{"id":11181,"date":"2025-09-11T08:20:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T08:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/?p=11181"},"modified":"2025-12-14T10:50:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:50:36","slug":"pavel-mazhejka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2025\/09\/11\/pavel-mazhejka.html","title":{"rendered":"Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka (released on September 11, 2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Political persecution:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka is one of the first political prisoners of the Republic of Belarus, in 2002 he was sentenced to two years of confinement for “slandering the president” in an article in the Pahonia <\/em>newspaper. He served his sentence in \u017d\u0142obin in an open-type correctional facility where he worked at a sawmill.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March 2021, Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka was arrested together with artist Ales Pushkin, who exhibited a portrait of the anti-Soviet saboteur Ja\u016dhien \u017dychar at the Center of Urban Life. On March 26, Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka was summoned to the Hrodna prosecutor’s office for questioning. He did not return home because he was detained. Against Pavie\u0142, together with Ales Pushkin, a criminal case was opened “for intentional actions aimed to restore and justify Nazism.” After 72 hours of detention, Pavie\u0142 was then released as “there were no grounds for detention anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

On May 12, 2021, the Economic Court of the Hrodna area decided to liquidate the Center of Urban Life, which over five years of its existence had hosted multiple exhibitions, concerts, discussions, and book and film presentations.<\/span><\/p>\n

On August 30, 2022, Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka was arrested in Hrodna and taken to a temporary holding facility. On September 2, he was transferred to the pre-trial detention center. This may mean that Pavie\u0142 had been charged.<\/span><\/p>\n

On September 20, 2022, he was recognized as a political prisoner.<\/span><\/p>\n

On July 10, 2023, the trial of Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka and lawyer Julija Jurhilevi\u010d, who was the defender of artist and political prisoner Ales Pushkin, began in the Hrodna Regional Court. At the beginning it was an open court but before the end of the trial court became closed to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka and lawyer Julija Jurhilevi\u010d were tried on the basis of part 2 of Art. 361-4 of the Criminal Code for “promoting extremist activities committed repeatedly by a group of persons based on a previous conspiracy.” They were accused of passing on information to the Belsat television channel, which the authorities recognized as an “extremist organization” on November 3, 2021. According to the case materials, Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka, “in a preliminary collusion with Julija Jurhilevi\u010d,” from February to March 2022, provided Belsat with information about the revocation of her lawyer’s license, exclusion from the Hrodna Regional Bar Association, and Ales Pushkin\u2019s the criminal case.<\/span><\/p>\n

On July 26, 2023, the Hrodna Regional Court sentenced Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka to 6 years in a medium-security penal colony, Julija Jurhilevi\u010d to 6 years in a low-security penal colony.<\/span><\/p>\n

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On November 17, 2023, the Ministry of Internal Affairs included him in the \u201cList of citizens of Belarus, foreign citizens, and stateless persons involved in extremist activities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pavie\u0142 Ma\u017eejka<\/span> was released on September 11, 2025 and forced into exile.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Creative activity:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Head of the cultural space City Life Center in Hrodna, journalist, and coordinator of the publishing initiative City Library, which specialized in publishing books about Hrodna or by authors from the city, publisher.<\/span><\/p>\n

Publications:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Publishing initiative City Library<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Head of the cultural space City Life Center in Hrodna, journalist.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":11182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4310],"class_list":["post-11181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bylyya_lyudzi_slova_u_nyavoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11181"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21358,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11181\/revisions\/21358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}