Charter97.org website needs help

Charter97.org website can stop work any time soon.

After the editorial office of our website in Minsk was raided on the night of December 19, we were forced to leave Belarus. The KGB has confiscated our equipment. The chief editor of the website Natallya Radzina was arrested and is accused in the so-called criminal case on “mass riots”. Natallya faces up to 15 years of imprisonment, and she is deprived a possibility of working as a journalist productively.

At the moment the editorial office is situated in Vilnius and continues its work. The help which our friends have offered to us, would give us a possibility to work for a few next weeks, and then we would have to stop full-scale work.

Our project is not one or two persons. For meaningful, professional work of a news website which is large according to Belarusian standards, editors, administrators, translators, journalists are needed, as well as a place of work, communication payments, rent of a powerful server. It is impossible to organize at one’s own expense and due to one’s enthusiasm. Take my word for it, for their dedicated service our workers are paid money which is moderate even according to Belarusian standards.

We will do everything in power to preserve the leading Belarusian independent news website and we will remain the voice of the Belarusians, including those who are staying in the KGB torture chambers. We plan to cover part of expenses by advertising and due to own funds; we are in the process of negotiations with European donors. However time is needed in order to restructure the work.

We have to refer you, our readers, for help. In order to preserve the editorial office in this time of trouble, we need money. We ask you to support us and transfer any reasonable sum to the PayPal account. A special button is situated on the top of the right column. Uninterrupted operation of our website would be a guarantee of spending the funds as per their intended purpose.

We are thankful for your help and support in advance! Stay with us!

A note:

Charter97.org is a leading news website in Belarus. News items are posted in three languages: Belarusian, Russian and English. The site is visited by more than 50,000 unique visitors daily, and the monthly number of visitors is 500,000. The website was launched by Aleh Bybenin, a journalist, in 1998.