{"id":47055,"date":"2023-05-30T17:26:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T14:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/api.pozirk.online\/articles\/local-journalist-sentenced-to-prison-for-extremism\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:29:13","slug":"local-journalist-sentenced-to-prison-for-extremism","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/news\/47055\/","title":{"rendered":"Local journalist sentenced to prison for extremism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>May 30, <span>BPN.<\/span><\/b>&nbsp;The Homiel Regional Court has sentenced Ja\u016dhien Mierkis, a prominent&nbsp;local journalist, to four years in prison for extremism, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reports. It has also ruled that his photo and video equipment and data carriers be confiscated. <\/p>\n<p>Mierkis had cooperated with independent media such as the <span>Belsat TV<\/span> channel, which was banned as an \u201cextremist group\u201d after the 2020 protests against Alaksandr \u0141uka\u0161enka. <\/p>\n<p> Later he stopped working as a journalist and focused on local history projects.<\/p>\n<p> He was arrested in September 2022 after his apartment and his father\u2019s house were searched by authorities.<\/p>\n<p> He had previously spent 27 days in detention for participating in unauthorized events.<\/p>\n<p>Human rights activists consider him a political prisoner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>May 30, BPN.&nbsp;The Homiel Regional Court has sentenced Ja\u016dhien Mierkis, a prominent&nbsp;local journalist, to four years in prison for extremism, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reports. It has also ruled that his photo and video equipment and data carriers be confiscated. Mierkis had cooperated with independent media such as the Belsat TV channel, which was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"template":"","rubric":[16],"class_list":["post-47055","articles","type-articles","status-publish","hentry","rubric-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Local journalist sentenced to prison for extremism | Pozirk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 30, BPN.&nbsp;The Homiel Regional Court has sentenced Ja\u016dhien Mierkis, a prominent&nbsp;local journalist, to four years in prison for extremism, the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/news\/47055\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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