Two journalists from Belarus have had two and a half year prison sentences handed to them amid a crackdown on independent media and democratic institutions.

Yahor Martsinovich and Andrey Skurko of Nasha Niva were found guilty of paying residential taxes for utility bills for their Nasha Niva newspaper’s offices instead of corporate rates,

On Tuesday, Judge Anzhela Kastsyukevich pronounced the sentences of Mr Martsinovich and Mr Skurko after the Zavodzski district court in Minsk found them guilty.  

“We upheld the freedom of speech and independence of Belarus, but both have now become hollow,” Mr Martsinovich said at the trial. “The newspaper has survived two revolutions and two world wars during its history, and now it’s witnessing another war into which Belarus was drawn. We are its victims.”

Mr Martsinovich and Mr Skurko have been in custody since their arrest in July 2021, where the Nasha Niva office was raided, as well as the homes of its staff. Its website was also blocked. 

The newspaper, Nasha Niva, covered the anti-government protests in 2020 after President Alexander Lukashenko gained a sixth term after the widely condemned August presidential vote.    

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the sentences, calling for Mr Martsinovich and Mr Skurko’s release. 

“Today’s sentence against Yahor Martsinovich demonstrates once again how Belarus authorities will resort to any legal artifice, no matter how transparent, to imprison journalists who covered the 2020 protests and their brutal suppression,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately release Martsinovich along with all other journalists currently behind bars, and stop filing spurious retaliatory charges against members of the press.”