Larysa Shchyrakova transferred to Homel women’s correctional facility

On August 31, Judge Mikalai Dolia of the Homel Region­al Court sen­tenced a jour­nal­ist to three and a half years in prison and fined her $1100. Dur­ing the tri­al, Larysa Shchyrako­va announced that she would not appeal the ver­dict, as she believed it was not worth pur­su­ing since no con­vict­ed jour­nal­ists or pub­lic fig­ures had man­aged to have their sen­tence com­mut­ed in a high­er court. Recent­ly, she was moved to the cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty for women in Homel.

The cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty con­sists of sev­er­al two-sto­ry brick bar­racks con­struct­ed in the 1970s, a med­ical cen­ter, a laun­dry, and sewing work­shops.

Larysa Shchyrako­va will spend a con­sid­er­able amount of time there: approx­i­mate­ly two and a half years. The eight months she spent on remand count as 12 months in prison. She cel­e­brat­ed her 50^th birth­day while incar­cer­at­ed.

The for­mer jour­nal­ist was arrest­ed in Homel on Decem­ber 6, 2022. Her son Svi­ataslau was sent to a children’s home until his father came to take him out of the sys­tem.

Shchyrako­va was found guilty of “dis­cred­it­ing the Repub­lic of Belarus” and “pro­mot­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties”. The details of the charges against the jour­nal­ist are unknown, but it’s believed she dis­sem­i­nat­ed “untrue” infor­ma­tion about Belarus online. It’s also unclear what her involve­ment in “extrem­ist activ­i­ties” was. Attor­ney Vik­to­ria Famen­ka, who rep­re­sent­ed Shchyrako­va, signed a non-dis­clo­sure oblig­a­tion.

The jour­nal­ist was accused of gath­er­ing, pro­duc­ing, man­ag­ing, stor­ing, and dis­sem­i­nat­ing audio, video, pho­to, and text data to aid the extrem­ist oper­a­tions of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter and Bel­sat TV chan­nel.

On 3 Novem­ber 2021, the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of the Repub­lic of Belarus rec­og­nized the TV chan­nel Bel­sat and its social media pages as extrem­ist for­ma­tions. The same hap­pened dur­ing Shchyrakova’s tri­al with the Homel chap­ter of Vias­na. The fact that the woman pub­licly announced her deci­sion to leave jour­nal­ism two years ago, before Bel­sat or Vias­na were labeled as extrem­ist for­ma­tions, did not influ­ence the court’s rul­ing.

On Sep­tem­ber 22, the Belaru­sian Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs includ­ed Larysa Shchyrako­va on the List of Belaru­sian Cit­i­zens, For­eign Cit­i­zens, and State­less Indi­vid­u­als Engaged in Extrem­ist Activ­i­ties. This occurred three weeks after the ver­dict.

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