Belsat journalist Darya Chultsova released after two years in penal colony

Darya Chultso­va was born and raised in Shk­lou. The same region in east­ern Belarus, by the way, is the tiny home­land of Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka. Accord­ing to her moth­er, Natallya Tser­abilen­ka, Darya is a very deter­mined per­son, absorbed in pas­sions since child­hood:

“Darya loved to draw as a child. She even went to art school. Draw­ing trans­port­ed her to anoth­er world. Lat­er she wished to buy a gui­tar and began learn­ing to play it. But most of all, Dasha loved to write. She always had some note­book or notepad with her and wrote, wrote and wrote,’ Natallya recalls.

Natallya did not expect that Dasha’s writ­ing inter­ests would lead her where they did. When her daugh­ter said she want­ed to become a jour­nal­ist, the fam­i­ly took it as a joke. In the final grade, Dasha repeat­ed­ly talked about her plans to become a jour­nal­ist. That’s when her rel­a­tives real­ly start­ed to wor­ry. Being an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist in Belarus is a big risk. The par­ents even dis­cour­aged Dasha dur­ing the uni­ver­si­ty admis­sions process. But that didn’t stop her.

“Dasha is very deter­mined to pur­sue her goals. It may seem like she lis­tens to me but still does things her way. Con­vinc­ing her to do any­thing is very dif­fi­cult. She believes that no one can tell her what to do. Now I often hear that I raised a fan­tas­tic daugh­ter; peo­ple write to me about it,” Natallya says.

Dasha’s child­hood friend Milana Minchukho­va recalls that Dasha was always curi­ous about every­thing around her.

“You could say that Dasha is an explor­er. She com­bines such qual­i­ties as calm­ness and per­cep­tive­ness with curios­i­ty in the most diverse spheres of life. She has always loved lis­ten­ing, read­ing, and draw­ing. And the moment came when these pre­dis­po­si­tions deter­mined the choice of her pro­fes­sion,” says Milana.

While sub­mit­ting doc­u­ments to the Mahil­iou State Uni­ver­si­ty, Dasha told her moth­er: “If it’s not jour­nal­ism, I won’t study any­thing at all.” And so she began study­ing jour­nal­ism. Dasha and her col­leagues at the uni­ver­si­ty were work­ing on their own mag­a­zine. Even then, she was faced with choos­ing where and in what role she saw her­self as a jour­nal­ist. To decide, she need­ed time and prac­tice.

“Togeth­er with Dasha, we start­ed shoot­ing mate­r­i­al for the project ‘Mahilou. Online.’ It was a great time; we had a mis­sion: to show the social prob­lems of Mahil­iou. And we suc­ceed­ed. Then I saw that Dasha was burn­ing with inter­est and had a tal­ent not only as a jour­nal­ist but also as a cam­er­ap­er­son,” says Dasha’s col­league from col­lege, Krystsi­na Barysa­va.

Dasha and Krystsi­na high­light­ed var­i­ous social prob­lems in Mahil­iou in their project. And, of course, they touched on pol­i­tics.

“Every­thing we did was sin­cere. Dasha could spend half a day, or even a whole day – as much as it took – to make it per­fect. At the same time, she sym­pa­thized with peo­ple and insist­ed on show­ing every­thing exact­ly as it real­ly is,” explains Krystsi­na.

In 2019, Dasha began work­ing with the Bel­sat TV chan­nel. As a jour­nal­ist, she worked in tan­dem with cam­era­man Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki.

“We trav­eled to var­i­ous cities in the Mahil­iou region and filmed reports on the prob­lems of ordi­nary peo­ple. We showed how people’s lives change when they come into con­tact with the bureau­crat­ic sys­tem,” Mikhail Arshyn­s­ki said, describ­ing his coop­er­a­tion with Dasha.

Being an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al, Mikhail taught Dasha how to become a ver­sa­tile jour­nal­ist. As he point­ed out, Dasha per­formed her edi­to­r­i­al tasks con­scious­ly and with­out fear, which tes­ti­fied to her pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

Repres­sion against Dasha for her jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties began while she was still in Mahil­iou. Courts twice fined Dasha for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion for a for­eign media out­let (Arti­cle 22.9 Part 2 of the Belaru­sian Code of Offens­es). But this did not dis­cour­age the girl from work­ing in the media.

Dasha only worked in Mahil­iou dur­ing her stud­ies. After grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ty in Sep­tem­ber 2020, she moved to Min­sk. It was a hec­tic time for the Belaru­sian cap­i­tal. At the time, Min­sk was the place of thou­sands of protests against the rig­ging of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Darya began work­ing as a cam­era oper­a­tor. After mov­ing to Min­sk, she was repeat­ed­ly detained for her jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties.

“In this respect, Dasha is a true Belaru­sian patri­ot. She went to all those protests, and that’s also how she expressed her love for her home­land. She knew that it involved a lot of risk for a jour­nal­ist, but she went there any­way. The day before she was detained on Novem­ber 15, I asked her if she was afraid. And Dasha said that only she and Kat­sya could go and do the job. So they went,” recalls Krystsi­na.

Fabricated case

The jour­nal­ists went to work for the last time on Novem­ber 15, three days after the trag­ic death of oppo­si­tion activist Raman Ban­daren­ka, who died in the hos­pi­tal after being beat­en by the police. The oppo­si­tion announced a mas­sive memo­r­i­al action in the court­yard in front of his apart­ment build­ing, where Raman was bru­tal­ly detained. Dasha and Kat­sya knew that all jour­nal­ists were then the tar­get of the police and ser­vices. And the author­i­ties would do every­thing to pre­vent them from cov­er­ing the event. The jour­nal­ists were not fright­ened, and their live cov­er­age, which became the rea­son for their tri­al and impris­on­ment, was watched by near­ly 75,000 peo­ple. Thanks to them, view­ers could watch the vio­lent action of the riot police dis­pers­ing the protest and the moment of destruc­tion of the Bandarenka’s memo­r­i­al.

“They think they can do any­thing. They want­ed to put jour­nal­ists behind bars, and they did. And since there was noth­ing there, they fab­ri­cat­ed a case. Kat­sya and Dasha got arrest­ed for noth­ing; they were not guilty and just doing their job. They didn’t recruit peo­ple there; they didn’t per­suade peo­ple to do any­thing,’ explains Dasha’s moth­er.

The jour­nal­ists who cov­ered the protest from the 13th floor of a near­by apart­ment build­ing got accused of man­ag­ing the riot and par­a­lyz­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Belaru­sian human rights activists rec­og­nized the jour­nal­ists as pris­on­ers of con­science just four days after they got charged. In Decem­ber 2020, the girls won the Belaru­sian human rights community’s “Jour­nal­ist of the Year” award.

The fate of the jour­nal­ists has attract­ed inter­est: Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter, Asso­ci­a­tion of Pol­ish Jour­nal­ists, Nation­al Union of Jour­nal­ists of Ukraine and Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Russ­ian NGO ‘Free­dom of Speech’ and Moscow PEN Club. Jour­nal­ists of Lithua­nia award­ed the jour­nal­ists the ‘Hope for Free­dom’ award.

The inves­ti­ga­tion last­ed three months. On Feb­ru­ary 18, 2021, Judge Natallya Buhuk sen­tenced Darya and Kat­sary­na to two years in a penal colony with manda­to­ry labor. She end­ed up in a women’s colony in Homiel.

Always cheerful and smiling — even behind bars

Octo­ber 26, 2021. Dasha had her first so-called long vis­it with rel­a­tives. From their social media feeds, we know what her stay in the penal colony was like. The day begins with a wake-up call at 6:00 am. Dasha was sent to the sewing room, where work had to be done in two shifts. In the penal colony, the jour­nal­ist learned how to trace tem­plates for blanks. She said she liked her occu­pa­tion because it made the time pass faster. Accord­ing to rel­a­tives, Dasha’s work in the colony was not very stress­ful, but it was almost unpaid. She received 41 rubles a month – or about $20 dur­ing the glaz­ing peri­od. When they went on their sec­ond shift, pris­on­ers were tasked with peel­ing pota­toes and clean­ing.

Darya took part in the cul­tur­al and sports activ­i­ties of the colony, in the Miss Autumn con­test, led events and read poems in Belaru­sian – she tried to fill every minute. Dasha’s rel­a­tives said that the girl had prac­ti­cal­ly no free time until 10 pm – then she took a show­er and went to bed.

In the colony, Darya, like most polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, was giv­en the sta­tus of ‘prone to extrem­ism and oth­er destruc­tive activ­i­ties.’ Such an inmate is dis­tin­guished from oth­ers by a spe­cial yel­low badge and is sub­ject to tighter con­trol. Accord­ing to her rel­a­tives, even in prison, Dasha always tried to be cheer­ful, opti­mistic, smile and not pro­voke con­flicts. She was not pun­ished once and was nev­er tak­en to a soli­tary con­fine­ment cell.

“I’m in prison; I have the right to rest,” she said

Due to the lack of free time, Darya could not read or write let­ters much — she did so at any free moment. Cor­re­spon­dence sent from the colony is sub­ject to cen­sor­ship, so she had to avoid writ­ing about pol­i­tics — she con­veyed her feel­ings, dreams and plans for the future.

“I’m stuck in 2020. For me, time stands still. Only the num­ber (2022) has changed, which I write on the doc­u­ments where you put the date. I feel that I’m 23 years old, not 25 as I will soon be. It’s strange, and I guess it’s hard to under­stand unless you feel it your­self. I’m con­vinced that every­thing will come back when I’m home. There is just no real world here, and time pass­es dif­fer­ent­ly,” she con­veyed in one of her let­ters.

“As I told you today, every­thing is fine. In my life, I have always had the feel­ing that I had to do some­thing. When I took a day off, I felt uncom­fort­able that I wasn’t work­ing. Here I have the same feel­ing that I con­stant­ly have to do some­thing. For exam­ple, to answer people’s let­ters. If I don’t do it, my con­science both­ers me. Paint some­thing for some­one, write some­thing, etc. con­stant­ly like in some kind of pan­ic. Now I’m try­ing to push it away from me. I’m in prison, I have the right to rest, haha,” she wrote.

Prison did not make Dasha ques­tion her life choic­es. In her let­ters to her par­ents, she wrote that if she had known what her work as a jour­nal­ist would lead to, she would have cho­sen that path any­way. And she always stressed that she want­ed to return to media work after her release.