Belapan: Business

It is a big news agency in the country. BelaPAN makes news on politics, economy, and sports from Belarus in the Russian, Belarusian, and English languages.

BelaPAN has the on-line newspaper Belorusskiye Novosti (naviny.by). Its site can't be opened in Belarus. It has been writing about the 2020 Belarusian protests and 2020 Belarusian presidential election.

On January 14, 2021, the office of BelaPAN was searched. Computers and part of the written by hand and printed papers were taken away. All that stopped the work of the news agency.

On August 18, 2021, the police searched the office of BelaPAN, houses of its journalists. The police took away computers, smartphones, and other things from there. A number of people who worked for BelaPAN were arrested, including editor-in-chief Iryna Levshyna. The websites of BelaPAN (belapan.by and belapan.com) has stopped working since August 18, 2021. Iryna Levshyna, past head Zmicier Navazhilau and accountant Katsyaryna Boeva became persons in a criminal case on organizing actions that attack public order. On August 19, 2021, ten organizations (the Viasna Human Rights Centre, the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and others) made a joint statement. It said that they are political prisoners.

In November 2021, the KGB declared BelaPAN an extremist formation. Creation of such a formation or participation in it is a criminal offence in Belarus, and indeed, Levshyna and Navazhilau were charged with creation of an extremist formation. BelaPAN websites, already blocked in Belarus, have stopped updating.

BelaPAN has received numerous awards, including:

• Dźmitry Zavadski Prize "For Courage and Professionalism" (2004);
• Free Media Award [en] (2005);
• the Runet Prize as the best online Russian language source of news outside Russia (2006);
• Corporate Social Responsibility Award (2016);
• editor-in-chief Iryna Leǔšyna got Journalist of Year award (2018);
• BelaPAN’s Taciana Karaviankova got the Civil Society Champion prize (2018);
• Leader of Consumer Market Award (2019).