Imprisoned journalist Larysa Shchyrakova “adopted” by British MP

Wendy Cham­ber­lain joined the #WeS­tand­BYy­ou cam­paign, call­ing for the imme­di­ate release of Larysa Shchyrako­va and all Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers who seek free­dom and democ­ra­cy.

The cam­paign of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers was ini­ti­at­ed by the Ger­man-Swiss human rights orga­ni­za­tion Libere­co – Part­ner­ship for Human Rights.

Thanks to the ini­tia­tive of human rights activists and politi­cians, many Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers now have sym­bol­ic “god­par­ents”. Their task is to attract pub­lic atten­tion to those con­vict­ed on polit­i­cal grounds.

The for­mer jour­nal­ist was arrest­ed in Homel on 6 Decem­ber 2022. Her son Svi­ataslau was sent to a children’s home until his father came to take him out of the sys­tem. Ten days after the deten­tion, the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty rec­og­nized the woman as a polit­i­cal pris­on­er.

The indict­ment alleges that Shchyrako­va gath­ered, pro­duced, man­aged, saved, and shared audio, video, pho­to, and text data to aid the extrem­ist oper­a­tions of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter and Bel­sat TV.

On 3 Novem­ber 2021, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of the Repub­lic of Belarus declared the Bel­sat TV chan­nel and its socials as ‘extrem­ist for­ma­tions.’ On 9 August 2023, the Homel chap­ter of Vias­na HRC and its relat­ed social media pages were also declared as such, while Shchyrakova’s tri­al was already under­way.

On August 31, Larysa Shchyrako­va was sen­tenced to 3.5 years in prison and a fine of $1,316. The jour­nal­ist chose not to appeal the ver­dict.

On 22 Sep­tem­ber 2023, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry added her name to the “list of extrem­ists”.

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