US director joins Solidarity Marathon in support of Larysa Shchyrakova

Ernie Bar­barash wrote that see­ing the posts of Svi­at­lana Tikhanouskaya and Pavel Latush­ka on Insta­gram from the Tuta­ka fes­ti­val in Poland inspired him to join the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon. He chose a pho­to of Larysa Shchyrako­va, with whom he was reg­u­lar­ly in con­tact since 2021 until she was detained.

Ernie Bar­barash, who was born in Odessa in 1977, is a direc­tor and screen­writer. He moved to Cana­da with his par­ents and cur­rent­ly resides and works in Los Ange­les, USA. Every week, he posts a sto­ry on his social media about a Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­er. He recon­struct­ed the paint­ing The Storm­ing of the Bastille by cre­at­ing a mosa­ic of pris­on­ers’ pho­tos.

Ernie Bar­barash told Vias­na that there are var­i­ous fac­tors that moti­vate him. The pri­ma­ry focus is on the pris­on­ers, who are inno­cent peo­ple jailed for sim­ply attend­ing protests. Their sto­ries include tales of active resis­tance against the regime, as well as being impris­oned for mere­ly com­ment­ing on social media.

“I believe it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to con­tin­ue fight­ing for them. They brave­ly took a stand for what they thought was cor­rect, and paid the heavy price for it. They are unable to fight from their con­fine­ment, but we, on the out­side, are free and should ful­fill our duty by con­tin­u­ing the fight. I am upset by the unfair­ness and chaos of what is hap­pen­ing to peo­ple in Belarus, which is a mod­ern coun­try in the heart of Europe. The more I learn about these indi­vid­u­als and their griev­ing fam­i­lies, the more I feel the need to assist,” the direc­tor said.

We would like to remind every­one about the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Marathon in sup­port of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists.

The marathon of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the jour­nal­ists of Belaru­sian polit­i­cal pris­on­ers was launched on May 3 in Vil­nius by a joint action of the BAJ and the Lithuan­ian Union of Jour­nal­ists.

Nor­way, Fin­land, Den­mark, Ger­many, and oth­er coun­tries have already joined the call.

BAJ calls on jour­nal­ists around the world to sup­port the sol­i­dar­i­ty action! You can print por­traits of impris­oned Belaru­sian media work­ers, take pic­tures with them in out­stand­ing places in your city (not in Belarus) and post them on social media using the hash­tags #СвабодуЖурналістам and #BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist. Don’t for­get to send them to office@baj.media or intercomm@baj.media.

A#СвабодуЖурналістам

#BecauseThe­Jour­nal­ist

Anoth­er online sol­i­dar­i­ty marathon called “We care!” will be held on Sat­ur­day, July 29. By par­tic­i­pat­ing in the marathon, you can pro­vide finan­cial sup­port for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers. Over 20 inde­pen­dent media orga­ni­za­tions, BAJ includ­ed, are going to par­tic­i­pate. The marathon will be live-streamed on sev­er­al inde­pen­dent YouTube chan­nels from 10 am to 10 pm Min­sk time.

Read more:

Online solidarity marathon «We care!» to be held on July 29. Proceeds to support political prisoners and their families

Journalist Pavel Mazheika sentenced to six years in prison

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