Valiantsin Stefanovich: On Pornography

A curious statement was made by Uladzimir Rabavolau, deputy chairman of the Operations and Analytical Centre (OAC) at the President’s Administration, in his interview to Radio Liberty last week.

According to him, the websites blocked for public access by resolutions of the OAC of June 29, 2010, may appeal the restrictions with the authorities. And, if they fix the alleged flaws, access will be restored.

According to Uladzimir Rabavolau, the black list currently contains 119 Internet resources, mainly of pornographic or extremist content or those that infringe on copyrights. Among these 119 prohibited websites is the site of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” (www.spring96.org).

I, as the deputy chairman of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”, would like to know: what was the reason for the OAC’s decision to limit access to the website of our organization? We have not received any official notifications or court rulings that could find our organization an extremist one, we do not violate copyright, because we are the authors of information.

Maybe our website was qualified as pornographic?

Still, I have the impression that the use of censorship in the country, including against independent and human rights online resources, is pornography in itself. There are a lot of things that are pornographic in our country.

For example, Article 193.1 of the Criminal Code, which provides for imprisonment only for activities on behalf of an unregistered organization, regardless of the purpose of such activities. This is nothing but pornography.

The Belarusian elections, whose results are known before they started, isn’t it a porno story?

Generally speaking, staying in power for almost 19 years – it’s just hard porn!

So, eroticists, we are not going to appeal for the simple reason that our activities are completely legal and legitimate. And I wish yours could be legal, too.

Fighter against pornography

Valiantsin Stefanovich