Watchdog

MINSK -- A contributor to RFE/RL's Belarus Service who was detained at a protest against Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Minsk last weekend has been jailed for eight days.

A court in Minsk on November 19 found chief video editor Yulia Kotskaya guilty of taking part in an unsanctioned rally, a charge she rejected, saying she was covering the event as a journalist.

Kotskaya was among the more than 1,200 people detained by riot police on November 15 across Belarus, which has witnessed nearly daily protests since Lukashenka was declared winner of the country's August 9 election despite charges of election fraud by the opposition and the West.

At least 18 journalists -- including Kotskaya and three other contributors to RFE/RL's Belarus Service, photo reporter Andrey Shaulyuha, cameraman Andrey Rabchyk, and veteran reporter Ihar Karney -- were among those detained, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

Earlier this week, Karney was sentenced to 10 days in jail for allegedly taking part in an unsanctioned rally in Minsk. Rabchyk and Shaulyuha received 15-day sentences on similar charges.

They all pleaded not guilty as well, insisting they were covering the protest.

Last week, a veteran correspondent of RFE/RL in Belarus, Aleh Hruzdzilovich, was sentenced to 15 days in jail on the same charge of covering another mass rally against Lukashenka.

In August, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry refused to extend the accreditations of several RFE/RL correspondents, forcing them to suspend their work for RFE/RL.

According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 26 reporters were incarcerated in Belarus as of November 18.

Amnesty International has slammed a bill circulating in the lower house of Russia’s parliament that would identify individuals receiving funds from abroad as “foreign agents,” saying the proposed legislation signals a “new witch hunt of civil society groups and human rights defenders.”

Under the bill introduced in the State Duma on November 18, individuals labeled as “foreign agents” would be banned from joining the civil service or holding a municipal government position.

They would also be forced to mark their letters to authorities and other material with a “foreign agent” label.

"If adopted, the bill will drastically limit and damage the work not only of civil society organizations that receive funds from outside Russia but many other groups as well," Amnesty International’s Russia Researcher Natalia Prilutskaya said in a statement on November 19.

“The bill signals a new witch hunt of civil society groups and human rights defenders standing up for justice and dignity,” Prilutskaya charged.

“It exposes the Russian authorities’ belief that civil society actors are destructive 'agents of the West' bent on destabilizing the government -- not as key allies to address challenges and seek to bring positive change," Prilutskaya said.

Russia’s “foreign agents” law came into force in 2012. Since then, hundreds of organizations have seen their funding shrink, and their staff intimidated or prosecuted.

Critics say the law has been arbitrarily applied to target Russian civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and political activists, including outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Under the current proposal, the “foreign agents” label would be obligatory for publications and other materials issued by public associations and their members, as well as for NGO staff deemed to be in that category.