After the Belarusian regime passed a sweeping new law earlier this year banning “LGBTQ propaganda,” it took less than two weeks to designate Jane Baziuk an “extremist”.
It didn’t matter that Baziuk was now living in Poland, or that they had been actively trying to keep a low profile.
Since leaving Brest in 2022 to move to Poland, Baziuk had been volunteering for a youth educational initiative and sharing queer content on their social media. For two years, they – Baziuk is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns – had managed to stay beneath the radar, or so they thought. Then a friend saw their name on the news.
“At first, I didn’t even believe it,” Baziuk told The i Paper. An updated list of “extremist formations” had mentioned Baziuk’s name. No one informed them officially about the designation.
Baziuk feared for their family, who had remained in Belarus, and warned them about the possibility of being searched or questioned by security forces.
“It took me time to realise the scale of what was happening – that the state had actually targeted me and was trying to complicate my life, even though I was no longer in the country,” Baziuk said, adding: “Pressure continues from a distance.”
Belarus’ crackdown follows a path first laid out by Vladimir Putin. In 2013, Russia passed its own anti-LGBT+ “propaganda” law, which banned the promotion of “non-traditional family values” to children. In 2022, this was extended to all age groups.
Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’s strongman president, followed his Russian ally earlier this year.
The new law, which went into effect in April, extends beyond LGBT+ issues by targeting child-free people, and by bundling homosexuality, gender reassignment and paedophilia within the same legal framework.
Officially, it makes the “propaganda of homosexual relations, gender change, refusal to have children and paedophilia” punishable by fines, community labour and up to 15 days in prison.
Unofficially, it appears to be an attempt to cut off free speech and punish those who espouse different values.
‘A model of hatred’
Baziuk is one of several Belarusian activists The i Paper spoke to, who have found themselves caught in the state’s expanding campaign against anything it deems a threat to its vision of “traditional values”.
Ivan-Yanuk Salauyeu was forced to leave Belarus in 2024 after police leaked their gender identity and they were subsequently fired from their job as a teacher.
LGBT+ activists in Minsk wave a Pride flag and an old Belarusian national flag in front of a police barricade in 2020 (Photo: TUT.by/AP)
Salauyeu said that authorities in Belarus have constructed “a model of hatred” and that people there “are fed the wrong values and are taught to hate those who are different”.
LGBT+ people “are not protected by law and are being systematically destroyed as human beings”, they added.
Deliberately cryptic, the new law bans the dissemination of information “intended to influence citizens’ perceptions”, while giving authorities wide discretion to decide what constitutes “propaganda”.
Alisa Sarmant, director of TG House, a trans-led support organisation in Belarus, warned that in practice “virtually everyone” – activists, journalists, educators, NGO staff and ordinary social media users – may be at risk.
During Lukashenko’s three-decade rule, his regime has detained tens of thousands of people, criminalised dissent and subjected political prisoners to torture.
‘People are detained on fabricated grounds and taken to police stations,’ says Alisa Sarmant, pictured, who heads a trans-led support organisation in Belarus
Sarmant said that entrapment and raids on private gatherings are now regular occurrences.
“People are detained on fabricated grounds and taken to police stations, where they face beatings, humiliation and threats,” she told The i Paper. “Many are forced to go into hiding or urgently leave the country.”
Sarmant said that entrapment through dating apps is now also widely used, with individuals invited to meetings, where they are detained and often coerced into co-operation.
As a political activist, she has faced mounting pressure, not only because of her work, but because of her own identity.
In a worrying sign, in recent years similar legislation has been unveiled in Bulgaria, Hungary, Georgia and Kazakhstan, all states with historical, political and cultural ties to Russia.
‘The key is targeting minorities of all kinds’
Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director, said that Belarus is now following this repressive model, using “traditional values” to expand the state’s ability to punish dissent – a trajectory that has helped Russia turn its anti-LGBT+ crackdown into a wider tool of repression.
She told The i Paper that Russia provides a “blueprint” for other European states, and that Belarus will not be the last to succumb to it.
“If you look at the range of tools in the [authoritarian] toolkits, they all basically deploy the same,” she said, highlighting the silencing of independent media and civil society, the manipulation of law enforcement and the elimination of other political parties.
“The key is targeting minorities of all kinds,” she added.
Riot police detain participants of a 2010 gay rights protest in Minsk (Photo: Victor Drachev/AFP)
However, Struthers warned against treating every new law as an act of Russian interference abroad.
“Whether it is in direct connection to Russian influence, that is very difficult to determine,” she said. Instead, she sees it as part of a much wider global regression in human rights, fuelled by increasingly authoritarian politics.
Despite being physically distant from Belarus, those in exile still feel the worrying reach of the regime back home, and recall the “painful mix” of relief and survivor’s guilt that ran through them on hearing about the new law.
“It hit me like a physical blow,” said Salauyeu. “I felt a wave of horror and a profound sense of grief for those still trapped there. My immediate thought was: ‘They are turning my home into a prison without walls’.”
They added that “it felt like the regime was officially declaring a witch hunt, codifying hatred into law just to tighten their grip on society”.
“It confirmed every fear that had forced me to flee – it was a grim validation that the country I love was moving toward total darkness.”
Salauyeu also said that after leaving Belarus, they learnt they’d been charged under the criminal code with promotion, facilitating, or aiding and abetting extremist activity. They are now on the wanted lists in both Belarus and Russia, underscoring just how closely the two countries are moving with their “propaganda” laws.