Journalist Dzianis Ivashyn transferred back to Mahilou Correctional Facility No. 15

Jour­nal­ist Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, who is serv­ing a 13-year prison sen­tence, had spent the pre­vi­ous three years in the high-secu­ri­ty prison in Zhodz­i­na. Fol­low­ing his trans­fer back to the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, his rel­a­tives received an offi­cial notice regard­ing his pos­si­ble parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty — after Feb­ru­ary 13, 2030.

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn. Pho­to: from per­son­al archive

Rel­a­tives have now received his first let­ters from the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty. A let­ter to his moth­er dat­ed June 18 indi­cates that Dzia­n­is was in a quar­an­tine unit at that time, the journalist’s wife, Vol­ha Ivashy­na, report­ed on Face­book. A post­card from her hus­band reached her a few days lat­er as well.

Vol­ha says she is con­cerned by a line in the let­ter in which he writes that he has not yet resumed exer­cis­ing and is “oper­at­ing in ener­gy-sav­ing mode.”

Accord­ing to her, the trans­fer back to the Mahilou cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty — where Dzia­n­is was orig­i­nal­ly sent to serve his sen­tence — can hard­ly be regard­ed as a relief com­pared to the prison where the jour­nal­ist served the past three years.

“For Dzia­n­is, the Mahilou facil­i­ty is actu­al­ly worse than the prison in Zhodz­i­na. On orders from the facility’s lead­er­ship, he was beat­en there, and then iso­lat­ed from oth­er pris­on­ers in a pun­ish­ment cell so no one would see his bruis­es. As his trans­fer to the prison approached, he was thrown into pun­ish­ment cells and secure hous­ing unit almost con­tin­u­ous­ly. He was mis­treat­ed for speak­ing and writ­ing let­ters in Belaru­sian; his let­ters were destroyed, and he was denied phone calls, food parcels, and vis­its with his par­ents. And all this hap­pened with­in just a few months at the facil­i­ty — he wasn’t even there for half a year,” Vol­ha Ivashy­na said.

Accord­ing to Vol­ha, the journalist’s moth­er recent­ly received an offi­cial let­ter from the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty admin­is­tra­tion stat­ing that the pris­on­er Dzia­n­is Ivashyn had arrived there on June 18, 2026, and that he would become eli­gi­ble for parole after Feb­ru­ary 13, 2030. To qual­i­fy, how­ev­er, he must “prove his own reform” through his con­duct.

The let­ter, signed by the head of the facility’s spe­cial depart­ment, sur­named Mast­sep­a­nen­ka, also states that after Jan­u­ary 9, 2029, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn may become eli­gi­ble for a com­mu­ta­tion of his sen­tence to a more lenient form of pun­ish­ment. This like­wise requires him to demon­strate to the facil­i­ty admin­is­tra­tion that he has “firm­ly set out on the path of reform.” Also required are a writ­ten pledge of “law-abid­ing con­duct,” an absence of dis­ci­pli­nary sanc­tions, a con­sci­en­tious atti­tude toward work, and max­i­mum com­pen­sa­tion for “the harm caused by the crime.”

In con­nec­tion with the lat­ter point, rel­a­tives have been encour­aged to help com­pen­sate for this harm and to “exert a pos­i­tive influ­ence” on the pris­on­er. Accord­ing to the journalist’s wife, the mate­r­i­al dam­ages set by the court were paid off long ago.

“We were hop­ing Dzia­n­is might be exchanged for some pris­on­ers of war or spies, so we decid­ed to pay every­thing off to make sure that was in order — and so the facil­i­ty admin­is­tra­tion wouldn’t have any addi­tion­al lever­age to pres­sure Dzia­n­is. As for the notice from the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, it’s a stan­dard form let­ter sent to every­one. It lists, for instance, the per­mit­ted lim­its for pris­on­ers on the num­ber of care pack­ages, vis­its, and so on. But, for exam­ple, dur­ing Dzianis’s first stint at this facil­i­ty, his com­mis­sary allowance was imme­di­ate­ly cut to $16, even though high secu­ri­ty lev­el allows for twice as much. In real­i­ty, it’s all decid­ed by the admin­is­tra­tion,” says Vol­ha Ivashy­na.

The case of Dzianis Ivashyn

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn is a cor­re­spon­dent for the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian news­pa­per Novy Chas and a vol­un­teer edi­tor of the Belaru­sian-lan­guage ver­sion of the web­site run by Inform­Na­palm, an inter­na­tion­al inves­tiga­tive com­mu­ni­ty. The jour­nal­ist is known for his inves­ti­ga­tions into the influ­ence of the “Russ­ian world” on Belarus and Syr­ia, as well as into the con­tro­ver­sial devel­op­ment of the Kura­p­aty memo­r­i­al site near Min­sk.

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn has been impris­oned for near­ly five years, since March 12, 2021. He was ini­tial­ly charged with inter­fer­ence with the activ­i­ties of inter­nal affairs offi­cers, and author­i­ties lat­er added a charge of “high trea­son” as well.

The “last straw” for the Belaru­sian author­i­ties was like­ly his inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty offi­cials who had tak­en jobs with the Belaru­sian riot police. The jour­nal­ist was detained lit­er­al­ly the day after he gave an inter­view about this to the inde­pen­dent TV Cur­rent Time.

On Sep­tem­ber 14, 2022, the Hrod­na Region­al Court found him guilty of trea­son and ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion about pri­vate life. Judge Valer Ramanous­ki sen­tenced Ivashyn to 13 years and 1 month in prison. He was also ordered to pay a total of $9,030 in moral dam­ages to nine secu­ri­ty offi­cers.

In late June 2023, his pun­ish­ment was tight­ened: with­out noti­fy­ing his fam­i­ly or lawyer, the court trans­ferred him to a high-secu­ri­ty prison.