March 6, Pozirk. A total of 51 people were found guilty of sharing banned content in the Hrodna region’s Astraviec district last year, the state-controlled ostrovets.by reported, citing Judge Śviatłana Łabor.
In all, Belarus has 142 district courts. If every court sentenced 51 people like the district court in Astraviec, the number of people punished over banned content would be 27,406 in 2024.
Meanwhile, the Viasna Human Rights Center documented 5,890 trials involving the charges of sharing opposition content in 2024. That was rise by more than 50 percent from the number recorded in 2023. Therefore, most instances of persecution for possessing and sharing banned content are not documented by human rights defenders.
Authorities seized smartphones from all defendants. Most were sentenced to fines ranging from 840 to 1,050 rubels ($260 to $325), while some people were given 15-day jail terms, Łabor said.
Reposts, reactions, shares and donations to opposition initiatives are considered minor offenses in Belarus but may also lead to criminal charges, the judge noted.
Minsk and the Minsk region top the statistics with at least 2,772 people persecuted for online activities, followed by the Brest and Hrodna regions with 1,925 and 1,363 people, respectively.
The government introduced the “extremist content” designation in the wake of the 2020 mass protests against election fraud to punish Belarusians for following critical media outlets and social media accounts.
Belarusian law enforcement officers randomly check people’s phones to see who are they following. Those found to possess or share links to banned media and accounts are punished by fines or jail sentences of up to 15 days under Article 19.11 of the Administrative Offenses Code. It does not carry any punishment for those producing banned content.
The extremist content list contains thousands of entries, so it is actually hard for people to follow it and delete blacklisted content from their devices.
