Nikolai Khalezin

Nikolai Khalezin was first a journalist, and later a playwright. He led edited the newspapers Name and News in the 1990s, both of which were closed by the government. He then organized mass pro-democracy protests in Belarus, including the "Freedom March" in 2005. Khalezin was arrested in 1998, 1999 and 2002. He began writing plays in 2004, now 12 in all. In 2005 he founded the Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) which had positioned itself as an underground group that used artistic means to protest the increasingly repressive rule of President Alexander Lukashenka.

BFT members have been fired from their state-controlled jobs, expelled from universities, beaten, and arbitrarily arrested. In August 2007, the entire BFT company, as well as the audience watching the show, was arbitrarily detained. In May 2009, unidentified assailants beat Khalezin and his father-in-law in the courtyard of their apartment building, a crime that was not investigated by the police. The apartment of his father was raided multiple times by KGB officers who were looking for Khalezin and his wife. Staging of his plays is not allowed in Belarus.