Zhanna from Mazyr worked in Poznań, but returned to Belarus. And she was thrown into a pre-trial detention center for politics

Zhanna was born in 1969 in Murmansk, Russia. She studied at a polygraphic lyceum in Ufa, but most of her life is connected with Mazyr, Belarus. The woman was registered as an individual entrepreneur, was fond of fitness and healthy eating, and also traveled a lot.

In 2023, Serada received an invitation from a Polish company, and since then lived and worked in Poznań.

Plans for a peaceful life abroad were interrupted after returning to Belarus. Zhanna last posted on social networks in December 2025 – soon after, she was arrested.

Recently, Zhanna Serada's case was heard by the Homiel Regional Court. The woman was accused under parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code. For "facilitating extremist activity," she was sentenced to house arrest ("home chemistry").

The Belarusian authorities consider "extremism" to be subscriptions to independent channels, media, the presence of links to them on social networks, or the presence of Belarusian national, pre-Lukashenka symbols on social networks or items. "Extremism" also includes almost any criticism of the authorities, official historical narratives, or expressions of solidarity with Ukraine.

Numerous criminal cases recently brought under the article on "facilitating extremism" were related to the "Hayun case."

"Belaruski Hayun" is an OSINT monitoring project that was created in 2022 when Russia attacked Ukraine through Belarus. The project tracked the military activity of Russian and Belarusian troops, relying on information from Belarusians. Its activities were coordinated by a group of activists led by Anton Matolka.

The "Hayun case" began after security forces detained an activist who had lived underground in Belarus for several years. A link to join the Hayun bot, which she had been sent at the very beginning of the project's existence, was found on her mobile phone. The fatal mistake was that the link was permanent. Therefore, the security forces were able to connect to the bot and download all the information from it. They obtained messages from accounts that wrote to the bot, as well as their IDs and usernames.

The founder of "Hayun," Anton Matolka, immediately after the hack, explained how the information leak occurred and announced the closure of the project.

According to calculations by the "Belpol" association of security forces and human rights activists, the names of 9594 people who fell under politically motivated criminal cases are known. In total, some kind of political repression (criminal cases, administrative cases, dismissals, searches) affected about 500,000 Belarusians. Several hundred thousand people were forced to leave the country.

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