Belarusian freelance photojournalist Aliaksandr Ziankou is serving a three-year prison sentence after being convicted in January 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group.
On June 22, 2023, authorities detained Ziankou after searching his home and seizing his computer equipment in Barysaw, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the capital, Minsk.
A court in Minsk convicted Ziankou on January 30, 2024. On April 16, a Belarusian court upheld Ziankou’s sentence, according to a representative with the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group operating from exile, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. CPJ could not determine whether Ziankou plans to appeal his sentence.
According to an unnamed former cellmate of Ziankou who spoke with BAJ, the charge stemmed from video footage found on his computer and posted on a website the authorities labeled as “extremist.”
A BAJ representative told CPJ, under condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, that Ziankou’s detention was not made public until his name appeared on the court’s website in January 2024. Ziankou was not included in CPJ’s 2023 count of imprisoned journalists due to a lack of publicly available information at the time.
The BAJ representative told CPJ in late 2024 that Ziankou developed health problems in detention: “his eyesight deteriorated, and his knees began to hurt badly.”
On May 3, the Belarusian Ministry of Interior added him to its list of people allegedly involved in extremist activity.
CPJ’s emails to the Belarusian Investigative Committee, the country’s law enforcement agency responsible for investigating crimes, in late 2024 for comment did not receive any reply.
Authorities previously detained Ziankou in 2020 while he was documenting protests against President Aleksandr Lukashenko, according to the BAJ representative.