As a journalist, I have repeatedly written about how people are detained in Belarus, covering criminal courts and administrative trials. Being arrested for between three and 15 days was seen as something ordinary - a routine punishment, relatively safe and harmless. I thought so myself, until I found myself in prison last month.
I was detained while covering a protest in Minsk on 8 November. Here, the nuance is that it is almost impossible to hold a public protest legally, and any street events are now outside the law. This means that everyone present automatically becomes “participants in an unsanctioned public event”. Until the Belarusian presidential elections in August, the authorities used to observe some rules regarding journalists, who would be detained and then released. But starting in September, Belarusian journalists began to be detained en masse, and deemed participants in protest actions.
That Sunday, there were reports from the start that journalists were being deliberately detained, so I hid my press badge under my jacket. When the police officers grabbed me, I managed to show it, but it didn’t help. The riot police constantly asked about my accreditation - apparently, they had been instructed that only foreign correspondents with accreditation from the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are journalists. The simple press cards of local journalists do not concern them.
