Where are they now?

Remem­ber­ing per­se­cut­ed col­leagues from the Belarus Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists in dire need of sup­port.

Over the course of more than a decade, I worked with inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists in Belarus to help build their organ­i­sa­tion­al and jour­nal­is­tic skills, as part of an Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists project fund­ed by Inter­na­tion­al Media Sup­port.

My first task had been to edit a book­let about BAJ, includ­ing details of the mur­ders of jour­nal­ists Dzmit­ry Zavas­ki in July 2000 and Vierani­ka Charkasa­va (pic­tured on the cov­er) in Octo­ber 2004, and the beat­ings, arrests and jail­ings of some 50 local and inter­na­tion­al media work­ers cov­er­ing the 2006 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Min­sk.

Today most of the peo­ple I worked with are now either in jail or in exile. 

After years of per­se­cu­tion under Pres­i­dent Lukashen­ka, whom even Con­doleez­za Rice dubbed ‘the last dic­ta­tor in Europe’, the mul­ti award win­ning Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists <www.baj.media> was liq­ui­dat­ed under a Supreme Court order in 2021. The homes of BAJ lead­ers were raid­ed, and the BAJ office bro­ken into and sealed by the secu­ri­ty forces. (I won­der if the bell I brought them from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry is still locked inside.)

As if that was not enough, in 2023 the Belaru­sian KGB added insult to injury by declar­ing BAJ an extrem­ist organ­i­sa­tion.

I had my own brush­es with the KGB on only my sec­ond vis­it to Belarus. They seemed to know where I was at all times. Although visa reg­u­la­tions required you to stay where you say you are stay­ing, in Min­sk, I went with a team of BAJ mem­bers to meet col­leagues who were keep­ing inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism alive in towns around the coun­try. 

We had to resched­ule some meet­ings as calls came in from the KGB – who fre­quent­ly rang work­ing jour­nal­ists just to keep them in their place. They were let­ting us know they knew where we were. This time they informed us the edi­tor of the local paper in a par­tic­u­lar indus­tri­al cen­tre would like to inter­view me.

We turned up at her emp­ty offices late on a Sat­ur­day after­noon. She intro­duced us to ‘trainee reporter’ who want­ed to sit in on the inter­view. She blew the gaffe on the set up with her first ques­tion by ask­ing me to “describe media reg­u­la­tion in your home coun­try of Ire­land”. Now I am an Irish cit­i­zen and trav­el on an Irish pass­port, but I was born and live in Eng­land. The only way she could know about my Irish con­nec­tion would have been through offi­cial sources.

The ‘trainee’ punched anoth­er hole in the scam with the only two ques­tions he asked – for my views on Latvia remov­ing Russ­ian stat­ues from pub­lic parks, and the West’s recog­ni­tion of Koso­vo. I respect­ful­ly point­ed out that these were polit­i­cal mat­ters on which I would not com­ment, but I was hap­py to answer ques­tions on jour­nal­ism issues. He had none. The edi­tor con­tin­ued her inter­view with care­ful­ly pre­pared ques­tions she appeared to be read­ing from a Filo­fax. We left soon after, but not before I snapped a pic­ture of the hap­less pair. He turned out to be a local KGB agent. I nev­er saw what she wrote in a two-page spread based on our inter­view, but it was suf­fi­cient to get me banned from Belarus for a decade.

BAJ mem­bers had their own hair-rais­ing tales of KGB inter­fer­ence includ­ing a young blog­ger who was detained mere­ly for post­ing pic­tures of ‘Press Free­dom Ted­dy bears’ that had land­ed in his girlfriend’s gar­den out­side Min­sk. They had been dropped from a plane by Swedish activist Tomas Mazetti. And every­where there was con­cern about the bug­ging of loca­tions and land­line phones. Inter­net cafe own­ers were oblig­ed to report on which sites their cus­tomers accessed.

It made me realise that the mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ance of my board­ing card at Gatwick Air­port, which meant I had to iden­ti­fy myself to a state offi­cial on the air­craft, an attempt to rook me by offi­cials at Min­sk air­port, and the theft of my wal­let from a state hotel and its mirac­u­lous reap­pear­ance, sans cash, but after I had can­celled all my cards, might all have been part of a desta­bil­is­ing tac­tic.

The KGB make no secret of their pres­ence oper­at­ing from a mas­sive yel­low head­quar­ters con­sum­ing a whole block, com­plete with cells and inter­ro­ga­tion suites, right in the cen­tre of Min­sk. And when oppo­si­tion can­di­date Alyak­san­dr Kazulin was briefly released from jail in 2008 to attend the funer­al of his wife, the church and the streets out­side were so full KGB that it was risky to take pho­tos. Kazulin had been jailed for more than 5 years for organ­is­ing anti-gov­ern­ment ral­lies.

Even my ban did not put a stop to our train­ing pro­gramme. We held ses­sions in Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland, Rus­sia and Ukraine instead. At one of them sev­er­al young mem­bers came out as gay, and I was proud to have been part of the cre­ation of an LGBTQ+ net­work across the region. Christ­mas 2024 sees Jour­nal­ists 4 Tol­er­ance cel­e­brat­ing its 15th anniver­sary.

Denis Ivashin is led away to serve 9 years for inves­ti­gat­ing the recruit­ment of for­mer Ukrain­ian riot squad mem­bers into the Belaru­sian police force

So many of these brave jour­nal­ists were tak­ing risks with their free­dom. The entire BAJ Exec­u­tive is now in exile, with at least 45 media work­ers cur­rent­ly in jail serv­ing sen­tences from two to 14 years.

Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau was part of a BAJ del­e­ga­tion to Britain and spent sev­er­al years in the UK, work­ing with Index on Cen­sor­ship and Amnesty. He and his part­ner Iry­na Ziobi­na were arrest­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021 charged with riot­ing, and accused of pay­ing the fines and deten­tion fees of anti-gov­ern­ment pro­tes­tors.

Lat­er charged with high trea­son Andrei was sen­tenced to 14 years in gaol, Iry­na got 9 years. The cou­ple mar­ried in Min­sk jail in 2022. 

By declar­ing pub­li­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing out­lets ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions’ the author­i­ties are able to arrest and charge pho­tog­ra­phers, cam­era oper­a­tors and oth­er free­lancers just for sup­ply­ing mate­r­i­al to out­lets. While I was there any­one pub­lish­ing more than 300 copies had to be reg­is­tered and com­ply with any reg­u­la­tions the state might impose. You even need­ed offi­cial per­mis­sion to sell in the street. I was told a favourite trick of the secu­ri­ty ser­vices was to approach some­one car­ry­ing news­pa­pers and ask to buy one, then arrest any­one who oblig­ed. Some news­pa­pers had to be print­ed out­side the coun­try so deliv­ery was fraught with added dan­gers. And one news­pa­per office I vis­it­ed was sub­se­quent­ly bought by the local author­i­ty which prompt­ly evict­ed the paper. With­out a prop­er office as stip­u­lat­ed by the state, it became an ille­git­i­mate oper­a­tion. 

When TUT.BY Media was ’liq­ui­dat­ed’ by the state in 2021, edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va and her CEO Lud­mi­la Chekhi­na were jailed for 12 years each on charges that ranged from tax eva­sion to asso­ci­at­ing with ter­ror­ists. Three oth­er staff mem­bers cit­ed as co-defen­dants went on the run and are now list­ed as fugi­tives want­ed by the Lukashenko regime. 

Putin-fan Alexan­der Lukashenko has been in pow­er since 1994. In the unfree and unfair pres­i­den­tial elec­tions of 2020 he claimed 80% of the vote which was odd as oppo­si­tion can­di­date Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya reck­oned she had won 60%. Inevitably she is now in exile along with those close col­leagues who did not end up in jail. Sergei, her blog­ger hus­band, had been the orig­i­nal can­di­date but his can­di­da­cy was blocked as he had ear­li­er been jailed for ‘par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unau­tho­rised protest action’. Svi­at­lana took his place. She intends to run again in the sum­mer of 2025 when Lukashenko will be seek­ing his sev­enth term in office.

When Thatcher’s favourite PR-man Tim Bell was bur­nish­ing Pres­i­dent Lukashenko’s image in 2008, I pro­duced Zvon (The Belarus Clar­i­on) a 4‑page newslet­ter telling the truth about the repres­sive regime. Exiled jour­nal­ists dis­trib­uted it to investors at a Church House event in West­min­ster. British secu­ri­ty ser­vices offi­cers asked us to move away, at the behest of their KGB coun­ter­parts. We were back to pick­et Bell’s Dorch­ester Hotel din­ner par­ty in Park Lane that evening.

Amnesty inter­na­tion­al, Index on Cen­sor­ship and the exiled Belarus Free The­atre are lead­ing sup­port for BAJ mem­bers in the UK. Funds are need­ed to keep spir­its high and look after the fam­i­lies of those in jail. Dona­tions can be sent via https://www.patreon.com/baj_media 

PHOTOS: BAJ & Mike Jemp­son