Activists from the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demonstrated on Monday, November 6, in front of the Belarusian embassy in Paris to support journalist Marina Zolotova, imprisoned for two and a half years by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. A few dozen RSF members blocked the entrance to the embassy, which they covered with posters demanding her release and postcards reproducing messages of support sent to the journalist. Embassy staff did not react.
The date November 6 was chosen because of the 46e journalist’s birthday. In March, Marina Zolotova was sentenced to twelve years in prison by the regime’s courts for “inciting hatred” and for calling for actions “aimed at undermining national security”. She was the editor-in-chief of Tut. Bythe country’s largest independent online media outlet, until authorities shut it down in August 2021 for “extremism”.
Present at the demonstration with their two children, the journalist’s husband, Vassili Kichkourno, admitted that he had not ” no hope “ to see his wife released soon. Visibly moved by the support received, he explained that he had not “no dialogue” with the Belarusian authorities, who turn a deaf ear to any request for contact. He and his two children, aged 20 and 17, live in exile in Warsaw.
Radical and systematic repression
Very worried, Mr. Kichkourno said he was torn between the need to publicize Marina’s fate and the fear that the regime would take revenge for this media coverage on the journalist or on her relatives who remained in Belarus. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further complicated the situation for Belarusian political prisoners. “Our problems take second place compared to the seriousness of what is happening in Ukraine”he notes.
Strongly shaken by a wave of massive demonstrations caused by the gross falsification of the result of the 2020 presidential elections, Alexander Lukashenko launched a campaign of radical and systematic repression against all forms of opposition. In power for twenty-nine years, the dictator closed all the country’s independent media, imprisoned dozens of political figures and forced others into exile. According to Frédéric Petit, deputy for French people established outside France, 1,462 Belarusians are today political prisoners.
The regime’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has isolated the country internationally, cutting off all negotiations and all leverage to facilitate the release of incarcerated opponents.
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