{"id":583260,"date":"2026-09-29T19:54:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=583260"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:24:16","slug":"former-political-prisoner-and-journalist-andrei-aliaksandrau-receives-free-media-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/former-political-prisoner-and-journalist-andrei-aliaksandrau-receives-free-media-awards","title":{"rendered":"Former Political Prisoner and Journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau Receives Free Media Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Journalist and media manager Andrei Aliaksandrau<\/strong>, who was released on September 16, has received a Free Media Award. The ceremony took place today at the Munch Museum in Oslo.<\/p>\n

Aliaksandrau received the award \u201cfor his courage and commitment to defending press freedom and freedom of expression under an increasingly repressive regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is a varied thing; you just have to keep up with the changes. Two weeks ago, I was assembling wooden crates in Navapolatsk\u2014and now here I am, sitting on the 12th floor of the Munch Museum in Oslo with the Free Media Award 2026 and a wonderful view of the fjord. But my thoughts and emotions are with everyone who stayed behind to assemble those crates, and with those waiting for them to come home. This bird above the fjord is for everyone who refuses to give up\u201d<\/em>, the journalist wrote<\/a> on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Andrei Aliaksandrau was detained in January 2021. In 2022, he was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony on charges of creating an \u201cextremist group,\u201d treason against the state, large-scale tax evasion, and training civilians to participate in riots. On September 16, 2026, Aliaksandrau was released and forcibly taken to Lithuania.<\/p>\n

The Free Media Awards are presented annually by Norway\u2019s Fritt Ord Foundation and Germany\u2019s ZEIT-Stiftung to journalists in Eastern Europe. The awards recognize independent media outlets and journalists in Eastern and Central Europe for their investigative work under extraordinary circumstances.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Andrei Aliaksandrau. Photo from Facebook<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalist and media manager Andrei Aliaksandrau, who was released on September 16, has received a Free Media Award. The ceremony took place today at the Munch Museum in Oslo. Aliaksandrau received the award \u201cfor his courage and commitment to defending press freedom and freedom of expression under an increasingly repressive regime.\u201d \u201cLife is a varied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":583259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6abcab14233b4.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Former Political Prisoner and Journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau Receives Free Media Awards"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338,143127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-society"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583262,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583260\/revisions\/583262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}