Jubilee behind bars: Larysa Shchyrakova turns 50

Four months ago, on 6 Decem­ber 2022, Shchyrako­va was arrest­ed after a search of her home. The police took her minor son Svi­ataslau to a children’s shel­ter. Over time, his father, who lives in Rus­sia, came to col­lect the child from the facil­i­ty.

Mean­while, Larysa Shchyrako­va was trans­ferred to a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. The ex-jour­nal­ist is accused of dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus, how­ev­er, the charge details are unknown as her lawyer signed a nondis­clo­sure state­ment.

Her lawyer was forced to sign a non-dis­clo­sure state­ment. Shchyrako­va receives care pack­ages from her rel­a­tives, but she is not allowed any vis­its.

Larysa grad­u­at­ed from the his­to­ry and philol­o­gy depart­ment of the Fran­cysk Skary­na Homel State Uni­ver­si­ty and taught his­to­ry and Eng­lish at school. Lat­er she got inter­est­ed in jour­nal­ism and start­ed work­ing for inde­pen­dent media. She also launched her own project ded­i­cat­ed to the com­mem­o­ra­tion of peo­ple repressed in Sovi­et times. She record­ed tes­ti­monies of their fam­i­ly mem­bers and cre­at­ed doc­u­men­taries based on them.

Larysa Shchyrako­va used to work for sev­er­al inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. But back in 2021, she pub­licly announced her quit­ting jour­nal­ism because of the harass­ment she had to endure for work­ing with­out accred­i­ta­tion. The ex-jour­nal­ist was held admin­is­tra­tive­ly liable over 40 times, includ­ing for her cov­er­age of post-elec­tion protests.

She reg­is­tered as an indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neur and start­ed doing folk-style pho­to shoots. For that, she used her own rich col­lec­tion of nation­al embroi­deries, pat­terns and old house­hold items of the Homel region.

We are wish­ing Larysa strength, faith, and a fast release.

Recent­ly the Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (EFJ) and unions of French jour­nal­ists SNJ, SNJ-CGT, and CFDT-Jour­nal­istes issued a state­ment call­ing for the imme­di­ate release of Larysa Shchyrako­va.