The Council of Europe Demands from the Belarusian Authorities to End Pressure on Media

Spokesman Daniel Holtgen made a statement.

The Council of Europe urges the Belarusian authorities to refrain from further pressure on the media, said the organization's spokesman Daniel Holtgen.

"The recent actions against tut.by and journalists are alarming and violate the fundamental right to freedom of expression," he said, BelaPAN quoted.

On May 18th, the department of financial investigations of the State Control Committee initiated criminal proceedings against the officials of TUT BAY MEDIA under Part 2 Article 243 of the Criminal Code (evasion from taxes and fees in especially great amount).

The tut.by website has been blocked. This decision was taken by the Ministry of Information upon notice of the Prosecutor General's Office. The central office of tut.by was searched. Employees who came to work in the morning are not available; some detainees, including editor-in-chief Marina Zolotova, were taken to the temporary detention facility, according to the portal's Telegram Channel.

According to the latest information of tut. by, in addition to Zolotova, the following people were detained in connection with the criminal case: Liudmila Chekina, general director of TUT BAY MEDIA, chief accountant Angela Assad, deputy accountant Maria Novik, deputy director Irina Rybalko, HR director Nadezhda Adamovich, journalist Elena Tolkacheva, software engineer Vitaly Kalinovsky, business analyst Vadim Trusov, head of marketing Anna Zayats, manager Andrey Avdeev. Also, deputy editor-in-chief of the portal Olga Loiko was detained for 72 hours. She is in the TDF on Okrestina Lane. Journalist Tolkacheva was also taken there.

According to the portal, CEO of Rocket Data Daria Danilova and head of hoster.by Sergei Povalishev were detained. The investigators also came to Yulia Cherniavskaya, co-owner of hoster.by and widow of tut.by founder Yury Zisser. After the meeting with the law enforcers, she was taken to hospital with a hypertensive crisis and didn't return home after the discharge.