A woman, her newspaper and an entire sector under attack in Belarus

On 20 April, Belaru­sian spe­cial forces raid­ed the home of Aksana Kolb, edi­tor-in-chief of the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Novy Chas (New Time), in riot gear, with shields, car­ry­ing sledge­ham­mers. They act­ed like they were arrest­ing a dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal, rather than escort­ing a 53-year old jour­nal­ist and grand­moth­er to yet anoth­er inter­ro­ga­tion. In today’s Belarus, inde­pen­dent media work­ers are labelled as “extrem­ists” and treat­ed like ter­ror­ists.

Ms. Kolb might not have expect­ed the police on that par­tic­u­lar morn­ing, but their egre­gious actions were hard­ly a sur­prise to her or oth­er local jour­nal­ists. Since the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing free­dom of expres­sion in Belarus has been among the worst in Europe. Media out­lets and jour­nal­ists face unprece­dent­ed repres­sion. Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, the gov­ern­ment has detained jour­nal­ists over 650 times, arrest­ed and sen­tenced more than 130 media work­ers on admin­is­tra­tive charges, and used vio­lence against and caused injury to 80 jour­nal­ists. More than 60 media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are under crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion; 26 are behind bars. 

While Novy Chas and oth­er out­lets have suf­fered per­se­cu­tion in the past, today the entire inde­pen­dent media sec­tor is under attack. As has been the case with dozens of pub­li­ca­tions, the gov­ern­ment forced Novy Chas to stop issu­ing its week­ly paper, blocked its web­site, repeat­ed­ly detained its jour­nal­ists and pho­tog­ra­phers, and searched its edi­to­r­i­al office and the homes of its employ­ees. In Novem­ber 2021, its founder – the Belaru­sian Lan­guage Asso­ci­a­tion, one of Belarus’ old­est NGOs – was shut down by the author­i­ties. Ms. Kolb was inter­ro­gat­ed sev­er­al times as a wit­ness and sus­pect in oth­er polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed cas­es. Despite the risk, she refused to flee the coun­try, choos­ing to remain close to her paper’s read­ers. While Novy Chas was forced to stop its print edi­tion, it con­tin­ued to appear online – on its web­site, social media pages and mes­sen­ger chan­nels.  

Until 2020, Novy Chas was a niche pub­li­ca­tion tar­get­ing the country’s intel­li­gentsia. Led by Aksana, who fre­quent­ly authored op eds, it was not linked to any polit­i­cal force but was uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro-Belaru­sian. Novy Chas was the only nation­al week­ly pub­lished in Belaru­sian lan­guage that focused on in-depth socio-polit­i­cal con­tent, his­to­ry and cul­ture, and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism (its lead­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, Dzia­n­is Ivashyn, was jailed in March 2021 and remains a polit­i­cal pris­on­er). 2020 was notable not only because of the protests in Belarus but also for the public’s hunger for objec­tive and inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion. The print run of Novy Chas more than tripled and the audi­ence of its web­site sky­rock­et­ed, reach­ing over 1 mil­lion vis­i­tors in Sep­tem­ber 2020.

Aksana Kolb’s arrest high­lights the fact that, despite the government’s attempts to silence inde­pen­dent media, their influ­ence remains strong. It is not sur­pris­ing that the regimes in Belarus and Rus­sia view them as a threat.

Even among Belarus’ brave and resource­ful inde­pen­dent media, Novy Chas was a unique news­pa­per. Since the paper began pub­lish­ing in 2007, its edi­to­r­i­al team has worked close­ly with human rights defend­ers and civ­il soci­ety groups. It not only fea­tured human rights and civic activists, but also dis­trib­uted free copies to polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. For many behind bars, Novy Chas was their only source of inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion and only link to the out­side world. After their release, pris­on­ers relat­ed how they had read the paper out loud to their entire cell and dis­played copies that had been passed around to the point of falling apart. After August 2020, when the sites of online media were blocked, grass­roots groups dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of issues of Novy Chas by hand to neigh­bor­hood mail­box­es. 

This time, after a lengthy inter­ro­ga­tion, Ms. Kolb was detained and placed in Akrestsi­na Prison, Minsk’s infa­mous deten­tion cen­ter. It is a “stan­dard pro­ce­dure” for the author­i­ties to hold sus­pects for up to 10 days, after which they must either release them, file offi­cial charges or detain them again for anoth­er alleged offense. Her case is one more exam­ple that per­se­cu­tion is unremit­ting against the few inde­pen­dent media still left in Belarus. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, this repres­sion is tak­ing place at the same time that Belarus’ Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs dis­patched offi­cial let­ters to EU gov­ern­ments and the inter­na­tion­al media call­ing for a new dia­logue in the hope that it would lead to the lift­ing of sanc­tions against Belarus.

Since the first day of Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media have car­ried out time­ly, sys­tem­at­ic and pro­fes­sion­al report­ing on the war. They are pro­vid­ing Belaru­sians with objec­tive infor­ma­tion, detailed analy­sis and human-inter­est sto­ries that counter the pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from Belaru­sian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments and state media. More­over, after the Krem­lin shut down Russ­ian inde­pen­dent media out­lets in Feb­ru­ary and March, Belaru­sian dig­i­tal media became an impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion for Russ­ian soci­ety. Inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian news sites observed an increase of traf­fic from Rus­sia and some launched spe­cial projects tar­get­ing Russ­ian audi­ences. As a result, sev­er­al Belaru­sian nation­al and region­al online media – includ­ing Novy Chas – were also blocked in Rus­sia in March 2022. 

Aksana Kolb’s arrest high­lights the fact that, despite the government’s attempts to silence inde­pen­dent media, their influ­ence remains strong. It is not sur­pris­ing that the regimes in Belarus and Rus­sia view them as a threat. Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists con­tin­ue to work effec­tive­ly and pro­vide cit­i­zens with inde­pen­dent and unbi­ased infor­ma­tion, despite the extreme con­di­tions inside and out­side the coun­try. But the Belaru­sian demo­c­ra­t­ic forces, includ­ing inde­pen­dent media, need more inter­na­tion­al sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty, which might help to free Aksana and the country’s more than 1,100 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.
On April 20, 2022, Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ) issued a state­ment call­ing on Belaru­sian author­i­ties to imme­di­ate­ly release and drop any charges against Ms. Kolb.