MINSK, March 24. /TASS/. Several journalists, including from foreign mass media, who were detained by the police in Belarus’ capital city Minsk earlier in the day, have been released, a police spokesman said on Friday.
"The journalists have left the police station," the spokesman said, adding that they had not been detained but taken to the police station to establish their identity.
In the meantime, according to Belarusian human rights activists, about ten people who were taken to the police station with the journalists are still there.
Journalist Ales Zalevsky reported about the detention on his Facebook account. Among those detained were journalists from France24 television channel, a correspondent from Ukraine’s Novoye Vremya (New Time) and reporters from Radio Liberty’s Belarusian desk.
At the moment of detention, the journalists were at the Minsk office of the Green Party which conducted a campaign to raise assistance to those detained in Minsk on March 15 after a rally in protest against an unpopular labor law.
Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko signed a law, dubbed in the press as the "law against social parasites," in April 2015. The law requires all those who work less than 183 days a year to pay a levy of more than 200 U.S. dollars for "lost taxes" to help fund welfare policies. The law sparked off mass protests across the country.