Belarusian PEN Center liquidated by Supreme Court

In its law­suit seek­ing the Belaru­sian PEN Center’s liq­ui­da­tion, the jus­tice min­istry described dona­tions made by Svi­at­lana Aliek­si­je­vič [Svet­lana Alex­ievich], a renowned writer and the organization’s chair­per­son, to the orga­ni­za­tion as ille­gal for­eign aid, claim­ing that the Nobel prize win­ner was a per­ma­nent res­i­dent of a for­eign coun­try, Ms. Niad­baj told Bela­PAN.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter argued that Ms. Aliek­si­je­vič was only a tem­po­rary res­i­dent of a for­eign coun­try. She has been stay­ing abroad since last Sep­tem­ber. The argu­ment was ignored by the judge.

Ms. Niad­baj said that the orga­ni­za­tion viewed its liq­ui­da­tion as part of the government’s cam­paign to purge the NGO sec­tor.

The activist stressed that the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter would not halt its activ­i­ty and would appeal the rul­ing.

On July 14, offi­cers of the inte­ri­or ministry’s Main Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion Depart­ment came to search the Min­sk office of the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter. They had a search war­rant signed by the pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al.

Giv­en the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, no rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter were in the office at the time, so the offi­cers con­duct­ed a search at anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion that has the same legal address as the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter and seized all its equip­ment.

A crim­i­nal case was opened under a num­ber of Crim­i­nal Code arti­cles, includ­ing those penal­iz­ing “calls for actions aimed at dam­ag­ing the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Belarus,” “con­spir­a­cy to seize state pow­er in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al way,” and the estab­lish­ment of an extrem­ist group.

At least 30 search­es were con­duct­ed and more than 10 peo­ple were arrest­ed in the Belaru­sian author­i­ties’ crack­down on human rights groups and oth­er NGOs across the coun­try on July 14.

A few days lat­er, it turned out that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties had frozen the bank accounts of the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter and sev­er­al oth­er NGOs tar­get­ed in the raids.

Found­ed in 1989, the Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter has pro­mot­ed the Belaru­sian cul­ture and defend­ed the free­dom of expres­sion and the rights of jour­nal­ists, writ­ers and cul­tur­al fig­ures.

The orga­ni­za­tion has been part of PEN Inter­na­tion­al since 1990.