TALLINN, Estonia, April 20, (AP): Journalist Ksenia Lutskina served only half of her eight-year prison sentence in Belarus after being convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government. She was pardoned after she kept fainting in her cell from a brain tumor diagnosed during pretrial detention. "I was literally brought to the penal colony in a wheelchair, and I realized that journalism has really turned into a life-threatening profession in Belarus,” she told The Associated Press in Vilnius, Lithuania, where she lives.

Lutskina was one of dozens of journalists imprisoned in Belarus, where many face beatings, poor medical care and the inability to contact lawyers or relatives, according to activists and former inmates. She compared the prisons to those from the Soviet era. The group Reporters Without Borders says Belarus is Europe’s leading jailer of journalists.

At least 40 are serving long prison sentences, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists. Lutskina had quit her job making documentaries for Belarus' state broadcaster in 2020 when mass protests broke out after an election - widely denounced as fraudulent - kept authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in power.

Trying to set up an alternative TV channel to fact-check government officials, she was arrested that year, put on trial and later convicted. Other journalists fled the country of 9.5 million and operate from abroad. But many have had to curtail their work after US President Donald Trump's administration cut off foreign aid, a vital source of funding for many independent media.

"Journalists are forced to face not only repressions within the country, but also the sudden withdrawal of U.S. aid, which puts many editorial offices on the brink of survival,” BAJ chair Andrei Bastunets told AP. Lukashenko's brutal crackdown after the disputed election led to over 65,000 arrests between 2020-25. Thousands told of being beaten by police, opposition figures were jailed or forced into exile, and hundreds of thousands fled abroad in fear.

More than 1,200 people behind bars in the nation of 9.5 million are recognized as political prisoners by Belarus' leading rights group, Viasna. Its founder, Nobel Prize Peace laureate Ales Bialiatski, is among them. Independent journalists have been swept up too, with outlets closed or outlawed. Lukashenko, in power for over three decades, routinely calls them "enemies of our state,” and vows that those who fled won't be allowed to return.