H. E. Alexander Lukashenko
President of the Republic of Belarus
Minsk
Belarus

Vienna, 29 July 1997

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI) strongly condemns the detention of a Russian television crew by state authorities.

On 22 July 1997, a three-man crew for Russian Public Television (ORT), headed by Minsk bureau chief Pavel Sheremet, was travelling on assignment to film the Belarusian border with Lithuania, where they intended to verify reports that security on all borders has been increased. After applying for permission for the shoot, Sheremet was informed by the authorities that he would not be able to film until September or October. The crew nevertheless decided to go to the border, which they did not cross. When they did proceed to a guarded boarder crossing, Sheremet, his camera man Dmitry Zavadsky, and their driver, Yaroslav Ovchinnikov., were detained and two video cassettes were seized by the border guards. They were then released.

On 26 July, however, Sheremet and Ovchinnikov were detained again by border guards at Minsk airport and taken to Grodno, near the Lithuanian border, apparently, for questioning about the 22 July incident. Border guards also went with a warrant to the Minsk home of Zavadsky and took him to Grodno.

All three ORT employees are currently being held in a temporary detention faculty at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Grodno, but yesterday their case was transferred for investigation to the Belarusian Committee for State Security on charges of violating Article 80, para. 1 of the Belarusian Criminal Code, under which illegal border crossing is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.

IPI, the global network of editors and media executives from newspapers, magazines, broadcasting organisations and news agencies, condemns the detention of a film crew on assignment and points out that everyone has the right to “seek, receive and impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers,” as guaranteed in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We therefore strongly urge Your Excellency to ensure that Sheremet and his crew are released immediately and that all charges related to illegal border crossing are dropped.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director