Belarus declares Instagram page of Polish photographer “extremist”

The infor­ma­tion appeared on July 9 in the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of Extrem­ist Con­tent, which is main­tained on the web­site of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.

The deci­sion to rec­og­nize the account @michalkosc as extrem­ist was made on July 8 by the Pukhavichy Dis­trict Court in the Min­sk Region.

The des­ig­na­tion was most like­ly trig­gered by Michał Kość’s pho­tographs post­ed on his page, which include images from Belaru­sian sol­i­dar­i­ty ral­lies in Poland, scenes along the Pol­ish-Belaru­sian bor­der, and por­traits of promi­nent indi­vid­u­als — among them, impris­oned human rights advo­cate and founder of the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, Ales Biali­ats­ki.

Michał Kość lives in Białys­tok. He is a mem­ber of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Pol­ish Art Pho­tog­ra­phers and a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the Pol­ish pho­to agency FORUM.