Young blogger mobilises protest against Belarus dictator
29 August, 2020
A fresh-faced 22-year-old blogger is using only his keyboard to perform the primary communications hub for protesters in Belarus because they mount an unprecedented challenge to the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, often dubbed Europe's last dictator.
Stepan Svetlov may be the founder of NEXTA Live, a Telegram channel with 2.1 million subscribers that helps mobilise protesters and shares photo and video content from the demonstrations.
"It began as a school project," Svetlov told AFP in an interview in the Polish capital Warsaw where he has been residing in exile under police protection after having received death threats.
'A mark of respect'
Svetlov originally setup NEXTA Live in 2015 as a YouTube channel for sharing funny, satirical music videos about Belarus and President Lukashenko, who has ruled with a heavy hand since 1994.
NEXTA this means "somebody" in Belarusian, commenced putting out weekly video news videos in 2017 that got thousands of views.
The switch to Telegram -- a messaging iphone app employed by protest movements worldwide as a result of its strong encryption and anonymity -- came in 2018 when police raided Svetlov's house in Belarus.
"It had been the first sign that the authorities appreciated my work. Such as a mark of respect," said a self-assured Svetlov, whose father is a journalist at the Belarusian channel Belsat, also located in and backed by Poland.
Protesters 'not alone'
The charge of organising mass unrest that NEXTA is currently being investigated in Belarus posesses prison sentence as high as 15 years.
"Of course it's not true. We wish exclusively peaceful protests.... It had been the authorities that started beating, shooting, using water cannons."
But Svetlov admits that NEXTA has a role in co-ordinating the current protests since "nobody except us can do this since they would be immediately detained and arrested".
"Despite the fact that we are 500 kilometres from the border, we do not stop being citizens of Belarus who would like to have their own role, their own contribution in bringing about change," he said.
"Nexta and other Telegram channels play an essential role in bringing people together. People can see that they are not by yourself," he said.
At the peak of the protests following the disputed August 9 election, Svetlov said NEXTA was obtaining around 200 messages one minute.
The quantity of information -- some 100,000 messages a day -- meant the team of four people focusing on NEXTA had to focus on photography and video content, which Svetlov said was much easier to verify.
The channel uses other kinds of verification such as requesting pictures of ID documents or using multiple unconnected sources but Svetlov said trusted, regular sources will be the best.
Valery Karbalevich, an analyst from Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, said NEXTA played a "crucial role" in the logistics of protests such as giving timings and meeting places.
"All of the once popular bloggers in Belarus have been in prison for a while and only a Telegram channel operating from abroad is able to co-ordinate the demonstrations," he said.
Independent analyst Vladimir Matskevich agrees, describing NEXTA Live as having "the most influence and largest audience" with regards to the ongoing wave of protests.
'Our deepest hope'
The channel is currently planning for a major expansion.
"We are looking for at least eight persons to deal with the number of information we are receiving," Svetlov said, outlining plans for a video editing studio and more content on events in Russia and Ukraine.
"We want to expand to a Russian-speaking audience more fully," he said, pointing to surveys of the channel's subscribers that showed 40 percent of them were from countries outside Belarus -- mainly in Russia and Ukraine.
NEXTA can be looking for more funding sources.
Svetlov said that prior to the protests the channel was financed solely through ad earnings but this would not be adequate for the expansion.
Asked for his prediction for the future of Belarus, he said he hoped his homeland would become "a standard democratic European country".
"Protests will continue before people win."
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