# Political repression of Wikipedians in Belarus

The **persecution of Wikipedians in Belarus** is a series of arrests, detentions, and other types of pressure by the government of Belarus towards people who change the Belarusian Wikipedia. This started in the early 2020s and is considered a part of the repression against independent media and activists in Belarus. This repression is done to control what information people in Belarus can read.

Volha Sitnik, an administrator of the Belarusian Wikipedia, was detained in May 2025 for her Wikipedia changes. Human rights organizations say that she is a political prisoner.
## Historical context

The Belarusian Wikipedia was created in 2004 and has helped preserve and promote the Belarusian language, culture, and history. During the political crisis following the 2020 presidential election, the Belarusian government took more control over what information could be found, targeting independent media and online sources. Wikipedia articles covering protests and government actions were watched very closely, especially the ones that disagreed with the government.

In 2025, before the government arrested multiple Wikipedia editors, state media accused the Belarusian Wikipedia of pro-Western bias.

## Chronology

* In 2022, editors Mark Bernstein and Uladzislau Chahovich were detained. Bernstein was arrested for changing articles related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was sentenced to three years of "restricted freedom".
* On April 7, 2022, Pavel Pernikov, an editor of several versions of Wikipedia, including two Belarusian ones, was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for online posts that said bad things about Belarus, including two edits to Wikipedia articles about political repression in Belarus.
* In August 2024, a court in Mogilev declared "extremist" the telegram channel Вікіпедыя, which posted the most popular articles on the Belarusian Wikipedia.
* In December 2024, an editor using the pseudonym Stary Jolup, who contributed to the Tarashkevitsa (Belarusian Latin script) version of Wikipedia, was detained.
* On March 13, 2025, an administrator of the *Tarashkevitsa*-language version of the Belarusian Wikipedia with user name Kazimier Lachnovič disappeared.
* Between April and May 2025, editor Volha Sitnik was detained and later sentenced to ten days of administrative arrest. Later, Belarusian special services tried to get people to spy on Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya using social media and messenger accounts they took from Volha.
* On May 15, 2025, Maksim Lepushenka, one of the oldest administrators of the Belarusian Wikipedia (active since 2007), who wrote about the ancient history of Belarus, was detained.
* In November 2025, the Minsk prosecutor's office announced a two-year prison sentence and fine for a 37-year-old university lecturer for 25 edits made between 2020 and 2025 about the state symbols of the Republic of Belarus, presidential elections and referendums, and the activities of the authorities. *Nasha Niva* identified him as editor Kazimier Lachnovič. In March 2026, he was one of 250 political prisoners released as a result of talks between Alexander Lukashenko and the US Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale.

## International responses

Human rights organizations have condemned the actions of the Belarusian government as an attempt to take away freedom of speech and access to information. In response to the persecution of Belarusian Wikipedians, the Wikipedia community decided to hide the identities of editors who make changes to articles on military and political topics. This means that IP addresses cannot be seen by administrators of the Belarusian Wikipedia anymore. This change is supposed to help protect editors from the Belarusian government.

## Effects of repression

Some editors of the Belarusian Wikipedia say that attempts by Belarus to control what Wikipedia says have failed because of Wikipedia's rules. Arrests and detentions have not changed what article say, and the administrator rights of detained editors have been removed by the Wikipedia community to prevent the government from using their accounts to make changes.
Since September 2024, the government stopped saying much about the detentions and trials of Wikipedia editors, which makes it harder for people outside Belarus to monitor the repression.

The repression from the Belarusian government has made it much harder for the Belarusian Wikipedia to keep working. Fear of the government has made many editors self-censor themselves or stop changing Wikipedia at all, especially on political topics. Some Belarusian editors have needed to stop editing so that they could stay safe. This has caused the articles on the Belarusian Wikipedia to get worse, because there are less editors to make them better.