Ex-journalist Larysa Shchyrakova detained in Homel, her son taken to orphanage

“The rea­sons and cir­cum­stances of her deten­tion are still unknown. She is in pre-tri­al deten­tion, and her son Svi­ataslau is in a repair for chil­dren. Larysa has not been engaged in any pub­lic or jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties in recent years,” said the RLE/RF Belarus source.

Larysa Shchyrako­va is a well-known jour­nal­ist in Homel. Until 2021 she worked for a num­ber of inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tions. She made doc­u­men­taries and imple­ment­ed her own project to hon­or the repressed in the USSR titled “The Mur­dered and For­got­ten.” Shchyrako­va record­ed the tes­ti­monies of rel­a­tives of the repressed dis­si­dents and used those records to pro­duce pub­li­ca­tions and doc­u­men­taries.

By train­ing, Shchyrako­va is an Eng­lish teacher. She used to head the local his­to­ry orga­ni­za­tion Tala­ka, now liq­ui­dat­ed by the author­i­ties.

Over the past few months, the ex-jour­nal­ist has been engaged in eth­nic pho­to shoots – tak­ing pic­tures of peo­ple in Belaru­sian folk cos­tumes and relat­ed places. This year she enrolled in a psy­chol­o­gy course. Despite the threats, Shchyrako­va chose to stay in Belarus.