Nasha Niva chief editor released from prison

The jour­nal­ist post­ed a mes­sage of grat­i­tude to thou­sands of Belaru­sians who sup­port­ed him, helped him or oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, or at least were con­cerned about their sit­u­a­tion.

“It’s eas­i­er to do things when you are unit­ed. I’ll try to con­tact every­one who wrote me to jail. I found out that there are many more hon­est, decent Belaru­sians and true patri­ots of our coun­try than I could have ever imag­ined,” Martsi­novich shared on Face­book. “It’s painful to real­ize how many unnec­es­sary wor­ries and prob­lems our rel­a­tives and friends have to face. They car­ried the main bur­den on their shoul­ders. As inmates, we sim­ply pass the time inside and cross off each day. How­ev­er, our loved ones nev­er opt­ed to be raid­ed by masked ter­ror­ists, wait out­side of deten­tion cen­ters, or ques­tion whether or not we’ll be freed.”

“There are too many vari­ables to deter­mine exact­ly how we should have act­ed to reduce pos­si­ble loss­es and improve the chances of the tri­umph of rea­son and Belaru­sian peo­ple. Despite this, I remain opti­mistic.

“It’s impor­tant to me that I regain my free­dom with a clear con­science. I am not ashamed to look peo­ple in the eye, and that means a lot to me.”

Yahor Martshi­novich, Nasha Niva’s chief edi­tor, and Andrei Skurko, the adver­tis­ing man­ag­er were arrest­ed in July 2021 and released on 18 August 2023.

Dur­ing his arrest, Yahor Martshi­novich was sub­ject­ed to phys­i­cal abuse.

“They didn’t talk to me, they beat me. They didn’t care what I had to say,” the jour­nal­ist wrote in a let­ter. “They asked who I vot­ed for and hit me imme­di­ate­ly. ‘Who is our pres­i­dent?’ Even if you answered ‘Lukashen­ka’, they still hit you on the head.”

The arrest­ing offi­cers shout­ed protest slo­gans such as “We want change”, “We believe, we can, we will win”, and con­tin­ued to beat the jour­nal­ist. They found this very enter­tain­ing.

Lat­er, the Nasha Niva work­ers were charged with caus­ing injury not qual­i­fy­ing for theft, com­mit­ted by a group of per­sons in col­lu­sion or major injury.

The law enforce­ment claimed that Nasha Niva paid its util­i­ty bills at tar­iffs for indi­vid­u­als, instead of those set for legal enti­ties.

Yahor Martsi­novich, speak­ing from behind bars, said, “Even the guards are laugh­ing at me, I’m ashamed to tell my cell­mates what I’m accused of.”

The defen­dants ful­ly reim­bursed the dam­age worth $3,500. How­ev­er, in March 2022, the reporters received a sen­tence of two and a half years in prison.

Since the 2020 elec­tion, the chief edi­tor of Nasha Niva was arrest­ed twice. The first arrest hap­pened dur­ing the night of August 10–11, 2020 while he was report­ing the active phase of protests. The jour­nal­ist stayed in deten­tion for sev­er­al days but was freed on the orders of the Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter.

On 23 Sep­tem­ber 2020, Yahor Martsi­novich was arrest­ed again on crim­i­nal charges for “defama­tion against the deputy head of the Inte­ri­or Min­istry”. The rea­son was an inter­view with Uladzis­lau Sakalous­ki, one of the “Djs of Change,” pub­lished on the Nasha Niva web­site. Three days lat­er, Yahor Martsi­novich was released again but was reg­is­tered as a sus­pect for some time.

Despite the government’s efforts to sup­press the media and restrict their free­doms, the edi­tor-in-chief of the wide­ly-read Belaru­sian-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tion con­tin­ued to oper­ate in the coun­try.

“As a reporter, I attend­ed every Sun­day parade from August 16 to the lat­est ones in late Novem­ber,” Yahor Martsi­novich shared in March 2021.

He said his enthu­si­asm, con­fi­dence in the people’s will, and their even­tu­al tri­umph kept him opti­mistic for years to come. Martsi­novich acknowl­edged that even if some indi­vid­u­als were fright­ened, arrest­ed, or expe­ri­enced a come­down, it did not imply that the mass­es had sur­ren­dered.

“That is unfea­si­ble. If a large group of peo­ple tast­ed free­dom once, they will even­tu­al­ly inter­nal­ize it. Even­tu­al­ly, their desire for free­dom will reach a boil­ing point and affect every­one and every­thing.”

Read more:

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Andrei Skurko, head of Nasha Niva’s advertising and marketing department, released from prison