Hanna Liubakova, an independent Belarusian journalist in exile, is calling for a solidarity campaign to free her compatriot, journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva, who is currently serving an eight-year sentence for livestreaming the government crackdown on peaceful demonstrations in Minsk in 2020.

'My brilliant friend and colleague Katsiaryna Andreyeva is still imprisoned. Her crime was telling the truth. I am asking for a campaign of solidarity to secure her release,' Ms Liubakova said in a video testimony, published by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

The Polish-Belarus film 'Under the Grey Sky', which had been screened at the EESC and featured in EESC Info, is inspired by Ms Andreyeva's story. A journalist with Belsat TV, she was initially given seven days of administrative detention on accusations of ‘organising riots and disrupting public transport’. It later became an eight-year prison sentence for high treason.

Ms Liubakova was one of the speakers at the EESC's conference Challenges for Women in Media – supporting and hindering factors, organised for International Women's Day 2026, where she flagged the risks faced by women journalists in exile and under authoritarian regimes. 

Herself sentenced to ten years in absentia for so-called extremism, she is on a wanted list in Russia and across CIS countries. 

'In reality, my crime was journalism. This is what transnational repression looks like,' she said.

For years, Alexander Lukashenko's regime has been one of the world's top jailers of women journalists, not a ranking any country should be proud of, Ms Liubakova said. 'For women journalists, repression has an extra layer: threats, pressure on families and attempts to discredit us as 'bad women', not just professionals.'

Twenty-eight journalists remain behind bars in Belarus, a country where independent media are treated as enemies. 

'This is because information is critical infrastructure – it determines whether society can resist propaganda and authoritarian control,' Ms Liubakova said. 

'Supporting independent media is not a charity. It is an investment in Europe's democratic resilience,' she concluded. 

You can watch the video here.