Authorities put NEXTA logo and live channel on list of extremist materials

The court ruled that the NEX­TA-Live Telegram chan­nel “con­tains infor­ma­tion prod­ucts (videos, appeals and pub­li­ca­tions both on behalf of the channel’s edi­tors and sub­scribers) with signs of extrem­ist activ­i­ty, name­ly: orga­ni­za­tion and pub­lic calls for the imple­men­ta­tion of mass riots” … Here the mate­ri­als pub­lished in the peri­od from 9 to 11 August 2020 are meant.

An appli­ca­tion to rec­og­nize “NEXTA” as extrem­ist was sub­mit­ted by the Main Direc­torate for Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs of the Repub­lic of Belarus (GUBOPiK of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs).

Infor­ma­tion about the recog­ni­tion of the NEX­TA-Live chan­nel and the logo as extrem­ist was con­firmed by the press sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs Vol­ha Chamadana­va.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the experts deter­mined that from 9 to 11 August, NEX­TA-Live post­ed infor­ma­tion with signs of extrem­ist activ­i­ty (orga­ni­za­tion and pub­lic calls for mass riots). In this regard, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of the Repub­lic of Belarus was ordered to include the spec­i­fied Telegram chan­nel and the NEXTA logo (dig­i­tal water­mark) in the repub­li­can list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als, to take mea­sures to restrict access to infor­ma­tion resources con­tain­ing sim­i­lar names and their dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Belaru­sian seg­ment,” she wrote in her Telegram chan­nel.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs also empha­sized that the rebrand­ing of the chan­nel and the change of the logo will not become the basis for its exclu­sion from the list of extrem­ist mate­ri­als. Now the secu­ri­ty forces will be active­ly look­ing for peo­ple dis­sem­i­nat­ing pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion.

A spokesman for the Supreme Court in an inter­view with Pody­om said that every­one who sub­scribes to NEX­TA-Live will now be rec­og­nized as dis­trib­u­tors of extrem­ist mate­ri­als:

“We, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the court, can­not assess the legal con­se­quences of cer­tain actions. But accord­ing to gen­er­al prac­tice, dis­tri­b­u­tion means active actions, so repost­ing, send­ing to each oth­er — yes, this is dis­tri­b­u­tion. If there is a sub­scrip­tion to the NEXTA chan­nel on your phone, you send each oth­er, then yes, you are a dis­trib­u­tor of extrem­ist mate­ri­als. There­fore, be care­ful about what you repost”.

The edi­tors of NEXTA react­ed iron­i­cal­ly to this court deci­sion and announced a call for pro­pos­als for a “new non-extrem­ist” logo:

“For some rea­son, the court of the Cen­tral Dis­trict of the Hero City of Min­sk rec­og­nized our telegram chan­nel NEX­TA-Live and our logo as“ extrem­ist mate­ri­als ”. At the same time, the main news chan­nel NEXTA and the satir­i­cal LUXTA are still in law.

Well, we would be hap­py to turn over this page, but since we work strict­ly with­in the frame­work of Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion, we will now think about rebrand­ing. All sug­ges­tions for a new ‘non-extrem­ist’ logo and name can be sent to our bot. ”