New York, December 13, 2024—A Belarusian court on Friday convicted freelance reporter Ihar Karnei of “malicious disobedience to the requirements of the prison administration” and sentenced him to an additional eight months in prison. Karnei is already serving a three-year prison sentence after being convicted in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group.
“The additional eight months’ imprisonment given to journalist Ihar Karnei shows that the Belarusian authorities have little qualms about lashing out at members of the press already behind bars on spurious grounds,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should immediately release Karnei, along with all other jailed members of the press.”
Karnei, who formerly freelanced with Radio Svaboda, the Belarus service of the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was arrested in July 2023. State-owned newspaper Belarus Segodnya said that Karnei had collaborated with the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which was the largest independent media association in Belarus until it was dissolved in 2021 and labeled an extremist group in 2023.
After Karnei’s three-year sentence was upheld in June, he was transferred to Prison No. 17 in the city of Shklow, in the central eastern part of the country, and placed almost immediately in a solitary cell. Karnei is deprived of phone calls and parcels, and his family receives one out of four letters he sends, his wife Inna told CPJ in November.
On November 28, 2024, banned human rights group Viasna reported that Karnei was additionally charged with Article 411, Part 1, of the country’s criminal code, for allegedly disobeying the prison’s administration. There is no information about which of the prison’s requirements Karnei is accused of disobeying, according to the BAJ.
Belarus was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 28 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2023, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.
CPJ emailed Prison No. 17 for comment but did not receive any replies.