Title: It is OK to be an extremist
Author: Mikola Dziadok
Topic: extremism
Date: January 29th, 2019
Source: Retrieved on 30th November 2020 from mikola.noblogs.org

As you, maybe, know, few time ago Belarusian parliament passed the law, which allows fining and arresting ppl for “extremist” posts in social media. What our courts do now? They add certain videos, web-pages, social media pages, T-shirts, sayings or even fridgies (!) to a “Republican list of the extremist materials” (which already holds few hundreds of items) and than they detain you wherever you want.

This list consists of anarchism-related materials on around 1\3.

For the last 7 month I had 2 court trials (and one more will be soon), one for “Distribution extremist materials”, one for “Demonstration nazi symbolic”, in both pictures these were FB posts with nazi posing with their symbolics, with my comments about what I think about them.

For the 1st time I was fined in the amount of 200 eur. 3 weeks ago – on the amount of 500 eur. Both times, once again, for posts in social media! Few days ago I got to know that they started new administrative case: for writing “ACAB” on my “Vkontakte” page. This abbreviation is also acknowledged as extremist, and now I face fine or up to 25 days of arrest.

Moreover, week ago, while passing the EU-Belarus border (I was coming back to Belarus from Vilnius) I was disembarked from the bus by the border guards, and they were checking my identity and luggage for around 2 hours.

Many other guys from the anarchist movement report about the same pressure.

Anyhow, fuck cops and authority. It’s OK to be an extremist.