Aliaksei Shota

Affiliated media: Hrodna.life, Editor-in-chief

Incident date: March 19, 2021

Attack type:

• Fines and other restrictions following administrative offences

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Belarusian Association of Journalists

Location: Belarus, Hrodna

Additional information:

The Leninsky District Court of Hrodna fined twice the editor-in-chief of Hrodna.life Aliaksei Shota for distribution of information products included in the national list of extremist materials (Part 2 of Article 17.11 of the Code of Administrative Offences): 400 base amounts (BYN 11,600) as a representative of a legal entity and 25 base amounts (BYN 725) as an individual. The court ruled to confiscate the laptop seized from the journalist. The judge read out two reports on administrative offence. According to them, Shota (as an individual and a legal entity) posted three materials on April and June 2020, which contained links or the logo of the Telegram channel declared extremist. Shota pleaded not guilty. The journalist specified in his testimony that when the materials were published, the Telegram channel was not yet declared extremist. After the Telegram channel was declared extremist, all references to it that could be found were removed from the website.