Newsrooms, in my experience, are often as portrayed in movies. Virtually unbreakable friendships are formed yes as are long-festering and intense hatreds. Underlying these is the fast-moving river of competitiveness that you would toss both friends and enemies into if it means your story makes the front page. They are amazing foundries of creativity but are filled with terror for many fledgling journalists.

So what happens when there is an empty chair in the newsroom? I know from experience that it is heartbreaking. In my case, a colleague was knocked off her bike by a heavy-goods vehicle. She survived with horrific injuries but never made it back to the newsroom.

Reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal have also experienced what losing a colleague feels like. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the arrest of the newspaper’s Russia correspondent Evan Gershkovich. Evan’s colleague Paul Beckett is the WSJ’s assistant editor. He was formerly the Washington bureau chief before stepping down to work on the campaign to free Evan. He has written for us this week to mark the grim anniversary.

As he states, “that’s one year that Evan has been deprived of his basic rights and confined to a cell 23 hours a day, held on a charge of espionage which he, the US government and the Journal vehemently deny. One year that his parents and his sister have been deprived of their son and brother.”

Evan has been made a pawn in a wide geopolitical drama that criss-crosses the globe, but centred on Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. It is something we know about at Index on Censorship too.

A decade ago, we welcomed Andrei Aliaksandrau to the organisation as a journalist covering the news relating to media freedom and freedom of expression in his native country Belarus and neighbouring countries. He was a lively personality, full of humour and a passion for both whisky and Liverpool FC. He later worked for other organisations such as Article 19 before returning home, where he continued to freelance for Index.

In January 2021, Andrei and his then fiancé Irina Zlobina were arrested, accused of helping fund protests in Minsk following the disputed re-election of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. He was also accused of tax evasion and creating or participating in an extremist organisation – the BelaPAN news agency. High treason was added to the charge sheet later.

On 6 October 2022, Andrei was sentenced to 14 years in prison and Irina to nine years. The now married couple are working out their sentences in different penal colonies in Belarus. Their appeals against these shameful sentences were turned down in early 2023.

Journalists should never be used as pawns in political chess. Yet increasingly they are – from the streets of Trump’s USA to Gaza, from China to the former Soviet Union.  Unfortunately, the world’s leaders, even the supposedly democratic ones, recognise the power of the written word and are bent on silencing them.

As a result, there will be yet more empty chairs. It is our duty not to forget them. Even better if we can see these people return to their desks.

Mark Frary, associate editor