Journalist Writing About AKB Plant In Brest Receives Messages With Threats

Nasta Zakharevich filed a claim to the police.

Journalist Nasta Zakharevich, who writes about the battery plant in Brest, received messages with insult and a veiled threat in the VKontakte social network, reports baj.by with a reference to the Green Portal.

This is the message Nasta Zakharevich received on the night of August 19.

Before sending a link to the news about a boy hit by a car, the man deleted the previous offensive messages, so in the screenshot everything looks like he was just sharing the news.

What does the battery plant have to do with it?

Firstly, a person with the same name and surname once wrote a complaint to the police against activist, opponent of the construction Dzmitry Bekalyuk. Dzmitry was accused of “discrediting the Republic of Belarus”, and the amount of potential damage to export was estimated at 4.5 billion US dollars.

Secondly, this VKontakte account is known for often leaving harsh and rude comments under news related to the opponents of the plant.

This is the way he commented on the news about how the attempt to detain Tatsiana Fesikava ended up with the activist getting to hospital.

A person with the same name, surname, date of birth and photograph as in this VKontakte profile ran for the Brest regional “Council of Deputies” as the Deputy Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party.

He, as a lawyer, carried out the public reception at Media-Polesie, the website site that now publishes one material after another in support of fellow countryman Viktar Lemiasheuski, the head of 1AK-GROUP, which builds factories and occupies a significant share of the Belarusian battery market.

Important to note, in early July this year it became known that the KGB opened criminal proceedings against owner of the battery plant in Brest Viktar Lemiasheuski, as well as a number of other persons. Among the accusations is “giving a bribe”. The accused are held in custody.

After the received insults and threats, Nasta Zakharevich filed a claim to the police. The message with the news about the boy hit by the car was not considered a threat by the law-enforcement agencies.

The editors of the Green Portal declare that threats and insults against journalists are unacceptable. It is low from the human point of view, and illegal from the point of view of the law.

“We are convinced that the person who decided in such a vulgar form to leave “wishes” to Nasta in private messages was well aware of what he was doing. And his desire to “just share a link to the news” is not a naive conversation between a reader and a journalist. Anyway otherwise, we expect the law-enforcement agencies to evaluate the actions of this person,” the Green Portal editor’s office said.

Be sure to write a claim to the police

Chairman of the NGO “BAJ”, lawyer Andrei Bastunets emphasizes: in case of threats and insults, a journalist must write a claim to the police.

Specifically, in this case we are talking about obvious insults and threats that a person experiences, even if they are not voiced directly.

You should also write a claim about the facts of obstruction of the journalistic activities.

Get your claims registered, take copies of them.

The law-enforcement agencies are obliged to accept claims, conduct fact checks, find the culprits and bring them to justice in accordance with the legislation of Belarus.