Why are books banned in Belarus, who assesses their \u201charmfulness,\u201d and how does the censorship mechanism work overall? We do not have clear answers to these questions. A distinctive feature of the Belarusian situation is the absence of any coherent explanation from the repressive authorities. Books are removed from libraries, bookshops, and school curricula \u2014 and with them, vital ideas about language, history, and freedom are erased.<\/p>\n
Our task is to bring these \u201cforbidden\u201d books into the light and to speak about them. Because the word continues to live as long as there are those who want to read it.<\/p>\n
PEN Belarus invites you to an exhibition dedicated to books banned in Belarus.<\/strong><\/p>\n We have collected several stories of authors and their works that the state has sentenced as \u201cextremist,\u201d \u201charmful to national interests,\u201d or \u201cundesirable information.\u201d Listen to the voices of books that are destined to be silenced in our country, leaf through their pages, and do not allow censorship to prevail in our shared struggle for free expression.<\/p>\n The exhibition will run from January 24 to February 7 in Warsaw, at the Free Belarus Museum (Foksal 11). The project\u00a0was presented<\/a>\u00a0in early autumn in Krak\u00f3w at the 91st Congress of International PEN, and in November in Gda\u0144sk during the Giedroyc Prize award ceremony.<\/p>\n Poet and head of PEN Belarus Taciana Niadbaj:<\/p>\n \u201cThe books gathered here differ enormously \u2013 by genre, theme, geography, and by the depth of human experience they contain. Yet they share one defining quality: a refusal to accept the worldview of a totalitarian state. They show other models of life, alternative versions of reality. Their authors place no limits on thought or emotion \u2013 and that is precisely what makes them dangerous.<\/em><\/p>\n Real literature does not obey power. It listens to life, catches its breath, and in doing so both reflects and shapes a new social order. It does not serve \u2013 and that, in the eyes of a dictatorship, is its unforgivable crime.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In today\u2019s hyper-vigilant bureaucratic optics, even our first printer, Skaryna, would be suspected of \u201cdangerous\u201d passages. And how many \u201cdelayed-action mines\u201d do the ideologues detect in Kupa\u0142a, Arsiennieva, \u0141asto\u016dski, Niaklaje\u016d, Bacharevi\u010d, Sieviaryniec\u2026 in our classics, in living authors, in writers from abroad?<\/em><\/p>\n In a country where truth is treated as a threat and service to people is deemed suspicious, the words of free creators sound like defiance \u2013 grounds for prohibition. The real issue is not loyalty to the ruler, but responsibility to oneself and to Belarus.<\/em><\/p>\n History teaches us this: no censor has ever triumphed over the written word. A book can be burned, but its meaning cannot be destroyed. A thought can be imprisoned, but it cannot be made to disappear. This is why literature endures as the strongest form of freedom \u2013 stronger than any regime.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Today in Belarus:<\/strong><\/p>\n 311+<\/strong>\u00a0books banned for political or ideological reasons
\nExhibition opening hours:<\/strong>
Tuesday\u2013Friday: 4:00\u20138:00 pm<\/strong>
Saturday\u2013Sunday: 12:00\u20138:00 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n256+<\/strong>\u00a0authors under prohibition
\n5<\/strong>\u00a0independent publishers liquidated in the past five years
\nAt least\u00a031<\/strong>\u00a0writers are behind bars<\/a><\/p>\n