(RSF/IFEX) – RSF and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) have called for the investigation into the disappearance of Dmitri Zavadski, a Belarus cameraman for the Russian television station ORT, to be reopened. In a 27 February 2003 letter, the official heading the inquiry, Ivan Branchel, told Zavadski’s widow, Svetlana Zavadskaya, that the authorities had […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) have called for the investigation into the disappearance of Dmitri Zavadski, a Belarus cameraman for the Russian television station ORT, to be reopened.
In a 27 February 2003 letter, the official heading the inquiry, Ivan Branchel, told Zavadski’s widow, Svetlana Zavadskaya, that the authorities had decided to stop looking for the journalist because “he has not yet been found.” Zavadski disappeared on 7 July 2000.
The two press freedom organisations wrote to Branchel, pointing out that the decision was contrary to international legal norms and also deprived the Zavadski family (his wife, mother and son) of their right to know the truth about what happened to him.
RSF and the BAJ said ending the investigation violated the United Nations General Assembly’s Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (Resolution 47/133) of 18 December 1992, Article 17 of which states that “acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified.”
Regional bodies such as the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights have ruled several times that because enforced disappearance is by nature “continuous,” states are obliged to keep on searching until the missing person is found.
RSF and the BAJ believe that the trial that ended on 16 July 2002 with a life sentence for Valeri Ignatovich, former head of the Interior Ministry’s special police force, for being responsible for Zavadski’s disappearance, did not establish the exact circumstances of Zavadski’s enforced disappearance or the identity of those who ordered his kidnapping.
An ad hoc sub-committee of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly set up to investigate the disappearance of opposition figures in Belarus reported on 27 November 2002 that the Belarusian authorities had still not accounted satisfactorily for the journalist’s disappearance.
Zavadski was formerly the personal cameraman of President Alexander Lukashenko until 1996, when he resigned from the government-controlled television station without the authorities’ agreement and joined the Russian station ORT. He was jailed for two months with an ORT colleague in 1997 after they reported on gaps in Belarusian security along the country’s border with Lithuania.
In 2000, Zavadski revealed that Ignatovich, who had left the Interior Ministry police, was working with independence fighters in Chechnya. The Belarusian authorities say he killed Zavadski for reporting this information.
