Natallia Radzina
Editor-in-Chief of Charter’97
Natallia Radzina has been the Editor-in-Chief of the oldest Belarusian independent news resource, Charter’97, since 2001. She is also the CEO of the Karta-97 Foundation in Poland. Previously, Ms Radzina worked in the largest Belarusian independent newspapers Imya, Svoboda, Narodnaya Volya, and Nasha Svoboda, which were subsequently closed by the authorities. In Belarus, Natallia Radzina was persecuted for her journalistic activities. After the presidential elections in 2010, she was arrested and placed in a KGB detention center. Belarusian authorities charged her with the criminal article “Organization of Mass Riots.” Ms Radzina faced up to 15 years in prison. After two months in a KGB detention center, where she was tortured, she relocated to her hometown of Kobrin, where she was under the equivalent of house arrest. Ms Radzina fled to Russia in 2011 and spent four months hiding in Moscow before receiving asylum from Poland. In November 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists presented Ms Radzina with its “International Press Freedom Award.”
Updated: April 16, 2025