Minsk Labels RFE/RL’s Belarus Service As ‘Extremist’

Accord­ing to the state­ment issued by the min­istry on Decem­ber 23, «a group of cit­i­zens asso­ci­at­ed via Radio Svabo­da’s Inter­net resources were deter­mined to be an extrem­ist group.»

The move means that Belaru­sians who sub­scribe to Radio Svabo­da online could face up to six years in prison.

The move comes almost three weeks after a court in Min­sk des­ig­nat­ed Radio Svabo­da’s offi­cial Telegram chan­nel and some of the broad­cast­er’s social media accounts as extrem­ist.

Author­i­ties in Belarus have declared hun­dreds of Telegram chan­nels, blogs and cha­t­rooms as “extrem­ist” since the coun­try was engulfed by protests since the August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which hand­ed Lukashen­ka a sixth con­sec­u­tive term.

In response, the gov­ern­ment has cracked down hard on the pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment, arrest­ing thou­sands of peo­ple and push­ing most of the top oppo­si­tion fig­ures out of the coun­try. There have also been cred­i­ble reports of tor­ture and ill-treat­ment, and sev­er­al peo­ple have died.

Dozens of news web­sites have been blocked in Belarus and inde­pen­dent media shut­tered as part of a sweep­ing crack­down on infor­ma­tion in the wake of the unprece­dent­ed protests.

The web­site of RFE/RL’s Belarus Ser­vice has been blocked with­in Belarus since August 21, 2020, while the accred­i­ta­tion of all local­ly based jour­nal­ists work­ing for for­eign media, includ­ing RFE/RL, were annulled by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties in Octo­ber 2020.

Lukashen­ka, who has run the coun­try since 1994, has denied any fraud in the elec­tion and refus­es to nego­ti­ate with the oppo­si­tion on a polit­i­cal tran­si­tion and new elec­tions.

The West has refused to rec­og­nize Lukashen­ka as the legit­i­mate leader of Belarus and in response has imposed sev­er­al waves of sanc­tions against the gov­ern­ment and oth­er offi­cials accused of aid­ing and ben­e­fit­ing from the crack­down.