MINSK - Belarussian police have deported a Russian reporter who was working on a story about jailed opposition leaders, the reporter, Igor Karmazin, told Reuters on Wednesday.
The government of President Alexander Lukashenko cracked down on the opposition after a mass protest against his re-election to a fourth term in December 2010. Two former presidential candidates are in prison.
Karmazin, who met the wife of Andrei Sannikov, one of the jailed ex-candidates, said by telephone from Moscow that police had put him on a night train on Tuesday after briefly detaining him. Police declined to comment.
"After ending my meeting with (Sannikov’s wife Irina Khalip), I had only taken a few steps when two plainclothes (policemen) came up to me, grabbed my arms, put me into a car… and took me to a police station… They said I was a threat to Belarus’ security," Karmazin said.
Karmazin, a reporter with the Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets, said he was barred from visiting the former Soviet republic for a year.
After the European Union and the United States introduced sanctions against Belarus this year and called for the release of political prisoners, Lukashenko has pardoned dozens of those jailed for taking part in the December 2010 rally.
However, Sannikov, a second ex-candidate Nikolai Statkevich and a third person from the opposition, remain behind bars.
Russia has not put much pressure on Belarus over human rights, but relations between Moscow and Minsk have deteriorated in the last few years over economic issues such as trade in commodities and energy supplies.
