Belarus has an ever increasing list of items deemed extremist, ranging from reasonable ones, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, to rock songs that authorities see as being critical to Lukashenko’s regime.
The Lukashenko regime launched a major censorship campaign following anti-government protests
After the brutal suppression of peaceful protests in Belarus in 2020, the Lukashenko regime started the cleansing of the information field in the country in order to exclude any independent opinions or information sources. The clampdown against independent media, which included criminal prosecution, forced many to relocate to other countries. So how does censorship actually work in the 21st century in Europe?
The main step to completely kill the freedom of speech in Belarus was the criminalisation of independent sources of information. All independent media as well as bloggers were deemed “extremist organisations”, some even “terrorist organisations”, while special lists mentioning them have been created: there are 6 of them. At the moment, 39 journalists are imprisoned in Belarus, while any cooperation with independent media or bloggers (including foreign ones like Radio Liberty or Deutsche Welle) may end in up to 15 years in prison. This will be classified as “cooperating with a terrorist/extremist organisation” depending on the list the media is included in.
It is important that the means of censorship touch not only the sources of information, but the people who use and disseminate them. Such an approach was also widely used in the USSR, where the very possession of any printed or written materials of “antisoviet nature” was the reason for persecution. So here we come to the issue of classifying such information.
Against Lukashenko? You’re an extremist!
At the moment the most famous and actually effective mean of censorship in Belarus is called “the list of extremist materials” which was created back in 2008. According to the regime officials, its original goal is to prohibit the materials propagating ultraradical and extremist views. But gradually the word “extremist” started to be used to describe everything going against “the general line” of the Lukashenko regime ideology.
Ironically, the first materials to be deemed “extremist” were the CDs with “The Belarusian language lesson” and “The concert Solidarity with Belarus at the Market Square of the New City in Warsaw on March 12, 2006”. The CDs were taken from a Belarusian journalist Aliaksandr Burakou, who had to leave the country after the crackdown on the society following the 2020 presidential election.
If we look at the first rows of the “list of extremist items”, we will really find mostly mentions of posts, printed, audio and video materials connected with various radical ideologies. For example, the list includes a lot of editions of “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler or books propagating radical Islam and connected to the “Islamic State”. Neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic as well as anarchist media materials are on the list. Surprisingly, the list also includes some pro-Russian extreme right materials. Starting from 2014, one can find items connected with Ukraine, especially with the “Azov” movement and military units.
However, the very structure of the list looks quite absurd. There are no precise instructions for the description of the items included there, so some of them are completely impossible to identify. For example, it includes “gray chest badge (brooch)” – just like that, without any description. There is no possibility to find out which brooch was precisely deemed “extremist material” and for what reason. The list also includes various items connected with subcultures, like the text of the song “It’s fun to walk along the swamps with a machine gun”, which turns out to be one of the Dynamo Minsk fans’ songs or the text of “A.C.A.B.” in any form and printed on anything as well its Belarusian analogue – УПСК (Усе псы сістэмы – курвы or “All dogs of the system are bastards”).
The “list of extremist items” also includes a significant number of works of art, literature and history books considered by the regime as not fitting in the concept of their ideology: for example, the books describing the stalinist repression against Belarusian people like “NKVD killed in Kurapaty” or a series of books about the history of Belarus in 1921-1945 years by Ihar Mielnikau (who subsequently was imprisoned for 4 years). The song “Not to be a cattle” by Lyapis Trubetskoy was put on the list as well. However, the text of the song is the famous poem “Who are you?” by the classic of Belarusian literature – the national poet of Belarus – Janka Kupała, published in 1908. It has been taught to children at school as a cult example of Belarusian poetry of that time.
Rock bands, children rights NGOs, and Hitler are on the same “extremists’’” list
Until August 2020, the document consisted of 67 pages. It currently has 1445 pages and is growing bigger literally every day. So it is obvious that after the protests of 2020 the Lukashenko regime started to use the list as one of the main instruments of repression, especially censorship. One can also see the scale of this censorship: starting from August 9, 2020, on average almost every day the regime deemed something as “extremist materials”. Moreover, last year the scale even increased: throughout 2024 the “courts” made 1444 decisions that added items to the extremist list, which makes for an average of almost 4 a day. Nowadays, virtually any information that is not controlled by the Lukahenko regime could be deemed “extremist.
But how is this happening precisely? Basically, any “court” in Belarus is able to deem something “extremist item” after such a request is filed by any person or institution (usually police officers or prosecutor’s office). There are also special commissions (the republican and regional ones), consisting of the state institutions workers and officials, responsible for making “expert decision” whether the item should be deemed “extremist”. This decision serves as base for the verdict of the court.
It’s enough if only some ordinary police officer thinks he can file an issue to a “court”, which is quite common at the moment: it is easier for the regime enforcement agencies to create imaginary extremists than to fight against real security threats such as organised crime and corruption.
Not only Belarusian resources are deemed as “extremist” by the Lukashenko regime. For example, in 2024 the “Central District Court” of Minsk declared the websites of the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture and Action Against Child Abduction to be “extremist”. Polish International Radio for Abroad is also included in the “list of extremist items”, and so are many chats and groups of Belarusian diaspora all over the world in social networks are deemed as “extremist materials”. The social media accounts of Sw@da and Niczos – the duet of Polish singers who come from the region of Podlasie on the borderland with Belarus – were put on the list as well. They perform in a local dialect close to the Belarusian language and became extremely popular in Poland and Belarus in late 2024. They never sang something about politics or took part in any political performance.
The list also includes the Telegram channel “Nevzorov” – the channel of the famous Russian journalist, who is opposing the regime in Moscow and Minsk, as well as the book about Russian political figure Boris Nemtsov, “The Successor. The History of Boris Nemtsov and the Country in Which He Did Not Become President” by Mikhail Fishman.
Possessing anything deemed as “extremist materials” as well as being subscribed to any sources of information with this status means the possibility of being arrested for 15 days or being fined for more than 600 Euro. In case one publicly displays something from this list or shares it in any way (even sending it via any messenger to their family member) this person can be put into prison for up to 6 years for “helping in extremist activity”.
