In Belarus, they fire people for reading “wrong” news

In today’s Belarus, subscription to independent mass media can cost a man not just their job but also their freedom. Lukashenka’s regime continues to pursue the policy of total control over information, qualifying the reading of alternative media sources as “extremist activity”.

Screenshot of an article in the “Hrodnenskaya Pravda” newspaper

A vivid illustration of this is a recent article in the pro-Government “Hrodnenskaya Pravda” newspaper which describes – and with apparent pride, too – how the militia has tracked down a resident of the town’s Mostovsky District who has been reading independent Internet resources “for a number of years”. The man was accused of the “deliberate use of extremist materials” and dismissed from his job with a sizeable fine on top of it.

It is not about calls for violence or for breaking the law. “The crime” is a subscription to and regular reading of Internet resources publishing an independent point of view. Moreover, the Minister of the Interior openly states that they raid organizations, enterprises, and educational institutions.

The authorities officially admit the existence of lists of “persons inclined to extremism”; and tracking such people down is carried out through the system of digital surveillance. A Like, a repost, a subscription – they all become grounds for putting pressure on people. “The Internet remembers it all”, eerily warns the “Hrodnenskaya Pravda”, effectively supplanting the freedom of information with a digital supervision system.

In 2025, Belarus remains a country where the freedom of speech is destroyed systemically. The “list of extremist materials” contains thousands of sources, including us. When reading independent information is punishable by law, what fundamental rights, dignity, and future are there left to talk about?

Another telling episode. At the latest International Labour Conference which took place about two weeks ago, the issue of workers being persecuted for reading “extremist” trade union resources was raised by Stephen Russell, a UK workers’ representative. In response, the delegation of the pro-Government Trade Union Federation of Belarus made quite a show, demonstrating their indignation and calling those facts “slander” among themselves. The irony of it is that just a few weeks later the “Hrodnenskaya Pravda” itself confirmed the fact.

The independent trade unions and human rights organizations continue keeping records of such cases. We shall send them, inter alia, to the International Labour Organization as evidence of Belarusian workers being persecuted for access to information.

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