Meet Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova), an exiled Belarusian journalist, non-resident fellow on the Atlantic Council, and 2023 Oslo Freedom Discussion board speaker.
Liubakova started her profession on the solely unbiased Belarusian information channel, Belsat TV, the place she labored as a correspondent, presenter, and host of their essential information program, “In Focus.”
However after her investigative reporting and in-depth analyses uncovered the corruption of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime and its repression of dissidents, she discovered herself pressured to flee her nation after the federal government unleashed a brutal crackdown on unbiased journalism.
She left the nation in 2020, she stated, as a result of “even earlier than the elections and protests, I used to be surveilled. … I acquired this type of sign that it was higher for me to go away the nation. Now I report about [those] protesters from exile.”
Even from exterior Belarus, Liubakova’s reporting stays a dependable supply of factual, uncensored info for these inside and outdoors of the nation. Her work has been featured within the Washington Publish, The Economist, Open Democracy, and the Conversationalist.
To maintain writing requires braveness: Belarus continues to arrest and imprison journalists at house, whereas Lukashenko’s regime makes an attempt to apply transnational repression, focusing on dissidents exterior of its attain, like Liubakova.
“None of us can really feel secure anymore,” she stated. “However I’m grateful for the truth that I’m free and never jailed, as my mates are. A few of them have been sentenced to fifteen years. So I believe that I ought to do as a lot as I can to assist launch them.”
Liubakova and different changemakers can be sharing their tales on the Oslo Konserthus stage this June for the fifteenth annual Oslo Freedom Discussion board.
