Reporters Without Borders ranks Belarus as the worst country for press freedom in Europe. Maria Savushkina, a Belarusian journalist currently living in Berlin, reaches tens of thousands of people back home with her political satire.
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00:00Maria Savushkina is fighting for a free press in her native Belarus.
00:04She has not been able to live and work there for a long time.
00:09We didn't have a free elections campaign, we didn't have media freedom,
00:15so we had time to time we had political prisoners and all this was because we have a
00:25cruel political regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
00:29Based in Berlin, she now produces anti-regime videos that call out state abusers.
00:34Savushkina reaches tens of thousands of people in Belarus with her satire.
00:42In her home country, she was active as a journalist and as a campaigner for human rights.
00:47Over time, that required more and more courage.
00:50I have never had this kind of experience in my life, what I experienced there.
00:56We've been so proud of each other, we've been so brave and we protect each other.
01:05Things got worse in 2020.
01:07There were protests over the allegedly rigged election.
01:10Critical journalists were arrested.
01:12We've been sure that at least some people from our team will be arrested.
01:20In case we will stay inside the country.
01:23And we decided to escape.
01:27First to Ukraine, then to Poland.
01:30Now she lives in Berlin with a colleague.
01:33I met her and she told me about what's happening to her, about her exile.
01:39And press freedom is one of my main issues for decades.
01:43And now we are roommates.
01:46Freedom of the press in Belarus is non-existent.
01:49Even in Berlin, Maria Savushkina has to be careful and must package her content cleverly.
01:55What I'm trying to do is to find new ways to reach young audience, to reach people in Belarus
02:04with news content, but maybe not in format of news, but in format of political satire, for example.
02:13I live here in Germany, in Berlin, but all my thoughts, my home, my family, places I like,
02:23they are in Minsk.
02:26She has one request for Europe and the US.
02:28Don't forget Belarus, where independent journalists are treated like political prisoners.