Two Books by Pazniak Claimed to Be Extremist

The books under con­sid­er­a­tion are Abarona Kura­p­ataŭ. Nar­o­d­ny Memary­jal (Defence of Kura­p­aty. People’s Memo­r­i­al) (authored joint­ly by Zianon Paz­ni­ak and Valery Buj­val); Dobra­ja Phata­graphi­ja (Good Pho­tog­ra­phy); Sesi­ja Neza­lež­nasci (Ses­sion of Inde­pen­dence). Two books of each title were seized from Aleś Čachol­s­ki, an activist of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Par­ty of the BPF. Now the activist is under tri­al accord­ing to art. 17.1 – stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion of extrem­ist lit­er­a­ture. He was sum­moned to court on Novem­ber 26, but the hear­ing was post­poned, the police report has been sent for com­ple­tion. Mean­while, the activist tries to find the con­clu­sions of the exam­i­na­tion of the books by the region­al expert com­mis­sion. The reply from the Brest cus­toms office says that the books Good Pho­tog­ra­phy and Defence of Kura­p­aty. People’s Memo­r­i­al have been arrest­ed, accord­ing to the Law on Coun­ter­ac­tion to Extrem­ism, art. 14. The book Ses­sion of Inde­pen­dence con­tains no signs of extrem­ism, so the own­er can pick them up at the Brest cus­toms office.

TUT.by pub­lished the let­ter from the Brest cus­toms office

It should be men­tioned that many books by Zianon Paz­ni­ak have been exam­ined by the com­mis­sion on extrem­ism in 2014 («Цяжкі час—працяг», «Незалежнасьць Беларусі. 20 гадоў», «Дэклярацыя — першы крок да незалежнасьці», «Менскі гарсавет ў пэрыяд нацыянальнай рэвалюцыі (1990–1991)», «Тэрра Дэй», «Развагі», «Парсіваль» and oth­ers). In Feb­ru­ary 2015, the book own­er was informed that the com­mis­sion had no signs of extrem­ism in the books.

Zianon Paz­ni­ak is a politi­cian, leader of Nation­al move­ment in Belarus, founder of the Belaru­sian People’s Front, one of main oppo­nents to Lukashen­ka in mid 90ies, lives in emi­gra­tion since 1996.

Last time the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Lil­i­ja Ananič report­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2015 that over 100 print mate­ri­als had been exam­ined regard­ing extrem­ist con­tents, and 25 of the print mate­ri­als had been claimed extrem­ist.