The editors of Zerkalo.io contacted the readers a few hours before the start of the process, which will be held in closed mode.

"This whole process is a sur, which can be called the final push on the way to an alternative reality, where the real news is evil.

And evil, as you know, must be defeated.

The year of national unity has passed, followed by the year of historical memory, and now the year of peace and creation has barely begun, and everything is stable in Belarus: roundups, searches, torture, detention centers, sentences, terms, days, weeks, months, years - an undeclared five-year period repression is proceeding at a Stakhanov pace.

Some political prisoners in pretrial detention centers are occupied by other, no less political ones, new cases are opened, old ones have barely been sent to court.

The fate of Belarusians moves along the conveyor belt of repression from one shop to another, until they find themselves in an iron sealed cage with an "extremist" tag in a visible place.

And it doesn't matter who you are: a doctor, a former investigator, an officer, an official, a journalist, a factory worker or a Nobel laureate - you will be judged not by your deeds, but by your beliefs.

For many of us, journalists and editors of "Zerkala", the Tut.by case is personal.

Our media was created by natives of this portal.

The accused in the case are our former colleagues and close friends.

But this text is not about a person, it is about all of us, about Belarusians.

For our country, Tut.by was, without exaggeration, a big project.

Not depending on state money, relying only on himself, he was able to become a place from which millions of Belarusians started their day.

A place where we all read real news.

A place where we could always find answers to questions about what is really happening in the country.

In the country that the majority of Belarusians want to build, independent media is one of the unbreakable pillars of democracy.

In this country, the employees of Tut.by, Nasha Niva, BelaPAN are respected people who are trusted by society, and officials and politicians line up to convey their ideas to the masses through media materials.

And it sounds plausible, right?

Yes, you yourself know very well that the regime in modern Belarus has chosen an alternative path, where real news is the main enemy.

Those who made real news are on the dock or in prison.

Those who want to read them, too.

Instead, full-time propagandists call to bomb Kyiv, call Ukrainians "faces" and "disgraceful nits", Belarusians themselves - "a disgrace to the Belarusian people", and those who are supposed to protect the law and each of us, climb into a child's underwear or beat a person frying pan for being... you know, it's really hard to explain why.

Go to the link, read.

We in the editorial office have no doubt that the Tut.by case is fabricated from start to finish and appeared only because the regime is afraid of journalists.

Afraid of real news.

We believe that the employees of Tut.by should be released in the courtroom.

And we know that this will not happen.

Because you can't count on a fair trial in modern Belarus.

This political process is not the first, not the tenth, or even the thousandth.

There are only 1442 political prisoners in the country. By the time you are reading this text, there are probably more of them.

Our beloved country is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness.

When, it seems, it can't get any worse, another piece of news appears that makes you feel numb.

Belarus is speeding along the road to an alternative reality, where real news is evil.

And the government is trying to defeat this evil.

But we promise you to do everything so that they do not succeed.

For the sake of our colleagues, who are being tried today, and for the sake of the future of our country, we will continue the Tut.by case - and tell how things are really going in Belarus.

And we will do everything so that the lie does not become the truth."

About the persecution of Tut.by

• On May 18, the editor's office was blocked for publishing "information prohibited by law", the FIU officers came there.

  Later, the agency reported that a criminal case had been opened against the officials for tax evasion in a particularly large amount.

  According to law enforcement officials, a resident of the Park of High Technologies received income that was not determined by the activities allowed for residents.

• A total of 15 people were detained in the case: managers, journalists and other staff of the media portal Tut.by (Lyudmila Chekina, Marina Zolatova, Olga Loika, Iryna Rybalka, Alena Talkachova, Angela Asad, Maria Novik, Alla Lopatka, Alexander Daineka, Andrey Avdeev, Dar Danilova, Ekaterina Tkachenko and Iryna Kostyuchenko), as well as the general director of Hoster.by Siarhei Pavlishov (released on September 1) and the widow of Tut.by's founder Yuliya Cherniavskaya.

  Human rights activists recognized them as political prisoners.

• The widow of the portal's founder, Yury Ziser, Yulia Charniauskaya is currently under house arrest, two days after her arrest nothing was known about her, she suffered a hypertensive crisis and was hospitalized for some time.

• The Tut.by site itself is blocked by the decision of the Ministry of Information.

• In December 2020, Tut.by was stripped of its media status at the request of the Ministry of Information.

  The basis was the previously issued warnings regarding the materials on the holding of the presidential elections, the activities of the State Control Committee, the Belarusian customs, etc.

• In the evening of June 27, the portal deleted all posts from social networks over the past year and a half.

• On August 13, the Court of the Central District of Minsk recognized the information products and social networks Tut.by and the new project of Tut fighters Zerkalo.io as extremist.

• On October 7, the Investigative Committee reported on a new criminal case against Tut fighters - for inciting enmity committed by a group of individuals (Part 3, Article 130).

  They face up to 12 years in prison.