Larysa Shchyrakova’s son no longer in child care home

Six­teen-year-old Svi­ataslau spent more than two weeks in a child care home near­by the house where he lived with his moth­er. The teenag­er was placed in the chil­dren’s home after law enforce­ment offi­cers searched Shchyrako­va’s house and put her in cus­tody.

Svi­ataslau was tak­en home by his father, who arrived from Novosi­birsk (Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion) where he had lived for the past few years. The father and son will stay in Homel for the next month, until the sit­u­a­tion with his moth­er is clar­i­fied.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Larysa Shchyrako­va coop­er­at­ed with inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. But back in 2021, she pub­licly stat­ed that she was quit­ting jour­nal­ism because of the harass­ment she had to endure for work­ing with­out press cre­den­tials.

Over the past few months, the ex-jour­nal­ist has been engaged in eth­nic pho­to shoots – tak­ing pic­tures of peo­ple in Belaru­sian folk cos­tumes and theme-relat­ed places.

Larysa Shchyrako­va was detained on 6 Decem­ber 2022 and placed in the Homel pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter on charges of dis­cred­it­ing Belarus. The details of the accu­sa­tions are unknown, as the lawyer signed a non-dis­clo­sure plea.