Margaret Atwood shows support for Andrei Aliaksandrau on his birthday (Video)

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with impris­oned jour­nal­ist Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, writer Mar­garet Atwood, Thurston Moore of Son­ic Youth, Nadya of Pussy Riot, and Sir Trevor Phillips joined togeth­er to read a poem Andrei wrote in July 2021 while in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter.

Mar­garet Atwood. Pho­to: AP

The sym­bol­i­cal­ly titled poem “#” was trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by Belaru­sian poet Han­na Komar and John Farn­don.

The video was made as part of a cam­paign launched on Jan­u­ary 27 by the inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion Index on Cen­sor­ship. Orga­niz­ers invit­ed peo­ple to record videos read­ing the jour­nal­ist’s poem and share them on social media for Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau’s birth­day.

Mar­garet Eleanor Atwood is a Cana­di­an writer, poet, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and envi­ron­men­tal activist. She is a lau­re­ate of numer­ous pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary awards, includ­ing the Book­er Prize (2000 and 2019). She is one of the most renowned Eng­lish-lan­guage writ­ers in the world.

The tele­vi­sion series based on her award-win­ning nov­el The Hand­maid­’s Tale became one of the most suc­cess­ful lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions in recent years. The first sea­son aired in 2017, dur­ing Don­ald Trump’s first term.

Scene from the series The Hand­maid­’s Tale. Pho­to: Get­ty Images

Thurston Joseph Moore is an Amer­i­can musi­cian, song­writer, poet, and writer. He is the com­pos­er, gui­tarist, and vocal­ist of the cult band Son­ic Youth.

Thurston Moore. Pho­to: Rolling Stone

Sir Mark Trevor Phillips, Offi­cer of the Order of the British Empire and Fel­low of the Roy­al Col­lege of Jour­nal­ists, is a British writer and broad­cast­er. He was chair of the Com­mis­sion for Racial Equal­i­ty and the Equal­i­ty and Human Rights Com­mis­sion.

Mark Trevor Phillips. Pho­to: PA media

Nadezh­da “Nadya” Tolokon­niko­va is a Russ­ian musi­cian, con­cep­tu­al artist, and polit­i­cal activist. She is one of the founders of the fem­i­nist group Pussy Riot and the street art group Voina. A for­mer polit­i­cal pris­on­er, she lives in exile.

Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va. Pho­to: TED

Andrei Aliaksandrau’s Poem “#”:

When you look out through the bars at the sky,

It’s not bars you see but the sky over­head.

Yes­ter­day’s bread smells of mould and loss,

but tomor­row’s smells like gen­uine bread.

You say: the sky is a trick of the light.

But the bars are the trick of the light, I say!

Because bars are a hash­tag, just a habit, right?

And this is the hash­tag trend­ing today.

Yet the sky cares noth­ing for hash­tags at all,

the sky has no thought for trends up ahead,

it does not feel the ground where our feet fall,

nor count the cen­turies and slices of bread.

The sky just draws clouds of cot­ton wool

over time — this is all that goes on real­ly.

And the sky does not see any bars at all

when it peers deep into the sky in me.

Videos can be post­ed on any social media with a hash­tag #Free­An­drei and men­tion of Index on Cen­sor­ship.

Index on Cen­sor­ship is an inter­na­tion­al non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion and mag­a­zine based in Lon­don that has defend­ed free­dom of expres­sion and opposed cen­sor­ship world­wide since 1972. The orga­ni­za­tion pub­lish­es work by per­se­cut­ed authors, con­ducts research, and annu­al­ly awards the Free­dom of Expres­sion Awards to jour­nal­ists, artists, and activists.

The case of Andrei Aliaksandrau

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau. Pho­to: Vol­ha Khvoin

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau (born 1978) is a Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist and media man­ag­er, for­mer deputy direc­tor of the inde­pen­dent news agency Bela­PAN, and a polit­i­cal pris­on­er. Detained on Jan­u­ary 12, 2021, he was rec­og­nized as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er by the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty on Jan­u­ary 18, 2021. On Octo­ber 6, 2022, he was sen­tenced to 14 years in prison — one of the longest sen­tences imposed on a Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist.

Ali­ak­san­drau began his jour­nal­ism career at the Khimik news­pa­per in Navap­o­latsk. He lat­er earned a master’s degree in media man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster in Lon­don and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Index on Cen­sor­ship and Arti­cle 19. From 2009 to 2012, he served in the lead­er­ship of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, and from 2015 to 2018 worked in the direc­torate of Bela­PAN, lat­er as its media con­sul­tant.