Participants came from very different contexts — war and repression — but with a shared motivation: to understand, connect, and act. — Andrei Paluda, Belarusian human rights defender and project coordinator.

Tina Shabunia: Telling the stories that are not seen

Tina Shabunia, a Belarusian journalist now living in Warsaw, is one of the few Belarusian participants of the project who agreed to be public. She came to the project with a desire to learn more for her human rights work, with trust in the organisers, and a deeply personal connection to both repression in Belarus and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Shabunia and her closest family had been in forced exile as a result of the repressions that followed the 2010 elections in Belarus, but her relocation to Poland in turn was connected to Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“My family is split between Belarus and Ukraine,” she says. “I have lost two of my friends in the war, two Russians who volunteered to support Ukraine’s defence. I have a lot of Ukrainian friends, both in Ukraine and here in Warsaw.  For me, this is not abstract.”

She had already been working in human rights and media, focusing on stories of repression, migration, and political prisoners through her own media projects and collaboration with Belarusian media, where she writes under a pseudonym.

For Shabunia, one of the most powerful moments during the programme was seeing how Ukrainian participants reacted to Belarusian experiences.

“We are used to talking about [illegal] arrests, prison, and violence in Belarus,” she explains. “But when colleagues from Ukraine heard these stories, they were shocked.”

“That showed me how important these programmes are — to explain who we really are, and what has actually been happening in our country. We are not the regime, we are not the enemy. And we need to understand each other and cooperate.”

“It is also very important for me to learn from the experience of Ukrainian colleagues. I’ve previously participated in the Donbas Media Forum in Kyiv in 2024 and it was also useful in understanding how to communicate information in temporarily occupied territories. And, of course, this concerns Belarusians directly. 

Although Belarus is not officially recognised as occupied, in many ways it functions that way. It is very similar to what has been happening on Russia’s occupied territories of Ukraine since 2014 — the same internet censorship, and the fact that our people are jailed for likes, comments, and for reading independent press.

The project also reinforced her professional direction: “It didn’t change my path — it confirmed it,” she says. “It showed me how important it is to communicate and counter disinformation.”

During the programme, Shabunia further developed an idea she previously had for a media project focused on challenging propaganda. Soon after, she was able to bring this concept into her work with Belarusian independent media.

At the same time, she continues to navigate complex security realities — working partially under a pseudonym and carefully managing what she shares publicly and where she travels.

Nataliia Chufeshchuk: Feeling ones power

Nataliia Chufeshchuk, a librarian from Ukraine,  joined the project to learn more about the work of human rights defenders through real cases and to choose the direction in which she could contribute. “It turned into a very practical learning experience. I also wanted to meet more people from the human rights sphere and learn from their experience and real life cases.”  Several months after the course she gave this interview upon returning from a war crimes documenting mission – an activity she joined as a volunteer after the project.

One of the first moments that stayed with her was the close interaction with Belarusian participants. “I naturally used to be focused on Ukraine,” Chufeshchuk  admits. “But after speaking with colleagues from Belarus, and hearing some stories, I was shocked at the brutality of the regime in Belarus and their situation. It was a valuable interaction and the first such experience for me.”

Already before the course, Chufeshchuk had been involved in documenting wartime experiences, through interviews with survivors. The nature of information she works with and the non-stop developments lead to exhaustion and doubt. 

“The first story I recorded was about the village of Yahidne. It affected me so deeply that by the end of the interview, I didn’t know who needed calming down more — the interviewee or me.”

Through the Solidarity Force project, Chufeshchuk not only gained knowledge but also a new sense of agency. A key experience was the forum theatre sessions.

I realised that we should not be passive observers… Every situation can be influenced. You can step in and change something.

After the project, she took that insight into practice. Chufeshchuk became active in volunteering for documenting war crimes in frontline regions, travelling to communities affected by occupation and shelling. 

“Preparing for the most recent documenting missions, I was worried, scared — the cities we were about to visit were constantly attacked, but I was so impressed by local people, and how they sustain, despite all the circumstances and danger. It was yet another proof to me that documenting is vital. So that nationally and internationally, everyone knows what is really happening, instead of burying heads in the sand and saying it’s all made up.” 

For Chufeshchuk, documentation is about preserving truth and supporting the survivors.

It is important to document for history, and important for those whose stories we record — so they can see they are not forgotten and that their stories matter to others.

Solidarity Force, a collaborative project organised by the Belarusian Human Rights School and Educational Human Rights House Chernihiv, was implemented within HRHF’s House-to-House (H2H), with financial support from Norway.

H2H supports human rights projects organised collaboratively between two or more Human Rights Houses and their member organisations. In 2025, 22 CSOs from seven countries received support from the H2H Project Fund to implement 11 projects.

Top photo: Solidarity Force project participants. October 2025, Poland.