Natalia Radina is a renowned Belarusian journalist and editor-in-chief of the oldest Belarusian independent news resource, Charter-97. Born in 1979 in Kobrin, Brest Region, Belarus, she studied journalism at the Belarusian State University. She worked for the largest Belarusian independent newspapers, Imya, Svoboda, Narodnaya Volya, and Nasha Svoboda, which were subsequently closed by the authorities. Since 2001, she has been the editor of the Charter-97 website, and since 2010, editor-in-chief. She is also the director of the Karta-97 Foundation (Poland).
In Belarus, she was persecuted for her journalistic activities. After the 2010 presidential elections, she was arrested and placed in a KGB prison. She was charged with "organizing mass riots" and faced up to 15 years in prison. After two months in a KGB detention center, where she was subjected to torture, she spent another two months under a travel restriction, effectively "house arrest." She was banned from living in Minsk and deported to the city of Kobryn. She fled Belarus in April 2011, crossing the border illegally without documents after her passport was confiscated by the KGB. She received political asylum in Lithuania and currently works from Warsaw, Poland. She is a recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists (USA) award for "Courage in the Profession" and the Reporters Without Borders organization. She was awarded a medal from the government of the Belarusian People's Republic.