The Accidental Activist
Irina Khalip remembers clearly the day she stopped being a journalist and started to become an activist. It was April 2, 1997, and thousands of people had rallied in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, to protest the proposed unification of Belarus with Russia. Pushed by the country's authoritarian President, Alexander Lukashenko, the merger was seen by many as an attempt to re-create the Soviet Union. Khalip went to cover the protests in Minsk with her father, Vladimir, a documentary filmmaker. When riot police broke up the protest, Khalip and her father were caught in the melee. "It was the most horrible day of my life," Khalip, 37, says, recalling how cops clubbed her and dragged her by her hair. Her father was beaten unconscious. "Before that, I'd been covering street actions as a journalist," she says. "Since then, I've been there as an activist." And Khalip continues to harass the authorities. Last week, the Office of the Prosecutor General warned her that she could face up to five years in jail for writing articles it described as "calling for the violent overthrow of the constitution." Quips Khalip: "At least they didn't beat me up this time."
As deputy editor in chief of the BDG Delovaya Gazeta, a privately owned biweekly paper, Khalip takes on corrupt officials and even Lukashenko himself. She's regularly subjected to nightlong interrogations by police. The risk is serious: "During Lukashenko's rule, some 4,000 people have been imprisoned for political reasons," says Andrei Sannikov, an opposition leader. At least three opposition activists have disappeared since 1999. Khalip is determined to carry on. "I'd like to be the Belarusian answer to [Yuliya] Tymoshenko," she says, referring to a leader of Ukraine's orange revolution and, until recently, the country's Prime Minister. "Without the premiership, of course."
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