Belarusian journalist paid for Swedish bears

Belarusian journalist Anton Suryapin was detained by the State Security Committee for 72 hours until the editor’s involvement in the “Swedish landing” is clarified, Suryapin’s mother said . Suryapin, editor-in-chief of the Belarusian news portal bnp.by (Belarusian News Photos), posted on the website photographs from the “Teddy Bears for Freedom of Speech in Belarus” event, which took place on July 3. Then two Swedes from the advertising company Studio flew in a light plane over Belarus and threw 879 teddy bears with slogans in Belarusian in support of freedom of speech out of a window over the outskirts of Minsk.

Peer Cromwell, director of the Studio company, the organizer of the action, said that the journalist had nothing to do with their action, but they were saddened by his detention. “This is absolutely terrible news,” he told PublicPost. “This case once again demonstrates what we have been saying: journalists in Belarus work in terrible conditions.” Nevertheless, the detention of the journalist did not make the Studio employees regret their action: “The more people talk about this problem, the sooner the situation will change.” There are no actions in defense of the journalist in the Studio’s plans: “We don’t plan any more high-profile actions. Before holding the action, we calculated what we would do if something bad happened to us (I was in the car, waiting for the guys from the helicopter, with my foot on the pedal gas), but somehow we didn’t think about others.”