{"id":157001,"date":"2025-09-24T23:16:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/news\/157001\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T20:10:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T20:10:49","slug":"viciebsk-region-prosecutors-boast-of-making-dozens-of-extremist-content-requests","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/pozirk.online\/en\/news\/157001\/","title":{"rendered":"Viciebsk region prosecutors boast of making dozens of extremist content requests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

September 24, Pozirk. <\/strong>Ninety-five requests have been directed to courts in the Viciebsk region since the year\u2019s start to label sites and accounts as \u201cextremist content,\u201d the Prosecutor General\u2019s Office reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prosecutors in the Po\u0142ack, Sianno, \u010ca\u0161niki and Haradok districts worked hard to identify \u201cdestructive information,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prosecutor office workers are monitoring the Internet \u201cfor materials aimed at increasing social tension and creating distrust for state officials,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Viciebsk Regional Prosecutor\u2019s Office alone requested recognizing 12 social media pages, five YouTube channels and videos, as well as three Telegram chats and channels, as \u201cextremist content.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 2, Minsk region\u2019s prosecutors boasted of making over 1,100 extremist content requests in four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August, a report by the human rights organizations Article 19 and Human Constanta stated that virtually any dissent in Belarus is stigmatized as extremism or terrorism; applying these labels is a key tool of repression. The authors of the paper pointed out that persecution often took absurd forms, with officials labeling songs, memes or anime clips as expressions of extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government introduced the \u201cextremist content\u201d designation in the wake of the 2020 mass protests against election fraud to punish Belarusians for following critical media outlets and social media accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belarusian law enforcement officers randomly check people\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police forced some of those arrested to confess to following \u201cextremist\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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