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“Persecution of bloggers is unacceptable regardless of their nationality. As far as I know, Alexander Lapshin has not written anything which could be considered as a threat to a national security. The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement calling for the unconditional release of Lapshin. As a human rights activist, I do not support the actions of a state that hand over a person to a country where he faces persecution. Lapshin’s action contain no threat to public safety and national security alike, and the decision [about extradition] is wrong,” member of Belarussian Human Rights Center "Viasna" Valyatsin Stefanovich told Panorama.am in Strasbourg when asked to comment on the situation around Russian-Israeli blogger and traveler Alexander Lapshin, who faces extradition to Azerbaijan over his visits to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR).
     
Stefanovich assessed the case as a “bad example for the freedom of the press”, since it sets a practice for the countries to request extradition of bloggers out of different considerations.

In his words, while approving extradition requests, the Belarussian authorities should ensure the person is safe in the country he will be extradited, and avoid handing him to states where he faces persecution for merely visiting a “disputed territory”.

“Bloggers and journalists should be able to visit disputed territories that are considered dark spots, where no international norms are limited. Those kind of visits are necessary for human rights missions to observe the overall situation in the sphere of human rights which are not often regulated by the norms of the international law. This is a real problem in the post-soviet space,” the activist said, responding to the question regarding the possibility for journalists to visit disputed territories.