BAJ exhibition “Unheard Voices” in Hamburg: “A country where journalists are silenced becomes a prison”

Dur­ing Ham­burg Press Free­dom Week, the BAJ exhi­bi­tion “The Unheard Voic­es” is on view, ded­i­cat­ed to Belaru­sian media work­ers behind bars. The association’s exhi­bi­tion has been com­ple­ment­ed by an artis­tic com­po­nent cre­at­ed by artists liv­ing in exile in Ger­many.

BAJ exhi­bi­tion “Unheard Voic­es” open­ing at Katholis­che Akademie Ham­burg in Ham­burg, Ger­many, on 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

Large-scale events devot­ed to the repres­sion of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and to transna­tion­al pres­sure on inde­pen­dent media took place in Ham­burg as part of Press Free­dom Week.

The orga­niz­ers com­bined the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists’ tra­di­tion­al exhi­bi­tion with an art instal­la­tion by Belaru­sian artists based in Berlin (their names are with­held for secu­ri­ty rea­sons). The result is a full-fledged Belaru­sian media week in Ger­many.

From ignorance to awareness

The idea of expand­ing the exhibition’s for­mat grew out of the orga­niz­ers’ expe­ri­ence with the Ger­man media com­mu­ni­ty. Kse­nia Lut­ski­na, a for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er and jour­nal­ist who ini­ti­at­ed the exhi­bi­tion, told BAJ that a year ago, dur­ing inter­views with Ger­man media, she was often asked to speak only about well-known polit­i­cal pris­on­ers:

“There was a moment when I said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to talk about your col­leagues, the jour­nal­ists who are behind bars?’ And the Ger­man jour­nal­ists told me, ‘We real­ly don’t know much about that.’”

Kse­nia Lut­ski­na at the open­ing of the BAJ exhi­bi­tion “Unheard Voic­es” in Ham­burg, Ger­many, 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

Accord­ing to Lut­ski­na, the main goal of the project was to inform as broad an audi­ence as pos­si­ble, since many peo­ple in Ger­many remain unaware of the scale of the per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists in Belarus:

“For most peo­ple, it is news that some­thing like this can hap­pen in Europe in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.”

An artistic reimagining

With the sup­port of its Ger­man part­ners, BAJ was able to expand its tra­di­tion­al “Unheard Voic­es” exhi­bi­tion in Ham­burg.

BAJ exhi­bi­tion “Unheard Voic­es” open­ing at Katholis­che Akademie Ham­burg in Ham­burg, Ger­many, on 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

Berlin-based Belaru­sian artists cre­at­ed a spe­cial art instal­la­tion. Objects that visu­al­ize the sup­pres­sion of the free press in Belarus now accom­pa­ny BAJ’s dis­play, includ­ing an excerpt from a 2020 livestream and pho­tographs from that peri­od.

“My goal was to show, and this is how I put it to our Ger­man part­ners, that a coun­try where inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists are silenced has effec­tive­ly turned into a prison. In our coun­try, when you were in prison, the only source of infor­ma­tion was state pro­pa­gan­da. Now the state is try­ing to do the same to the entire coun­try,” Lut­ski­na explained.

Dis­cus­sion on transna­tion­al repres­sion and account­abil­i­ty

The open­ing of the exhi­bi­tion was accom­pa­nied by an expert dis­cus­sion on the per­se­cu­tion of Belaru­sian media and its trans­for­ma­tion into transna­tion­al repres­sion against jour­nal­ists in exile.

The dis­cus­sion was mod­er­at­ed by Gem­ma Pörz­gen (Deutsche Welle, taz). Pavel Latushka, head of the Nation­al Anti-Cri­sis Man­age­ment, deliv­ered a keynote address on repres­sion against Belaru­sian media and transna­tion­al pres­sure. Oth­er par­tic­i­pants includ­ed Lut­ski­na; Leanid Marozau, a Belaru­sian inter­na­tion­al lawyer and legal advis­er to Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya; and Alice Bota of Die Zeit, author of Die Frauen von Belarus (2021), a book about Belaru­sian women in 2020 which, accord­ing to Lut­ski­na, is in high demand among Ger­man read­ers.

Pavel Latush­ka and Kse­nia Lut­ski­na at the exhi­bi­tion in Ham­burg, Ger­many, on 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

Lut­ski­na said that Ger­man jour­nal­ists and vis­i­tors showed great inter­est in the details:

“Every­one, and this is very grat­i­fy­ing, care­ful­ly read the cap­tions beneath the images. Many peo­ple were par­tic­u­lar­ly curi­ous about why the stands list the names of the judges who hand­ed down the sen­tences. Pavel Latush­ka explained to the audi­ence in detail why it is nec­es­sary to doc­u­ment these names: so that in the future those respon­si­ble can be held legal­ly account­able for human rights vio­la­tions.”

Alice Bota at the BAJ exhi­bi­tion in Ham­burg, Ger­many, 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

“I also want to note that the exhi­bi­tion tru­ly cap­tured the inter­est of Ger­mans. On Sun­day, there were so many peo­ple here! They lin­gered at the stands for a long time, care­ful­ly read each journalist’s sto­ry, were aston­ished at the sever­i­ty of the prison sen­tences, and asked about the rea­sons for the per­se­cu­tion,” Lut­ski­na said. “I was glad that peo­ple came in and read each journalist’s sto­ry… They sat, took notes, shook their heads in dis­be­lief, and were hor­ri­fied.”

Gem­ma Pörz­gen at the BAJ exhi­bi­tion in Ham­burg, Ger­many, 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

The for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er said that the top­ic of impris­oned Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists became one of the cen­tral themes of Press Free­dom Week in Ham­burg.

“I would also note that we print­ed spe­cial book­lets for the exhi­bi­tion. Knowl­edge of what is hap­pen­ing to inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus needs to be spread.

The brochures cov­er not only sen­tences in cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties but also transna­tion­al per­se­cu­tion, list­ings in Russia’s want­ed-per­sons data­base, and recruit­ment attempts. In short, we tried to give Ger­mans a con­cise overview of all of this.

It seems we man­aged to do some­thing. We will con­tin­ue to talk about what is hap­pen­ing to free­dom of speech in Belarus,” Lut­ski­na said.

BAJ exhi­bi­tion “Unheard Voic­es” in Ham­burg, Ger­many, on 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

BAJ exhi­bi­tion “Unheard Voic­es” in Ham­burg, Ger­many, on 11 Octo­ber 2026. Pho­to: lookby.media

How the exhibition came to be

The project was ini­tial­ly named “Jour­nal­ists: Silent Mode,” which was adapt­ed for the Ham­burg event. When the exhi­bi­tion was cre­at­ed, more than forty jour­nal­ists were behind bars in Belarus.

Their only “offense” was doing their jobs hon­est­ly: gath­er­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing truth­ful infor­ma­tion of pub­lic impor­tance. The Lukashen­ka regime took from these jour­nal­ists their free­dom, their pro­fes­sion, their homes, their fam­i­lies, their friends, and their col­leagues, and threw them behind bars.

Today, 15 media work­ers remain in deten­tion. They are deprived of the chance to be near their loved ones, raise their chil­dren, care for their par­ents, do the work they love, and ben­e­fit soci­ety. They are pris­on­ers of con­science.

Con­cerned that the facts of per­se­cu­tion and repres­sion against jour­nal­ists might be lost in the infor­ma­tion space and turn into white noise, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists cre­at­ed the project “Jour­nal­ists: Silent Mode.”

The ideas for the visu­als were pro­posed by two Belaru­sian artists, Kasia Budzko and Kat­siary­na Miats, who know well what it means to be a jour­nal­ist in Belarus.

Each work is accom­pa­nied by a text con­vey­ing the despair of see­ing ordi­nary dai­ly con­cerns van­ish, and of an every­day life that has become unat­tain­able for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

Kasia Budzko’s con­cept involves visu­al­ly return­ing jour­nal­ists to their habit­u­al sur­round­ings. The artist super­im­pos­es their pho­tographs onto mod­ern urban land­scapes where they once lived, loved, worked, and dreamed. The emo­tion­al con­trast between the ordi­nar­i­ness of city life and the tragedy of an indi­vid­ual restores vis­i­bil­i­ty to impris­oned jour­nal­ists. Although they are impris­oned, their pres­ence remains in the life of the city, in people’s mem­o­ries, and in the his­to­ry of Belarus.

Kat­siary­na Miats’s con­cept is devot­ed to pre­serv­ing per­son­al integri­ty and human dig­ni­ty. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the metaphor of a mosa­ic, the artist illus­trates how an indi­vid­ual in cap­tiv­i­ty, due to iso­la­tion and sep­a­ra­tion from the out­side world, emerges closed off and frag­ment­ed. How­ev­er, her col­or pho­tographs cap­ture mem­o­ries and offer hope that light will return to the lives of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

The artist added a glitch effect to her works, a tech­no­log­i­cal error that reflects the injus­tice of impris­on­ment itself: a prison for jour­nal­ists is a mal­func­tion of real­i­ty. This effect visu­al­ly under­scores the fragili­ty of the con­nec­tion between a per­son and the world from which polit­i­cal pris­on­ers have been cut off. It also under­scores the need to restore the full pic­ture of these people’s lives and pre­vent their names and sto­ries from van­ish­ing.

“Jour­nal­ists: Silent Mode” is a visu­al act of resis­tance to the silent polit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy of squeez­ing peo­ple out. It restores the pres­ence of those whom the Belaru­sian author­i­ties have for six years sought to erase from pub­lic space, from their pro­fes­sion, and from life.

BAJ’s mis­sion is to give the dic­ta­tor­ship no chance to estab­lish a silent mode. We will keep speak­ing, shout­ing, and remind­ing, and we will show this pain to the whole world by every means avail­able to us.