OverviewFinalistsJudgesRulesArticlesHow to enterBelarus in Focus 2011Articles30 JanAlexander Tolcinský (Czech Republic) 
Czech Radio, July 3, 2012 Maybe you know the joke, maybe not. It’s basically as follows: Two Belarusians meet. One says: “What do you think? Will Lukashenko run for president again?” “Definitely not,” replies the other. “What do you mean?” asks the first. “His coronation is next week,” finishes the other. 28 JanIhar Tsikhanenka (Belarus) 
Voice of America, May 5, 2012 Senator McCain, a few days ago, you came back from Vilnius, where you took part in the Parliamentary Forum for Democracies. Could you explain what kind of political venue was that?
28 JanIhar Tsikhanenka (Belarus)
Voice of America, November 28, 2011Punishment without crime: two young men can be executed without being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt 28 JanAnnabelle Chapman (United Kingdom) 
New Eastern Europe, August 10, 2012 Evening. A leafy Oxford suburb in early summer. I take my place in the theatre amid academics and indefinite Russophiles, knowing that as soon as the lights dim, I will be transported far away. This is Minsk 2011, performed by the legendary Belarus Free Theatre. 28 JanAnna Prazhina (Russia) 
Afisha-Mir (Mir travel magazine), November 1, 2012 “You go past the direction sign to Polatsk, then past Hlybokaje, turn right off the main road at the sign Valki, and after the Paryzh sign go up the hill to your right. There you’ll see our khutor Wolk”. Those were the directions given to me by Evgeniy. 28 JanAnnabelle Chapman (United Kingdom)
New Eastern Europe, December 24, 2011 One year has passed since Belarus’s latest Presidential election. On 19 December 2010, Alexander Lukashenko was reelected in a rigged contest and the resulting protests repressed with unprecedented brutality. These events are revisited in a new documentary film, Belarusian Dream
28 JanSara Bicchierini (Italy) 
Io donna, November 19, 2011The journalist Natalya experienced jail. Vera, the lawyer, had to leave her son. Now they live in exile, but they keep on fighting for their country. Without freedom. 28 JanKatarzyna Kwiatkowska (Poland) 
Polityka, July 24, 2012 Foreign PR advisors insisted that his son should have warmed the Belarusian dictator’s image. Alexander Lukashenka took their advice to heart, yet, as usual, he overdid it
24 JanDaniela Araya (Costa Rica) 
CRhoy.com Newspaper, February 23, 2012 They are hungry of freedom, justice does not satisfy, hunger and thirst that steal their breath and condemned them to suffer torture and physical punishments. They are people who have opted to hold their hunger to tell the world they are political prisoners and they do not have freedom on behalf of their ideological choices. Political prisoners, birds jailed by governments.
24 JanDaniela Araya (Costa Rica)
CRhoy.com Newspaper, March 25, 2012 Capital punishment exists in many countries all over the world, where they execute the lives of criminals but, also some innocents whose cases have landed in the hands of the executioner. In these cases there is no going back, to those dead there is no return to life and to those condemned to death, who might restore them their lives?
24 JanLaurent Vinatier (France) 
Global Journal, December 28, 2012 Aleksandr Lukashenko is resilient. The President of Belarus has stood firm against the European Union (EU) and its renewed political and economic sanctions in response to his increasingly autocratic rule. In six months, he has freed two political prisoners while a dozen remain in custody. On September 23, nationwide parliamentary elections ran smoothly in an atmosphere of total indifference from the great majority of the population. Russia, for its part, supports Belarus with financial subsidies, ready to buy out everything possible at discounted prices. 22 JanDavid Erkomaishvili (Uzbekistan) 
The Point Journal, August 3, 2012 Belarus is no stranger when it comes to hurdle in relations with Russia, however, this is not the only resemblance in Belarus-Georgia nexus which steadily develops.
22 JanDavid Erkomaishvili (Uzbekistan)
The Point Journal, January 17, 2012 Ukraine is trying to avoid following the Belarusian model of post-Soviet alignment which offers deep integration only with Russia. Unlike his Ukrainian colleagues, Aliaksandr Lukashenka has not managed to diversify his country’s alliance choices.
22 JanLukasz Jasina, Tomasz Zawisko (Poland)
Liberal Culture, June 19, 2012 We would easily win against Lukashenko if he were not in our heads. Lukasz Jasina and Tomasz Zawisko talk to Aleksander Milinkevich 22 JanDmitry Bobrovsky (Belarus)
Tatarstan, December 22, 2012Each state has its own image. But not all countries have an image that has been purposefully formed, and which works on the economy of a state. 21 JanNatalia Antelava (Georgia) 
BBC, October 22, 2012 The question came out of nowhere - and it caught the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, off guard. "So, what’s your opinion on group sex?" asked Evgeny Lebedev, Britain’s youngest newspaper proprietor, who had flown to Minsk to interview the Belarusian leader.
21 JanDaniela Araya (Costa Rica)
América Economía Newspaper, October 23, 2012Although the real tourists that visit Minsk are few, those who do visit find an interesting space; frozen in time, imposing and even mythological, the streets of the Belarusian capital are a living museum. 21 JanIrina Peredriy (Belarus)
Belarus Project, December 13, 2012 This Belarus emigration joke on Facebook regularly collects hundreds of “likes” and “shares” on the Belarusian internet. This humour is based on the new Belarusian dream. 21 JanIrina Peredriy (Belarus)
Belarus Project, November 15, 2012The Bologna Process is an educational reform and series of agreements between European countries that aims to create a united European Higher Education Area. The main advantages of this system are the establishment a common basis for higher education, and the consequent possibility to move from one country to another for studying or working. The Bologna Declaration was signed in 1999 by 29 European countries. Today 47 countries are involved in Bologna Process; but there is a blank spot on the European educational map – it’s Belarus.
21 JanIrina Peredriy (Belarus)
Belarus Project, December 20, 2012 The first part of our article - “Here You Don’t Feel Isolated in the Way You Do in Belarus” - focused on people that went away from Belarus and stayed abroad for different reasons. But there are quite a lot of young people who are sure that Belarus is still the best place to live. So here we offer your attention three stories of young people who think that coming back was the only right choice. 21 JanDmitry Bobrovsky (Belarus)
Tatarstan.com, December 10, 2012The process of merging the Russian KAMAZ and the Belarusian MAZ drags on. Officials of two countries constantly declare that they are close to reaching agreement about a project to create an automobile holding called "Rosbelavto". The day before, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, declared that the final agreement on all disputed issues will take a while. It is not out of the question that the association may not happen at all.
16 JanLukasz Grajewski (Poland)
Eastbook.eu, January 16, 2012 There is a place in Belarus where a spokesperson of the government talks with an oppositional journalist and Minsk authorities debate with citizens about upcoming demonstrations. Belarusian freedom of speech is flourishing in the Internet
16 JanLukasz Grajewski (Poland)
Eastbook.eu, February 7, 2012 We seldom have a reason for praising Belarusian authorities here on Eastook.eu. Usually, they just give us none. However, actions of the Belarusian Ministry of Culture within the framework of the “Castles of Belarus” programme are noteworthy.
16 JanLukasz Grajewski (Poland)
Eastbook.eu, July 6, 2012 The Minsk airport is to be rebuilt – the planned extensions include a new runway, a terminal and a hotel. Costs of the investment will be covered by a loan from China. This is how the Chinese investment expansion in Belarus begins.
16 JanG.C. (United Kingdom)
The Economist (blog), April 17, 2012 The title is ponderous but the idea is exciting. On April 16th Poland launched the first seminar in a series entitled "The European Dialogue on Modernisation with Belarusian Society". This is a new European Union initiative to try to engage business and other non-government elements to ponder what Belarus might look like if Aleksandr Lukashenko [Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarusian] left power or (even less likely) saw the light of liberalism and agreed to radical change.
16 JanDarya Firsava (Belarus)
Belarus Digest, December 11, 2012 The number of cases of parents being deprived of their parental rights in Belarus is very high compared to other European countries.
16 JanDarya Firsava (Belarus)
Belarus Digest, August 16, 2012 The 2012 university admissions campaign in Belarus has just finished and reflects a very interesting trend. However good Belarusian higher education is for engineers, physicists, and mathematicians, that does not seem to matter to young people anymore. They want to become programmers 15 JanHanna Farhana Fauzie (Indonesia) 
Seputar Indonesia, December 29, 2012 What crosses your mind when you hear about Belarus? For sport freaks, the country beauty Victoria Azarenka or the former Barcelona ace Aliaksandr Hleb, may be the reply.
15 JanMichal Potocki (Poland)
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, November 15, 2012 The Polish Border Guard fell victim to the cold war between the West and Belarus. The authorities in Minsk deliberately close their eyes to illegal immigrants, who make their way towards Poland and further to the West. 14 JanMichal Potocki (Poland)
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, September 28, 2012 Behind our eastern border not one, but three Belaruses exist. One lives under the white-red-white flag and the Pahonia as the coat of arms. Over the heads of the other one flows the red-green flag, not much different from the one from the Soviet era. The third, and the biggest, has no flag and no coat of arms. It only has a slogan: ‘leave us alone.’ Both the other Belaruses are trying to win this silent majority. Each one of them is afraid of the other two.
14 JanMichal Potocki (Poland)
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, December 21, 2011 A year after the presidential elections in Belarus, during which Alaksandar Lukashenka pacified the opposition, the EU sanctions against Minsk remain fiction. The regime has serious economic problems, but the West helps it to endure, widely opening its markets for Belarusian goods. 14 JanMarek Zambrzycki (Poland)
Portal Geopolityka.org, December 29, 2012 The present, post-soviet Belarus is a country, whose system is based on the inelastic and inefficient planned economy, which represents antinomy of the market. It also provokes economic depressions on a regular basis.
14 JanMarta Palombo (Italy)
Belarus Project, January 19, 2012 How interesting is Belarus for Europeans? This was the question held in mind by a group of students of European Affairs in Sciences Po Paris, who have been conducting for already three months a project dedicated to Belarus, “Belarus Project”. To find the answer to this question, they have interviewed about 233 young, and not so, people from Europe and from all over the world. 14 JanMarta Palombo (Italy)
Belarus Project, December 11, 2011Belarus could have a lot more in common with Asia than we think. 14 JanArtyom Pugachev (Belarus)
Belarus Project, October 27, 2012 National identity and independence are very popular topics in Europe. The 19th century ideas of nationhood gave space to the vocal calls for independence coming from strong national regions such as Catalonia, Scotland and others. Today, as in the past it is for the strong nation to “demand” independence, though not in case of Belarus. 14 JanArtyom Pugachev (Belarus)
Nouvelle Europe, January 9, 2012 After the fall of the Soviet Union, populism emerged in the Belarusian political context as an effective instrument to come to power and to retain it. A democratically elected president, Alexander Lukashenko, has been governing since 1994; his unique leadership style continuously attracts the attention of the international community, not least because of its populist character. 14 JanMarta Palombo (Italy)
Belarus Project, December 4, 2011It is commonly believed that the term Belarus – also because of its former name, “Belorussia” – comes from “bielyi", meaning white, and “Rus", meaning Russian. Well, if the intuition is correct for “white”, the issue with “Rus” is actually more complicated. Let’s see together why. 14 JanJames Kirchick (United States) 
Ha'aretz, March 9, 2012 The next time the Foreign Ministry decries Israel’s increasing isolation, perhaps it should reconsider its official position that Andrei Sannikov does not exist
14 JanNadine Lashuk (Germany) 
Belarus Digest, March 8, 2012 On 8 March, Belarusians celebrate International Women’s Day. In the tradition of the Soviet Union, there is no special day for lovers such as Valentine’s Day, but men and women have separate holidays. This is the time to look at the relations between men and women in Belarus. Although both are equal in front of the law, in reality, women are not as equal as men.
14 JanNadine Lashuk (Germany)
Belarus Digest, February 3, 2012 Although prices in Belarus are as high as in any European country, salaries are very low. The average monthly income is around USD 200, but people still manage to buy food, flats and smart phones. How is it possible to make ends meet with such a low income?
14 JanNadine Lashuk (Germany)
Belarus Digest, April 18, 2012 The argument for loosening the visa regime for Belarusian citizen is that people to people contacts must improve. At a time when the official diplomatic relations are at an all-time low, it seems that the exchange between ordinary people offers a glimpse of hope. It might prevent the Belarusian citizen from total isolation. However, looking at the German-Belarusian informal relations, it gets clear that it may not work. Here is why.
11 JanMatthew Day (United Kingdom)
The Scotsman, December 21, 2012The authoritarian president of Belarus has praised his regime’s secret police as representing the “best traditions” of the Cheka, the feared forerunner of Soviet Russia’s KGB.
11 JanAndrzej Tichomirow (Belarus)
Belarusian Review, November 28, 2012 The First Congress, held last year, was a very interesting place for exchanging ideas and experience among various researchers in the humanities engaged in Belarusian problems. 7 JanHoria-Victor Lefter (Romania) 
New Eastern Europe, October 1, 2012Belarus, a country located in the centre of Europe, has been giving the impression of examining the question of the alternatives between the European Union and the Russian Federation. Does the average Belarusian feel they have to make this choice? 7 JanHoria-Victor Lefter (Romania)
New Eastern Europe, February 29, 2012 After the December 2010 elections and the repression that followed, Belarus and the European Union have fallen once more out of love. In this context of isolation, questions are raised whether the European Union has defined the best strategy towards Belarus. Far from reaching a consensus among the EU’s member countries, western Europe seems to have the most ambiguous position 7 JanJan-Henry Wanink (Germany)
Grafschafter Nachrichten, December 1, 2012 Aid projects for the victims of Chernobyl, that is the first image many inhabitants of the German County of Bentheim have when they think of Belarus, or White Russia. 7 JanOlga Polevikova (Belarus)
Eastbook.eu, December 27, 2012 Her name is Vivienne Long. She is a 32-year old Irishwoman who has spent last 10 years in a small Belarusian town of Cherven’ taking care of local children with mental disabilities. Here, in the backwoods of Europe, she found her love – a local girl Natallia – and experienced a real life. Sounds like a new TV series for teenagers? Just the ways of God 60 km from Minsk 23 DecLinas Jegelevicius (Lithuania) 
The Baltic Times, December 20, 2012 If on a weekend you were to take a closer look at the cars in the vast parking lots at Vilnius Akropolis, the Lithuanian capital’s largest mall, you’ll see that nearly every fifth vehicle - mostly luxurious BMW, Mercedes and Lexus SUVs - carries a red-green-and-ornamented-strip license plate, attributing the vehicle to Belarus. The well-to-do Belarusians’ invasion to the main Vilnius mall has been surging exponentially, competing in growth only with the Russians.
19 DecHanna Vasilevich (Belarus)
Belarusian Review, October 26, 2012 Belarus can hardly be described as a country which attracts much attention from international scholars and analysts. 19 DecKiryl Kascian (Belarus)
Belarusian Review, July 3, 2012 I remember a math problem from my school years: how much time would it take Z to get from point A to point C, traveling through point B? This was quite a simple task, but one has to correctly consider the conditions given in order to get the proper answer. 19 DecDavid Erkomaishvili (Uzbekistan)
Belarusian Review, May 7, 2012 Recent IISEPS poll results have become the bottom line for the editorial by Kiryl Kascian published in Belarusian Review lately. According to the poll, 47% of respondents in mid-2011 would have preferred Belarus’ integration with the EU as their main foreign policy choice, while only 31% of those questioned favoured integration with Russia. 19 DecG.C. (United Kingdom)
The Economist (blog), March 29, 2012 MIKHAIL GULIN is fretting over a provocative drawing of his that features prominently in a Polish catalogue: "I hope it doesn’t get me in trouble!" he half-jokes.
12 DecLaurent Vinatier (France)
Global Voice, December 20, 2011It has been one year since the last Presidential election, with its massive fraud, vote-rigging and harsh crackdown against opposition political and civil figures, including, of course, all the inconvenient Presidential candidates. 7 DecAndrej Dynko (Belarus)
New York Times, July 16, 2012LATE last month Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist in Belarus, was indicted on a charge of libel against the country’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, after publishing a series of articles that questioned the execution of two men convicted of bombing a Minsk subway station. 3 DecAndrew Connelly (United Kingdom)
Cafe Babel European Magazine, October 10, 2012 In 2002, Belarus introduced new legislation on religious affairs. Amidst the complex and byzantine instructions, one message was clear – state permission is required to practice religious ceremonies in non-religious buildings. For protestants, who historically have fewer traditional churches, this put them directly in the firing line of the government. Ten years on, how are the conditions of religious freedoms in Minsk under president Lukashenko, self-confessed ‘orthodox atheist’? 15 NovShaun Walker (United Kingdom)
The Independent, December 1, 2011Their trial for a subway bombing in Belarus raised as many questions as answers. But, amid claims of false confessions and to cries of disgust, two friends have been sentenced to death 15 NovShaun Walker (United Kingdom)
The Independent, December 2, 2011 There is only one person who can stop the execution of Lyubov Kovalyova’s 25-year-old son, Vladislav. Unfortunately for her, it is Alexander Lukashenko, the ruthless dictator who has ruled Belarus since 1994. He is not known for his compassion. 14 NovArgemino Barro García (Spain) 
Cafe Babel European Magazine, October 12, 2012 As if getting hold of sources, sniffing out lies and earning a pittance didn’t make a journalist’s profession hard enough in Belarus already, imagine also having to give the KGB the slip or going from one court trial to the next in order to carry out your job. For the reporters living in a post-soviet dictatorship that’s all in a day’s work
7 NovNabeelah Shabbir (United Kingdom)
Cafe Babel European Magazine, October 8, 2012 Since independence from the soviet union in 1991, remnants of Belarus’ titular language stay mostly in the cultural sphere, with around 300, 000 speakers in the country. Young musicians, poets and writers, often from the left end of the spectrum, still try to speak Belarusian against the more popular Russian
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