{"id":21192,"date":"2025-11-21T15:07:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/?p=21192"},"modified":"2025-11-21T15:07:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:07:19","slug":"belaruski-pen-i-bazh-zaprashayucz-kaleg-na-mizhnarodny-pres-bryfing-27-listapada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2025\/11\/21\/belaruski-pen-i-bazh-zaprashayucz-kaleg-na-mizhnarodny-pres-bryfing-27-listapada.html","title":{"rendered":"Briefing, November 27! Banned people: How writers and journalists work in Belarus, where independent work is branded \u00abextremism\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>PEN Belarus<\/strong><strong>\u00a0and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) invite international partners and media representatives to a briefing on the situation of cultural and media repression in Belarus.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The briefing will feature\u00a0journalists recently released from prison\u00a0after being convicted of \u00abextremism\u00bb, as well as\u00a0representatives of PEN Belarus, who will present information about\u00a0banned books\u00a0by Belarusian and international authors.<\/p>\n<p>PEN Belarus <a href=\"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/tag\/penanalytics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener \">monitors<\/a>\u00a0violations of cultural rights\u00a0in Belarus. The\u00a0banning of books\u00a0is not only an act of censorship but also a\u00a0violation of the right to freedom of expression and access to information, guaranteed by international agreements. PEN Belarus documents every case to ensure that the truth about cultural repression is preserved and heard. A <a href=\"https:\/\/bannedbooks.penbelarus.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">new\u00a0website<\/a> dedicated to banned books in Belarus\u00a0will be presented during the briefing.<\/p>\n<p>Current situation in Belarus:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>3 official lists of banned books<\/li>\n<li>Over\u00a0258 books banned\u00a0for political and ideological reasons, including works by foreign authors<\/li>\n<li>Over\u00a0208 authors blacklisted<\/li>\n<li>5 publishing houses\u00a0shut down in the past 5 years<\/li>\n<li>At least\u00a033 writers and journalists\u00a0imprisoned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>BAJ reports a similar situation in the media sector. The official list of so-called \u201cextremist publications and content\u00bb includes\u00a0over 1,800 pages\u00a0\u2014 news reports, features, human stories, pages and social media accounts of entire editorial teams, and even individual journalists.<\/p>\n<p>How does being labeled \u00abextremist\u00bb affect the work of media outlets? How do journalists manage to\u00a0remain relevant to audiences inside the country\u00a0despite ongoing repression? These topics will be discussed by\u00a0BAJ representatives\u00a0and\u00a0recently released journalists:\u00a0<strong>Larysa Shchyrakova<\/strong>\u00a0(served 3.5 years in prison) and\u00a0\u00a0<strong>Yauhen Merkis<\/strong>\u00a0(served 4 years in prison).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The briefing will be held on Zoom on November 27 at 1:00 p.m. (Central European Time). Language: English.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/e\/1FAIpQLSeIacJbU5Tqex2owFZOoCxHBggNSt57QY-Z1_8uHxlJItvX_g\/viewform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Registration<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The event is held with the financial support of Norway and the Human Rights House Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PEN Belarus\u00a0and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) invite international partners and media representatives to a briefing on the situation of cultural and media repression in Belarus. The briefing will feature\u00a0journalists recently released from prison\u00a0after being convicted of \u00abextremism\u00bb, as well as\u00a0representatives of PEN Belarus, who will present information about\u00a0banned books\u00a0by Belarusian and international authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":21200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4255,4094],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultural-right","category-other-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21192","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=21192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21194,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21192\/revisions\/21194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}