TOP BELARUSIAN BASKETBALL REFEREE DETAINED AT BORDER OVER TELEGRAM CHAT

Belarusian basketball referee Alexander Syritsa has been detained since January, according to Euroradio.

Syrit­sa was tak­en into cus­tody upon return­ing to Belarus.

Syrit­sa faces charges of “insult­ing Lukashenko and cre­at­ing an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” His wife was also detained at the bor­der and sub­se­quent­ly served time.

Since 2005, Syrit­sa has been a FIBA ref­er­ee. In 2019, he, along with his col­leagues, sued the Belaru­sian bas­ket­ball fed­er­a­tion. Reflect­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, he remarked:

“The fed­er­a­tion does not need peo­ple with their own posi­tions who have achieved some­thing them­selves. They removed every­one who dared to speak. Those who know how to bend and believe that man­age­ment is always right are in demand. I will not say that all those who remained are bad peo­ple. But they are, sor­ry, spine­less. I feel sor­ry for them. Who is to blame that they are not in demand any­where else? And this is always used.”

It is also note­wor­thy that Syrit­sa is an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Rus­si­a’s war against Ukraine, where he spent a lot of time and faced the inva­sion in Kharkiv, as well as the failed polit­i­cal sys­tem in his native Belarus.

Alexan­der Syrit­sa is cur­rent­ly being held in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter.