BelaPAN CEO Ales Lipay Died

(UPDATED) He was 52 years old.

On August 23, BelaPAN founder Ales Lipay died unexpectedly at 52 in Minsk, naviny.by reports.

According to Radio Liberty, Ales Lipay was struggling with a serious illness.

The funeral will take place on Sunday, August 26 in Rudzensk.

Ales Lipay was the founder and CEO of the BelaPAN new agency, the oldest independent informational agency in Belarus, which works since 1991. He was a member of the Union of Belarusian Writers and the Belarusian PEN Center. His first book of poetry, "Under the Snow" was published in 2000. In 2007, the collection of poetry called “The Remnant” came out to the print.

Ales Lipay was born in 1966 in the village of Androsaushchyna, Kopyl district. In 1988, while studying at the Faculty of Journalism of the BSU, he was prosecuted for participating in the manufacture of underground wall newspapers "Lirnyk". In late 80s, Ales was a participant of the "Zdeshniye" Young Writers Society. In 1988, he became the first reporter of Radio Liberty in Belarus.

In 1991, Ales Lipay worked in the newspaper "Znamya Yunosti", where he was in charge for the Belarusian-language page "The Genitive". He is the author of the written translation into Russian of the treaty on the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Belarus. In the early 1990s, he organized transportation to Belarus more than a thousand books published by the Belarusian diaspora in Germany, and distributed them to schools and libraries. In June 1996, during the operation to free the children taken hostage by terrorists in a kindergarten in Minsk, he was interviewing the terrorist, thereby diverting his attention on himself.

In 2004, BelaPAN headed by Lipay was honoured the Dzmirty Zavadzki Award "For courage and professionalism" as a "proof of impeccable reputation of BelaPAN and the recognition of the high professionalism of its journalists."

In 2005, BelaPAN was named winner of the award named after Gerd Bucerius "Young Press of the Eastern Europe".

In 2006, BelaPAN and online newspaper Naviny.by received the "Runet Award" - in the nomination of Runet outside Ru.

The editorial staff of Charter97.org expresses condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Ales Lipay.