Iryna Khalip

The next Monday and Tuesday she gathered more information for the article at the behest of her editor-in-chief. That Tuesday, at 8:53 p.m., she received a call to her mobile phone from a pay phone. A unknown man stated “You have been warned, bitch, haven’t you? If the article is published, you must not leave your house any more.”

When the Charter 97 website later asked about the source of the threats, Khalip stated “Only those who have a possibility to intercept emails of others could make threats to me. In our country it’s a prerogative of secret services...KGB servicemen are used to stay nameless and faceless in the crowd. They do not like when their illegal and sometimes criminal actions become known…”

In October 2013, Tom Stoppard awarded her the "International writer of courage" of the PEN Pinter Prize, a major international human rights award.

For her journalistic activities she has been regularly harassed, detained, and beaten by the Belarusian KGB and authorities. In May 2011, she was given a two-year suspended prison sentence for her role in protests following the 2010 Belarus election.

On March 3, 2010, it was reported by Charter97.org that Khalip and her husband Andrei Sannikov had been summoned to the Partyzanski District militia department in Minsk for questioning. Chief interrogating officer Alyaksandr Paznyak oversaw the interrogations, questioning them individually in an effort to uncover if they were connected to a criminal case involving "defamation" of Ivan Korzh, a former member of the KGB in the Gomel region. According to Khalip, they were asked "if we were coordinators of the website charter97.org, if we conducted journalistic investigation of the 'hunters’ case,' if I published anything relating to this issue, if we met with his family, if we published anything on the website 'Belorusski Partizan.' Our answers to all questions were decisive “no”, which is absolutely true.”

In March 2010, Khalip's husband Andrei Sannikov declared his intention to take part in the Belarus presidential election of 2010 as a candidate. Along with Uladzimir Niaklajeu and Jarasłaŭ Ramančuk, he was considered one of the main opposition candidates. With Khalip's support, he officially registered on November 18, 2010. After the presidential elections took place on December 19, 2010, incumbent Aleksandr Lukashenko was proclaimed the winner with roughly 80% of the popular vote.

Khalip sent a text of her journalistic investigation to the Novaya Gazeta editorial office on Saturday, November 22, 2009. That day at 17:43 she received an email from "Drug Drug" titled "Greetings from Boris." It read "Irka if you won’t remove the article you will meet with [murdered reporter] Anna Politkovskaya, or tomorrow you will meet with intoxicated niggers. With love, BA (sic)." Khalip immediately called London and spoke to Berezovsky, who assured her he had not sent the email and theorized it was the "special services."

In October 2009, Khalip was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation.

Khalip’s more notable reporting is related to abduction, detention and torture of Emmanuel Zeltser, a prominent American lawyer who spent 16 months in the Belarusian KGB detention before being released thanks to the intervention of the United States government and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International[1]. As was widely reported, on March 11, 2008, Zeltser and his assistant Vladlena Funk were abducted in London U.K. by the Belarusian KGB operatives. Both were drugged and secretly renditioned across international borders to Belarus aboard a private jet belonging to Boris Berezovsky, a notorious Russian “oligarch”, wanted by the Interpol for fraud and money laundering and close friend of the Belarusian dictator Alyaksander Lukashenka.

TIME selected her for the 2005 special issue "European Heroes", category "Brave Hearts". In 2009 she was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation. She is married to former Belarus presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov, an opposition activist and recipient of the 2005 Bruno Kreisky Award.

Time magazine selected her for the 2005 special issue "European Heroes", in the category "Brave Hearts".

In 2003, President Lukashenko altered the Belarusian criminal code to make it illegal for journalists to write anything negative about the president. At that point, Khalip had written multiple articles on corruption in the prosecutor's office for Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta (Belarusian Business Newspaper). The newspaper was accordingly forced to suspend its activities for "insulting the honor and dignity of the president." In 2006, the newspaper was forced to close permanently.

The paper is known for being outspoken about the corruption of governments in the former Soviet Republics, and its journalists have faced brutal intimidation and persecution. Anna Politkovskaya, one of their well-known reporters and a winner of the 2002 Courage in Journalism Award, was shot to death outside her flat in 2006. Three years before that, the Gazeta investigative journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin died in highly suspicious circumstances; many factions believe he was poisoned by the KGB. Khalip, however, has stated she won't stop reporting on civil and human rights abuses, because “[It would] betray my friends. [It would] betray the memory of their husbands. There is only one way to go ahead.”

In March 2000, Khalip was reporting on a Minsk demonstration protesting an official ban on a public march. The banned march was intended to be part of the opposition festivities commemorating the 1918 founding of the Belarusian Democratic Republic. She was forced into a police vehicle and detained at an Interior Ministry facility in Minsk, along with 34 other journalists. She was released later that day.

Khalip later went to work for the independent newspaper Imya ("Name"). In 1999, the Belarusian government issued a warning to Imya over an article Khalip had written about the Central Electoral Committee's activities. According to the chair of the Belarusian Press Committee, the article and the newspaper's coverage of the upcoming presidential elections amounted to "incitement to overthrow the state," and a second warning would lead to the paper's closure.

In 1997, Khalip was reporting at a rally that opposed Belarus unifying with Russia. She was clubbed by riot police and dragged by her hair, and her father, who was with her at the rally, was beaten into unconsciousness.

Afterward graduation Khalip got a job at the government paper Sovetskaya Belorussiya. She decided she wanted to become a full-time journalist in 1994, at age 26. She has stated "I was looking for something not very difficult...something easy and interesting. I was only half right, because journalism is really interesting, but not easy."

Belarus, which had gained independence from the USSR after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, elected Alexander Lukashenko as president in 1994. He quickly became known for restricting freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Khalip has stated "Dictatorships don’t like journalists - they either destroy them or buy them out." That year, Lukashenko fired the editor of Soviet Belarusia after the employees proposed privatizing the paper, and also demanded the paper become his "mouthpiece." Khalip quit her job and became a correspondent with other papers.

Iryna Khalip (or Irina Khalip; Belarusian: Iрына Халiп , Russian: Ирина Халип ) (born November 12, 1967) is a Belarusian journalist, reporter and editor in the Minsk bureau of Novaya Gazeta, known for her criticism of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Iryna Khalip was born on November 12, 1967 in Minsk, a city in Belorussian SSR. Her father is an arts and theater critic. She graduated from Belarus State University with a focus in journalism studies in 1989.