Iryna Leushyna’s words quoted at Echoing the Voices of Women action in Malmö

At the begin­ning of March, the Malmö Art Muse­um com­mem­o­rat­ed impris­oned female jour­nal­ists from Belarus as part of the Echo­ing the Voic­es of Women action. With the sup­port of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Malmö PEN told the sto­ry of nine media women who are cur­rent­ly impris­oned and also read quotes from the final state­ment in court of Iry­na Leushy­na, edi­tor-in-chief of the Bela­PAN agency.

Par­tic­i­pants in Echo­ing the Voic­es of Women action write texts by women polit­i­cal pris­on­ers on the win­dows. Pho­to from Mar­gare­ta Flygt’s archive.

Sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing PEN Malmö, Fem­i­nists for Jina, and ABF, held an event in sup­port of impris­oned women called Echo­ing the Voic­es of Women.

Vis­i­tors were invit­ed to write texts on the muse­um win­dows that echoed the sen­ti­ments of women polit­i­cal pris­on­ers around the world. The orga­niz­ers select­ed thir­ty pas­sages, includ­ing some from Belarus. One of the pas­sages was from the poet­ess Yulia Tsi­mafeye­va.

“The oth­er texts from Belarus were anony­mous due to the risks for some authors in their home­land,” empathized Mar­gare­ta Fly­gt, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of PEN Malmö.

The event Echo­ing the Voic­es of Women received sig­nif­i­cant cov­er­age in the Malmö press.

At the art con­cert held in the muse­um, Mar­gare­ta Fly­gt read an excerpt from the final state­ment of Iry­na Leushy­na, edi­tor-in-chief of the Bela­PAN agency. Free­lance jour­nal­ist Åsa Ohls­son, who has worked hard to strength­en links between Belaru­sian and Swedish reporters, spoke about female jour­nal­ists behind bars in Belarus.

Mar­gare­ta Fly­gt men­tioned to BAJ that sim­i­lar actions have been tak­en before, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to the Iran­ian pro­test­ers in 2022.

“The reac­tion was pos­i­tive, with peo­ple show­ing inter­est and being moved by what they saw and heard. Many indi­vid­u­als have lim­it­ed knowl­edge about Belarus, and it is easy to for­get about the Belaru­sian tragedy amidst new glob­al dis­as­ters. This event served as a good reminder of the coun­try”.