GAMAG Europe, the European alliance for gender equality in media, expresses its strong solidarity with all Belarus journalists, regardless their media or political position, and our special concern with violence against women journalists in this country and everywhere.

According to the Belarusian Union of Journalists (BUJ), the Bielorussian Association of Journalists (BAJ), and other International organizations focused on press freedom and human rights, already 151 journalists have been detained in the country, some of them international correspondents, and 400 have been harassed and intimidated in the frame of the current political and civil conflict in the country, in Minsk and other Belarus cities since August.

We join calls of International and European Federations of Journalists and other professional organizations to assure freedom of expression in the country and everywhere and to stop the prosecutions against journalists and media workers, as well as to allow them to do their job and cover all the events freely. We specially call for the use of a non-hostile and non-sexist language in media and the respect to a professional code of ethics.

We call Belarus authorities, European institutions as well as international organisations and civil society to defend the press freedom and the right to information as basic human rights.