spend a total of eight years and three months in prison.

She was arrested together with her colleague Darja Čulcova in November 2020 while covering the violent dispersal of a protest rally in downtown Minsk. In February 2021, both journalists were sentenced to two years in prison for alleged violation of public order. Human rights groups declared them political prisoners.