Dzmitry Halko, a Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist, has been transferred to Minsk’s Volodarka prison and faces up to six years in jail, his mother Tatiana Halko wrote on Facebook on April 27.
Halko was a freelancer for the Kyiv Post in 2015. He also used to be a fixer for the Times of London.
He was arrested by Belarusian authorities when crossing the border into Belarus from the Ukrainian city of Lviv, and now faces prison in Belarus, his Ukrainian wife Julia Garkusha said on Facebook on April 22.
Garkusha told the Kyiv Post on April 24 that Halko had gone to Belarus to repay a tax debt, unblock his bank card and see his son, who had also been in Ukraine and returned to Belarus a month ago.
Halko left Belarus for Ukraine in December after Belarusian authorities opened a criminal case against him.
He is accused of using violence against police officers and faces up to six years in prison. He denies the accusations of assaulting police officers.
In November Halko celebrated his son’s birthday in Minsk, and police officers arrived at Halko’s apartment, claiming that they had received a complaint about noise. Halko and his son then argued with the officers, and a police squad broke into the apartment and stormed it.
Several people received injuries during the raid.
Earlier, Halko told the Kyiv Post the police raid was connected to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissent. The server of the Belarusian Partisan, an opposition website, was based in his apartment, and his former wife works at the Belarusian Partisan.
The Belarusian Partisan’s site was blocked by Belarusian authorities in December.
Halko became an editor and journalist at the Belarusian Partisan online newspaper in 2016 and transformed it into one of the most opposition-minded and critical media outlets in Belarus. The Belarusian Partisan was founded by Pavlo Sheremet, a Belarusian-Ukrainian journalist who was killed by a car bomb in Kyiv in 2016.
Halko resigned from the Belarusian Partisan in 2017 in what he described as part of a government crackdown on independent media.
Halko, known for his pro-Ukrainian and liberal views, also covered Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and Russia’s war against Ukraine for the Novy Chas online newspaper from 2013 to 2015.
Halko has lived alternately in Minsk and the Ukrainian city of Mariupol since 2014. Previously, he had also lived in Russia.
Belarus has a long history of political prisoners, crackdowns on dissent and tight censorship of the media.
Belarus is among the 30 most authoritarian countries in the world, according to the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index. More than 100 journalists were arrested in Belarus last year.
At least five opponents of Lukashenko’s dictatorship disappeared in Belarus in 1999 to 2002 and are believed to be dead.
