25 books confiscated from journalist Dzianis Ivashyn ordered destroyed

“It is the 21^st cen­tu­ry, we are in the cen­ter of Europe, why not start burn­ing books! How igno­rant must one be to declare a dic­tio­nary of mil­i­tary ter­mi­nol­o­gy ‘dan­ger­ous for the pub­lic’ or ‘extrem­ist,’” com­ment­ed the wife of a polit­i­cal pris­on­er, Vol­ha Ivashy­na, on the court’s deci­sion.

Among the titles to be destroyed are books on Belaru­sian nation­al­ist and demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments, anti-Bol­she­vik upris­ings in Belarus, hybrid war­fare, Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, and oth­ers.

Dzia­n­is Ivashyn is 42 years old and mar­ried. He is an econ­o­mist and polit­i­cal sci­en­tist. He worked as a jour­nal­ist for the inde­pen­dent news­pa­per Novy Chas and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty Inform­Na­palm, which stud­ies the impact of Russ­ian aggres­sion on oth­er coun­tries. He is known for his pub­li­ca­tions on the scan­dalous con­struc­tion in Kura­p­aty, for which he and Novy Chas were sued by the devel­op­er, and on the influ­ence of the “Russ­ian world” on Belarus and Syr­ia.

The jour­nal­ist was arrest­ed in March 2021 and charged with “high trea­son”. He was sen­tenced to 13 years and one month of impris­on­ment and a huge fine for “high trea­son” and “ille­gal col­lec­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion about a pri­vate life”. His cor­re­spon­dence with the out­side world is hin­dered and many let­ters do not reach him. Accord­ing to the lat­est infor­ma­tion from his fam­i­ly, the jour­nal­ist may have been placed in a secure hous­ing unit.

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