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NEXTA: How Lukashenko fights the mouthpiece of the Belarusian opposition

2022-01-06T10:38:33.506Z


NEXTA: How Lukashenko fights the mouthpiece of the Belarusian opposition Created: 01/06/2022, 11:28 AM From: Aleksandra Fedorska The Belarusian journalist Protassevich, arrested by the Lukashenko regime, is part of a medium that is becoming increasingly important. © Niall Carson / dpa The medium NEXTA played an important role for the Belarusian opposition in the protests. Since then, Lukashenk


NEXTA: How Lukashenko fights the mouthpiece of the Belarusian opposition

Created: 01/06/2022, 11:28 AM

From: Aleksandra Fedorska

The Belarusian journalist Protassevich, arrested by the Lukashenko regime, is part of a medium that is becoming increasingly important.

© Niall Carson / dpa

The medium NEXTA played an important role for the Belarusian opposition in the protests.

Since then, Lukashenko has been fighting hard at home and abroad.

Warsaw - NEXTA was founded in 2015 in the Polish capital Warsaw.

At first it was just another YouTube channel run by a group of Belarusian migrants.

NEXTA was founded by Szjapan Puzila.

Roman Protassievich * joined them later.

Before joining NEXTA, Protassievich worked as a journalist and blogger for the Belarusian opposition.

Another well-known activist of the project was Uładzimier Czudziancou, who was arrested by Belarusian security forces on his way to Poland in November 2019 and sentenced to 5.5 years in a prison camp.

NEXTA: A small project becomes a big political issue

Both Puzila and Protassievich began to use the Internet for their journalistic and artistic projects early on. Puzila, who has now lived in Poland for over six years, gained experience in the production of film and television programs for Belsat TV in Katowice. In the spring it was reported that his father worked as a sports journalist for this station and lived in Minsk. It is no longer possible to check whether this information is still up-to-date, because the NEXTA team has become extremely cautious with regard to their own safety and the safety of their relatives.

The journalism student Protassievich worked in Belarus for various radio stations, including Euroradio.

For the period 2017 to 2018 Protassiewitsch received a scholarship from the Václav Havel Foundation and completed an internship at Radio Swoboda.

After Czudziancou was arrested at the end of 2019, Protassievich decided to apply for asylum in Poland.

In 2020 Roman Protassiewitsch and Szjapan Puzila were put out to an international search by the Belarusian regime.

They were accused of organizing massive riots and collective actions against public order.

NEXTA: the main source of information from Belarus for the global world

At this point in time, NEXTA had already switched to the Telegram application. The awareness of NEXTA increased particularly strongly during the protests after the presidential election in summer 2020. In August 2020, the Telegram channel NEXTA Live had over two million subscribers. Polish media speak of a “NEXTA phenomenon” because NEXTA has become the most important source of information from Belarus for the global world. NEXTA is now represented on all social media channels.

Piotr Pogorzelski, author of the “Po prostu Wschód” podcast and journalist at Belsat, emphasizes that NEXTA is a medium that has been based in Poland from the start, outside the borders of Belarus, and therefore based on information from third parties and local networks is instructed.

These are short films recorded with smartphones that reach NEXTA from Belarus.

In this way, a network structure developed in the early days through which NEXTA can be supplied with information from Belarus quickly and independently.

The strong affinity to the Internet and social media channels has made it easier to obtain information, network and technical access for people from Belarus both domestically and in the diaspora.

The repression of the Lukashenko regime

When the number of users of NEXTA in the millions (and that with a population of just under ten million people in Belarus), the regime hardly had any technical means of effectively restricting NEXTA's reporting.

Even if the Belarusian Internet was temporarily switched off, NEXTA could still be reached and could not be blocked.

All journalists working for NEXTA now work in Poland or perhaps in other European countries.

The information about their whereabouts is kept secret.

They are guarded by the police around the clock as their lives are threatened by the regime.

Alexander Lukashenko is the President of Belarus.

He is considered the “last dictator in Europe” © TUT.by/AP/dpa

These precautionary measures are more than appropriate, because President Alexander Lukashenko will stop at nothing when it comes to combating this independent medium.

He proved this when, on May 23, he forced the landing in Minsk of a Ryanair plane in which Roman Protassievich was sitting with his partner.

The couple was taken off the plane at the airport and arrested.

Reading the news on NEXTA is currently prohibited in Belarus and a criminal offense.

Pogorzelski therefore expects that NEXTA in Belarus has lost many subscribers as a result.

(Aleksandra Fedorska) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-01-06

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