This week on Black Diplomats, host Terrell J. Starr welcomes Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach, a media development specialist who has lived and worked all over Europe, but is from Belarus.

There have been nationwide protests in her home country for more than a month at the time of this recording, with the goal of ousting dictator Alexander Lukashenko and establishing a democracy.

“The constitution of Belarus still says there has to be free and fair elections!,” says Sadouskaya-Komlach in the interview. “The constitution of Belarus says that Belarus is a unitary, sovereign, democratic state. So the people came there to defend their constitution. To defend their basic right.”

Maryia’s research interests are democracy transition, human rights, media development in "closed" environments, including exiled media, disinformation, and the development of new communication and media strategies and responses. Being a Belarus native, she has covered the EU-Belarus relations and Belarusian foreign policy since 2001. 

In 2015, Maryia advised the European Endowment for Democracy on its Feasibility Study on Russian-language Media Initiatives. In 2019, she co-wrote a comprehensive analysis of Syrian exiled media for the International Media Support (Denmark). Maryia currently leads the Eurasia team at the Dutch non-for-profit media support organization Free Press Unlimited and contributes as a freelancer to several European media outlets. She looks for synergies between like-minded professionals and organizations all over the globe and specializes in creating and managing networks.

Thank you for listening!