Interior ministry adds 13 to its “extremist” list

December 29, Pozirk. The interior ministry has added 13 more names to the list of “persons involved in extremist activities,” taking their total to 3,654, its website says.

The additions include former political prisoners Sniažana Cadova and Andrej Marcinovič.

A judge sentenced Cadova to six months in prison over a TikTok video critical of a police officer who fined her daughter for not wearing a reflective band in the dark. She had already served the prison term in the pre-trial detention and was released.

Marcinovič was given three years of restricted freedom in home confinement in early December for alleged gross violations of public order, a charge often used against peaceful protesters in Belarus.

The interior ministry also blacklisted Juryj and Anastasija Makušyk, presumably a married couple convicted earlier over protests and whose criminal record has not been expunged; and Jaŭhien Filipovič, serving two and a half years of restricted freedom in an open-type correctional facility for donations to opposition groups. 

In 2023, police significantly expanded the application of “anti-extremist” legislation to persecute dissenters, Pavieł Sapiełka of the Viasna Human Rights Center told Pozirk earlier this week.

People placed on the list of individuals involved in extremist activities are banned from education activity, publishing, state positions and military service for five years after completing their sentences or criminal record expungement.

Their financial transactions are subject to special monitoring. They are also banned from activities involving narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors, arms and ammunition and explosives, for five years.