As of\u00a015 April 2025, at least 165 cultural figures, including not less than 36\u00a0writers, were not free \u2013 imprisoned or in home confinement.<\/b><\/p>\n
Miko\u0142a Dziadok, <\/b>an activist of the anarchist movement, author of prison literature, and laureate of the Franci\u0161ak Alachnovi\u010d Award, was not released as scheduled.<\/span><\/p>\n Writer and journalist <\/span>Anatol Sanacienka <\/b>was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest.<\/span><\/p>\n The Ministry of Information has expanded the list of banned publications, adding 27 new titles, including world literature bestsellers from the 20th and 21st centuries. The list now includes 92 books deemed to \u201ccontain content capable of harming the national interests of the Republic of Belarus\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The following books were labelled \u201cextremist\u201d: <\/span>Guidebook for Belarusian Journalists<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Przemys\u0142aw Fenrych<\/b> and <\/span>Vincuk Via\u010dorka<\/b> and <\/span>Belarus at the Breaking Point<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Jaras\u0142a\u016d Raman\u010duk<\/b> and <\/span>Leanid Zaika<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n In the Mahilo\u016d penal colony, political prisoners are informally forbidden from studying Polish, Czech, Latvian, and Ukrainian languages.<\/span><\/p>\n On 4 April, <\/span>Miko\u0142a Dziadok<\/b>, an anarchist movement activist, author of prison literature, and winner of the Franci\u0161ak Alachnovi\u010d Literary Award for his 2017 book <\/span>Colours of a Parallel World<\/span><\/i> (written during his first imprisonment), did not walk out free after the end of his prison term. On 10 November 2021, the Minsk City Court sentenced Miko\u0142a Dziadok under three articles of the Criminal Code (Articles 342, 361, and 295-3) to five years in a penal colony. In March 2025, it became known that Miko\u0142a Dziadok had been transferred to the pretrial detention centre No. 1 in Kaladzi\u010dy in connection with a new criminal case.<\/span><\/p>\n On 1 April, it became known that on 28 March, police detained writer <\/span>Anatol Sanacienka <\/b>in Babrujsk. On 31 March, the Babrujsk District and City Court sentenced him to 15 days of administrative arrest under Article 19.11 of the Code of Administrative Offences (distribution, production, storage, or transportation of informational materials containing calls for or promoting extremist activity). <\/span>Anatol Sanacienka <\/span>is a poet, prose writer, playwright, translator, and former regional newspaper <\/span>Babrujski Kur\u2019jer<\/span><\/i>\u2019s<\/span> editor-in-chief.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>1.<\/strong> Journalist, screenwriter, and history popularizer <\/span>\u0141arysa \u0160\u010dyrakova<\/b> works in a sewing workshop in a low-paid position, sewing uniforms for the internal troops\u2014specifically for personnel at pretrial detention centres and penal colonies, human rights defenders report.<\/span> <\/b>2.<\/strong> Political prisoner, journalist, and poet <\/span>Dzianis Iva\u0161yn <\/b>has been deprived of phone calls for four consecutive months\u2014December, January, February, and March. He is serving his sentence in Prison No. 8 in \u017dodzina. The last phone call from him was on 12 November 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/b>3.<\/strong> In the Mahilo\u016d penal colony, political prisoners are informally forbidden from studying<\/span> Polish, Czech, Latvian<\/b>, and <\/span>Ukrainian<\/b>, with the latter labelled as \u201cthe language of enemies\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> On 1 April, the Ministry of Information updated the list of banned publications. The list now contains 92 books that \u201ccontain content that could harm the national interests of the Republic of Belarus\u201d, according to the authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n 27 new titles were added to the list, including:<\/span><\/p>\n Several of the banned books have been adapted into films. For instance, Christopher Isherwood\u2019s <\/span>Goodbye to Berlin<\/span><\/i>\u2014a story about life in Germany before and during the rise of the Nazis\u2014was the basis for the film <\/span>Cabaret<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n Among the banned works are also two books by <\/span>Anne Applebaum<\/b>, <\/span>Gulag<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe (1946\u20131956)<\/span><\/i>, both focused on Soviet totalitarianism.<\/span> <\/b>2.<\/strong> On 4 April, Minsk\u2019s Partyzanski District Court labelled as \u201cextremist\u201d the following two books: <\/span>Guidebook for Belarusian Journalists<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Przemys\u0142aw Fenrych<\/b> and <\/span>Vincuk Via\u010dorka<\/b>, and <\/span>Belarus at the Breaking Point<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Jaras\u0142a\u016d Raman\u010duk<\/b> and <\/span>Leanid Zaika<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n On 9 April in Hrodna, security agents visited the mother of<\/span> Valer Rusielik<\/b> \u2014 a blogger and author of the YouTube channel <\/span>Daroha<\/span><\/i>, which features programs dedicated to Belarusian culture, history, and national identity. On 10 April, Valer Rusielik wrote on Facebook: <\/span>\u201cYesterday evening, security agents came to my mother\u2019s home in Hrodna again [\u2026] this time not in uniform but dressed in plain clothes. Once again, they asked about me: where I live, whether I plan to return, whether my mother is in contact with me, etc. What was new? They asked whether I had any tattoos or scars and how tall I was. They again recorded the personal information of my close relatives.\u201d Valer Rusielik\u2019s social media accounts have been designated as \u201cextremist materials\u201d in Belarus. He does not reside in Belarus.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of\u00a015 April 2025, at least 165 cultural figures, including not less than 36\u00a0writers, were not free \u2013 imprisoned or in home confinement. Miko\u0142a Dziadok, an activist of the anarchist movement, author of prison literature, and laureate of the Franci\u0161ak Alachnovi\u010d Award, was not released as scheduled. Writer and journalist Anatol Sanacienka was sentenced to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":18908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4255],"tags":[4291,4285],"class_list":["post-18898","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\/18898","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=18898"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18911,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18898\/revisions\/18911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI. Criminal prosecution of cultural figures, authors, and performers<\/b><\/h5>\n
II. Administrative persecution\u00a0<\/b><\/h5>\n
III. Conditions in the places of incarceration<\/b><\/h5>\n
\n<\/span>\u0141arysa \u0160\u010dyrakova was sentenced to three years and six months in a minimum-security penal colony under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code (facilitating extremist activity) and Article 369-1 (discrediting Belarus). She is serving her term in Women\u2019s Correctional Colony No. 4 in Homiel, where women convicted in politically motivated cases are marked with yellow tags on their clothes.<\/span><\/p>\n\u0406V. Repressions against books<\/b><\/h5>\n
\n
\n<\/span>Anne Applebaum is an American journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and researcher of communism and Eastern European history.<\/span><\/p>\nV. Persecution of cultural figures\u2019 relatives<\/b><\/h5>\n