Ales Yaŭdakha and Vaclaŭ Bahdanovič, arrested in the "booksellers' case", have been released
Dzmitry Kolas and Vaclaŭ's daughter Viktoryia Bahdanovič remain behind bars.
Vaclaŭ Bahdanovič and Ales Yaŭdakha
According to information from Viasna human rights defenders, Ales Yaŭdakha and Vaclaŭ Bahdanovič are free.
Yaŭdakha was released from the KGB pre-trial detention center, and Bahdanovič from the temporary detention facility.
We remind that on March 3, the "coalition of print publishers 'Fund Kamunikat.org', 'Lohvinau Publishing House', 'Andrei Yanushkevich Publishing'" was recognized as an "extremist formation". The corresponding decision was made by the State Security Committee.
This decision followed the mass detentions of publishers and book distributors in Minsk, which took place in February. All detainees were initially sent to serve administrative arrests based on protocols drawn up, as is common now, on fabricated grounds.
The list of people whom the authorities consider associated with this "coalition" includes names well-known in the book community: Dzmitry Kolas, Vaclaŭ Bahdanovič, Ales Yaŭdakha (they are in Belarus), as well as Yaroslav Ivanyuk (a Belarusian from Podlachia, a Polish citizen), Ihar Lohvinau, and Andrei Yanushkevich (Belarusian citizens who left the country after 2021). The list also included the websites and social media pages of the publishing houses.