(Washington Insider Magazine) -Aliaksei Shota is the editor in chief of Belarusian-based news outlet Hrodna Life. In May 2021, he was arrested by the Belarusian government as part of a larger crackdown on independent journalists across the country, before being released the same day. The publications has since been charged with two counts of sharing “extremist content” from Telegram channels that had been labeled “extremist” by Belarusian courts, amounting to fines of close to $10,000.
On Aug. 26 a court liquidated the company under which the publication was registered and gave Shota and other employees until Nov. 30 to close all business operations. The following interview has been edited for brevity and pertinence.
CH: You were a part of a crackdown on journalists that led to your imprisonment in May. More recently, a plane was forcibly landed by Belarusian authorities to remove opposition journalist and blogger Roman Protasevich. What do you want people outside of Belarus to know about being a journalist under the regime of self-proclaimed President Alexander Lukashenko?
AS: It’s extremely dangerous to be a journalist in Belarus right now. The most important thing you should know, and your readers should know, is that you don’t need to do anything to be caught by police and put in jail. You could be the most peaceful person in the world, if you’re a journalist you can’t avoid it I think of being arrested.
It’s impossible to predict. They don’t need any evidence at all. Like the case of Press Club Belarus, they were let out of prison a few days ago, after eight months in prison, and they were just put in jail, and they did nothing. They were officially charged for some economic or financial crimes. This case was not passed to the court or to the prosecutor. They were just like hostages.
Even in August 2020, when there was a war [Eds: massive peaceful protests over the fraudulent presidential election in Minsk], when police would shoot directly at journalists, without reason, it was not as scary as it was in July, where every day from different regions of our country, from different cities, another journalist was imprisoned for no reason. And you’re just waiting at home or in the office to be imprisoned, to be the next one.
In the morning you wake up and see through the window outside if there are any strange suspicious buses, with tinted windows, and without license plate numbers. It was so unpredictable for me at the end of May, when they caught me. I was with my children and my ex-wife, it was just some family thing, nothing special. They kept me for maybe three or four hours with the police. Somehow, they set me free. I was lucky.
CH: How were you treated during those three hours?
AS: Not very bad, they were nice really. They didn’t use force.
CH: The Associated Press reported that police took hard drives in the raid on your residence. What was on those hard drives?
AS: They have an order to take all the devices they can find. If they take two laptops, or phones, they think they will stop you [from working] because they took all your devices. It’s not a new thing. They do it all the time. They usually do nothing with them. My hard drive, my laptop, my phone, everything, [they] returned it a week ago, after paying a fine. They were very old drives, maybe with my family photos. It wasn’t even connected to my work.
CH: The regime has been imprisoning opposition figures and everyday people on trumped up charges including “suspicion of extremism.” Can you explain what they told you when they arrested you? You were charged with publishing “extremist information.” How were they using that term and what did they say?
AS: It’s kind of a new weapon against journalists. Before October 2020, it was a list of extremist content in the Ministry of Information, and it was like some newspapers of neo-Nazis. So really extremist content, skinheads, Nazis and so on.
Then starting from October 2020, I think more than 170 channels in Telegram, messenger, on a website, many different sources of content, were recognized by the court as so-called “extremism.” And it’s completely bullshit. Our channel, Hrodna Life in Telegram, we were forced to abandon it with 7,600 subscribers. And we were forced to create a new one that has three times fewer subscribers now, because courts recognize our Telegram channel as an extremist source.
If your channel, website or anyone, anything is recognized as extremist content, then all content is extremist content. Your logo, your watermark, your URL. If they find on your personal [social media] page a link to a website or channel that’s recognized as extremist, but you published it five years ago, when it wasn’t extremist, it is still sharing extremist content. It is a situation where the law is working in the past, and it could be the main danger for not only journalists, but for our readers. They could share something and have to pay huge fines after trials in the court.
CH: So Hrodna Life is still publishing, correct? How are you able to continue reporting?
AH: Yeah, we’re working well. Of course, we lost some people. Last year, after the elections, one guy left. Another person, our best reporter, was in prison after the election, he was brutally beaten by riot police, and he was forced to leave the country because of the campaign in state media. They showed his face on all central TV stations all over the country, they said he was not a journalist, and he was a liar and a lot of terrible things about his wife. It was awful.
Another case, our editorial deputy editor spent three days in prison, and they didn’t allow her to sit during the day. It’s a cage – 5 by 5 meters, 25 square meters – and 18 hours a day she was forced to stand, they didn’t allow her to sit. Very brutal rules in the prison and after that she was punished with a fine, like $200 or $300, and after that she left the country also.
You need to have a lot of bravery; you need to be very bold to stay in Belarus. And my colleagues, they don’t want to leave, they want to work in Belarus, because they understand you can’t do good local journalism abroad.
Right now, the main problem for us is the prosecutor of the region wants to liquidate us, to close our company, Hrodna Life Media, LLC because of what they said are “massive breaks of the laws.” This is bullshit. No, no massive breaks, only two breaks of the law and breaks of stupid, authoritarian laws, not democratic laws. I think they will close our company. No choice, it could not be another way.
CH: It’s clear that the Lukashenko regime will continue to crackdown on journalists and the opposition. What future do you hope to see for journalists in Belarus?
AS: It will be more and more difficult to work. Soon it will be impossible to work legally. They will shut us down, they will close all official registered media, our authorities, and they will get the rights of a lot of anonymous channels and bloggers, guys who don’t want to work according to ethics, to eradicate journalism ethics standards.
I can’t see any bright light in the close future. It will be worse and worse, and we need to prepare for our long night, or long winter, like in the Game of Thrones.
CH: If Hrodna Life shuts down, what will be your next steps?
AS: We are prepared for relocation, it will be needed. We can work from abroad. But it will not be the same as from Belarus and it will be very painful for us. And we are prepared to hire some some anonymous freelancers who could work for us in this situation.
One of the aims of our media was to create a community of readers and the local community, with the people who can take the responsibility for their city. So, I don’t have an answer of what to do. As I said already, in an interview with the New York Times, and as I’ve said many times, last year in 2020, our nation of Belarus made its choice, and that’s all you need to know. It was said to Lukashenko we don’t need you anymore.
You need to do your work the best you can. Just remember why you went to work years ago. We’re not revolutionaries, soldiers, we’re still journalists. We’re still a fly on the wall. We can’t participate, we’re just watching, which is such difficult work to do. We are transferring to the people just facts, what has transpired.
CH: Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya recently travelled to Washington, D.C. where she met with President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other U.S. government officials. She has also met with leaders from the U.K. and EU. What role does the international community play in supporting journalists or in countering government crackdowns in Belarus? What role do you think they should play?
AS: There is no real instrument on the side of the international community. They don’t have – the United States, European Union – any trade unions, journalist unions, no one from abroad has real tools to somehow influence the situation.
They need to talk all the time; they need to do everything to ensure the situation will still be on the first page of newspapers. But you need to understand, it has nothing to do with the practical situation in Belarus. As my friend said you need to shout as loud as possible and as best as you can, but you need to understand it will not have a real impact on Belarus today. But it’s all you can do right now.
Just don’t allow the world to forget about us.
