As of\u00a015 March 2025, at least 168 cultural figures, including not less than 36\u00a0writers, were not free \u2013 imprisoned or in home confinement.<\/b><\/p>\n
The trial has begun in the criminal case of journalist and writer<\/span> Palina Pitkievi\u010d.<\/b><\/p>\n The court has paused the criminal trial of journalist and non-fiction author <\/span>Ihar Ilja\u0161<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n Political prisoner <\/span>Ihar Ilja\u0161<\/b> cannot correspond with his wife, political prisoner <\/span>Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachva\u0142ava)<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n History books about World War II\u2014<\/span>Blood and Ashes of Dra\u017ena: Stories of a Partisan Crime<\/i><\/b>, <\/span>Partisans of the USSR: From Myths to Reality<\/i><\/b>, and <\/span>Soviet Partisans: Myths and Reality<\/i><\/b>\u2014have been declared “extremist”.<\/span><\/p>\n Prosecutors explain why the documentary film <\/span>The Forest<\/i><\/b>, dedicated to Stalinist repressions, was labelled “extremist”.<\/span><\/p>\n The Belarusian Bestiary<\/strong><\/em> exhibition in the <\/span>Mastactva<\/span><\/i> gallery in Minsk was closed after pro-government activists complained.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>1.<\/strong> On 7 March, the Minsk City Court launched the criminal trial of journalist and writer <\/span>Palina Pitkievi\u010d<\/b> on charges of participating in an extremist formation under Part 3 of Article 361-1 of the Criminal Code. The State Security Committee (KGB) considers her linked to the “extremist formation” MediaIQ, a Press Club Belarus project that promotes media literacy.\u00a0Palina Pitkievi\u010d wrote journalistic articles on cultural topics and performed as an actress at the Social Theatre Laboratory in Minsk. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism, specializing in creative writing. In 2020, she took third place in the “Nieba z saboju”\u00a0literary competition organized by PEN Belarus as part of the U\u0142adzimir Karatkievi\u010d Traveling Festival.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>2.<\/strong> On 12 March, it became known that the Minsk City Court had paused the criminal trial of journalist and non-fiction author <\/span>Ihar Ilja\u0161<\/b>. Journalist <\/span>Siarhiej Vahana\u016d<\/b>, the grandfather of <\/span>Ilja\u0161’s <\/span>wife, political prisoner <\/span>Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachva\u0142ava), <\/b>wrote on Facebook<\/span>: <\/span>“A break has now been announced because, at the request of the state prosecutor, the court has sent Ihar’s analytical publications in the media to an expert from an extrajudicial expert organization, Professor, Doctor of Philology, and Head of the Department at the Faculty of Philology at BSU, S. I. Lebiadzinski. However, Ihar and his lawyer had petitioned for an expert review at the State Center for Forensic Examinations, but the court denied their request. As a result, the court and all of us are now awaiting the results of the expert review.” <\/span><\/i>News of Ihar Ilja\u0161’s arrest first surfaced on 22 October 2024. Ihar Ilja\u0161 is a journalist who, along with his wife, journalist\u00a0<\/span>Kaciaryna Andrejeva (Bachva\u0142ava)\u00a0<\/b>(currently a political prisoner), co-authored the book\u00a0<\/span>Belarusian Donbas<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2020) about Belarusians’ participation in the war in eastern Ukraine. In March 2021, a court declared the book “extremist.”<\/span><\/p>\n Journalist <\/span>Siarhiej Vahana\u016d<\/b>, the grandfather of <\/span>Ihar Ilja\u0161’s<\/b> wife, political prisoner, journalist, and writer <\/span>Kaciaryna Andrejeva<\/span>, wrote about <\/span>Ihar Ilja\u0161’s<\/span> condition behind bars: <\/span>“The only thing that upsets him is the inability to correspond directly with Kacia, who has already been held for five years in Homiel Penal Colony No. 4. His only attempt to send her a letter ended with its return, even though Ihar had been told beforehand that there was no official ban on correspondence between prisoners.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n On 6 March, Minsk’s Central District Court designated history books about World War II \u2014<\/span>Blood and Ashes of Dra\u017ena: Stories of a Partisan Crime<\/i><\/b>, <\/span>Partisans of the USSR: From Myths to Reality<\/i><\/b>, and <\/span>Soviet Partisans: Myths and Reality <\/i><\/b>\u2014as “extremist”.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>1.<\/strong> On 5 March, representatives of the Homiel Regional Prosecutor’s Office explained why the documentary film <\/span>The Forest<\/i><\/b>, dedicated to Stalinist repressions, was declared “extremist”. The movie that ended up on the “extremist list” in January 2025 tells the story of Stalinist repressions in the Homiel region. Janka Kupa\u0142a Theatre actor Aleh Harbuz played the role of a survivor of execution. According to prosecutors, the filmmakers “categorically denied the results of the criminal investigation into the genocide of the Belarusian people.” <\/span>“In particular, they denied the fact that the human remains discovered by the investigative team of the General Prosecutor’s Office during fieldwork belonged to victims executed by the Nazis during the war. In the video, so-called ‘expert historians’ claimed that the remains found at the burial site belonged to people repressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s,”<\/span><\/i> said the head of the General Prosecutor’s Office’s department.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>2.<\/strong> On 13 March, the exhibition <\/span>“Belarusian Bestiary”<\/b> in the Mastactva gallery in Minsk was closed. <\/span>“Friends! Due to reasons beyond our control, the ‘Belarusian Bestiary’ exhibition has been closed. There will be no more guided tours,”<\/span><\/i> the exhibition organizers announced on Instagram. <\/span>Belarusian Bestiary<\/span><\/i> opened in the Mastactva gallery on 11 March and was initially planned to run until 22 March. The state newspaper <\/span>Zviazda<\/span><\/i> covered the exhibition’s opening. However, on the second day, criticism of the exhibition emerged from pro-government artists Sviat\u0142ana \u017dyhimont and Alaksandr P\u0142avinski and pro-Russian activist Volha Bondarava.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of\u00a015 March 2025, at least 168 cultural figures, including not less than 36\u00a0writers, were not free \u2013 imprisoned or in home confinement. The trial has begun in the criminal case of journalist and writer Palina Pitkievi\u010d. The court has paused the criminal trial of journalist and non-fiction author Ihar Ilja\u0161. Political prisoner Ihar Ilja\u0161<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":18641,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4255],"tags":[4291,4285],"class_list":["post-18602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultural-right","tag-chronicle","tag-hronika"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18602"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18643,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18602\/revisions\/18643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/b>\u0406. Criminal prosecution of cultural figures, authors, and performers<\/b><\/h5>\n
\u0406\u0406. Conditions in the places of incarceration<\/b><\/h5>\n
III. Repressions in the book sector<\/b><\/h5>\n
IV. <\/b>Censorship\u00a0<\/b><\/h5>\n