Up To 1,000 People May Be Tried In The "Belaruskag Gayun" Case

• 3.09.2025, 16:17

Detentions of people who sent information to the Motolko blogger project continue.

In Belarus, detentions continue in the case of "Belaruskaga Gayun" - the project of blogger Anton Motolko.

A worker of the Human Rights Center "Viasna" Viktoria Rudenkova in a conversation with "Radio Svaboda" explains that all the criminal cases known to human rights activists within the framework of the case are brought under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code ("promotion of extremist activity").

"This provision is used in an extremely repressive way: people are accused of transmitting photos or messages that have no signs of violence and relate to information that is significant for society," the human rights activist says. - Such actions are a gross violation of freedom of expression, including the freedom to receive and disseminate information. This is a violation of both its own Constitution and international obligations of Belarus.

According to the interlocutor, in practice, the punishment for the defendants of the "Gayun case" varies from "home chemistry" to imprisonment in a colony. Individual detainees are kept in custody for months.

Bearing in mind that the law enforcers have a database of all users who sent messages to the bot, as well as numerous testimonies of those who leave pre-trial detention centers or temporary detention facilities, there is a really high probability that the number of defendants in the "Gayun case" may even reach a thousand people."

February 5, 2025, the creator of "Belaruskag Gayun" Anton Motolko reported the hacking of the project's chatbot and reported a security threat to those who shared information with the Telegram channel.

February 7, it became known about the first detentions of informants of "Belaruskag Gayun". Then the project stopped working. It should be noted that the project of blogger Motolko was actively supported by the office of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.