Over the course of three months, the list of “extremist materials” in Belarus exceeded 10,000 entries. For the first time, an entire university was recognized as an “extremist organization.” Teachers are being taught to look for signs of “extremism” in children based on the badges on their backpacks and their social media nicknames. Family chats of political prisoners’ relatives are being banned, and lists of members of “extremist formations” now include even people who died several years before these organizations came into existence.
Each of these cases seems absurd on its own. But together they show how the practice of applying anti-extremist legislation in Belarus continues to expand, while the concept of “extremism” reaches far beyond the fight against violent crime. It now affects education, culture, civil society, and everyday life.
In this new Human Constanta review, we have gathered the key changes, court decisions, legislative developments, and the most illustrative cases from April–June 2026, in order to show not only individual stories, but also the general trends in the development of repressive practice.