Zhanna Litvina is an award winning Belarusian radio journalist and chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). The association publishes a magazine on the Belarusian media and provides legal aid to journalists and publishers who face an illegal searches, arrests and threats. Litvina has risked her life and livelihood to advocate for freedom of speech for decades, in the face of a Belarusian government that consistently threatens and detains journalists. Before co-founding BAJ, Litvina worked in television and radio for twenty years, and has worked for two radio stations that have since been shut down by state authorities.

About

Litvina was editor-in-chief of the last remaining independent radio outlet in Belarus, Radio 101.2, which was shut down by the government in the early 1990s. She kept the station alive by transmitting from Poland for over four years, commuting between Belarus and Poland.

In 1995, she co-founded the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) in order to fight the arbitrary dismissal of journalists. BAJ has been hailed as the "single most important organization for keeping the world informed about what goes on in Europe's last remaining dictatorship and for keeping Belarus's besieged journalists a bit more sane and safe than they would otherwise be." The association's primary focus is to protect journalists’ rights.

In 2003, BAJ received a Golden Pen Award from the World Association of Newspapers for "courageous resistance to the repression of the media by President Aleksander Lukashenko." In 2004, the European Parliament awarded BAJ the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for acting "as a champion of the independent media."

For her work as chair, Litvina was awarded the Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism in 2004, and the Ebert Foundation on Human Rights Award in 2008. She continues to seek the answer as to how best fight against censorship in today’s Belarus.