The Minsk Central District Court in Belarus last Wednesday classified all material produced by Deutsche Welle as “extremist”. DW has been blocked in the country since October 2021.
Director General of the vehicle, Peter Limbourg, says that the announcement of the criminalization proves “how nervous the regime is”. “The blocking of our websites in Belarus in October 2021 was already an unbelievable invasion of press freedom,” he said in a statement on Thursday.
“DW is still informing many people in Belarus through tools to circumvent censorship. Especially after the attack on Ukraine, the numbers have increased significantly. Now they want to use cheap tricks to create pseudo-legal bases to act against those who use their right to freedom of expression,” Limbourg said. Under the measure, anyone who disseminates or saves materials deemed “extremist” can be fined and jailed for up to 15 days.
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