Pozirk.online branded extremist content

December 8, Pozirk. A district judge in Minsk on December 5 declared pozirk.online extremist content banned for distribution.

The ruling comes just two months after exiled BelaPAN journalists launched the website and two years after the Committee for State Security (KGB) branded the news agency an extremist group, forcing it to stop operation and journalists to go into exile.

Three former BelaPAN executives are serving sentences of four to 14 years in prison after being convicted of extremism-related and other crimes. The updated extremist content list includes Radyjo Svaboda and its social media accounts, Salidarnasc, the Belarusian Information Center in Lviv, the belsat_ua account in Tiktok, politvyazynka in Instagram, and politician Valeryj Cepkala’s Facebook page, as well as the history book Горькие годы: Трагедия Западной Беларуси 1944–1954 (Bitter Years: Tragedy of Western Belarus 1944-54) by Alaksandar Tatarenka. Published in 2017, the book is based on archive documents concerning the operation of the secret police, NKVD, in Belarus.

Belarusian law enforcers randomly check people’s phones to see who are they following. Those found to possess or share extremist content are punished by exorbitant fines or short jail sentences.

Police force some of those arrested to confess to following “extremist” content before a video camera and then post forced confessions on Telegram accounts to intimidate the public. State television journalists have been involved in recording forced confessions.