BELAPAN FOUNDER DIES AT 52

Who is Ales Lipai

Ales Lipai — founder and head of Bela­PAN, the old­est inde­pen­dent news agency in Belarus since 1991. Mem­ber of the Union of Belaru­sian Writ­ers and the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter. 

Born in 1966 in Androsaushchy­na of Kapyl dis­trict, he grad­u­at­ed from the BSU depart­ment of jour­nal­ism. In 1988, he was per­se­cut­ed for pro­duc­tion of Lirnik, self-pub­lish stu­dent news­pa­per.

In 1988, Lipai became the first reporter of RFE/RL in Belarus.

. In the ear­ly 1990s, he orga­nized trans­porta­tion of over a thou­sand books pub­lished by Belaru­sian dias­po­ra in Ger­many to Belarus, and dis­trib­uted them through schools and libraries.

In June 1996, dur­ing the hostage res­cue mis­sion in a Min­sk kinder­garten, he inter­viewed a ter­ror­ist to divert his atten­tion.

Bela­PAN has been the prime spon­sor of the Min­sk con­cert ral­ly Inde­pen­dence Day, ded­i­cat­ed to the 100th anniver­sary of the procla­ma­tion of inde­pen­dence of the Belaru­sian Peo­ple’s Repub­lic. Address­ing the crowd, Lipai called for sol­i­dar­i­ty with the polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.