Reporters Without Borders slam sentence against Nexta editor

May 4, BPN. The sentence handed down on Raman Pratasievič on the World Press Freedom Day demonstrates the Belarusian regime’s “contempt for journalists’ rights,” Reporters Without Borders’ Jeanne Cavelier has said.

The eight-year prison sentence to Nexta’s former editor, arrested after the forced landing of a Ryanair aircraft in Minsk, “completes the chilling sequence of events” that brought him to a Belarusian jail, the RSF’s Eastern Europe bureau head said.

“We are outraged by this iniquitous trial and call for his release and the release of the 33 other journalists imprisoned in Belarus,” she added.

Reporters Without Borders said that after his arrest two years ago, Pratasievič was subjected to considerable psychological pressure and even forced to make a public apology on the ONT TV channel. He was held “in an unknown place and unknown conditions.”

Yesterday’s sentence was condemned by Council of Europe Secretary-General Marija Pejčinović Burić, the German Foreign Ministry, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, and Belarusian opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja.