The Belarusian Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit seeking the liquidation the non-government Union of Belarusian Writers (UBW), the organisation says on Telegram.
“Predictably, the [corresponding] letter has arrived. The Supreme Court has opened a civil case to close down the Union of Belarusian Writers,” the statement reads.
The Union of Belarusian Writers is the oldest association of literary persons in Belarus; it was founded in 1933-1934. Its former names were the Union of Writers of the BSSR and the Union of Writers of Belarus. Its first leader was Mikhas Klimkovich, the author of the Belarusian anthem We, the Belarusians. Such prominent men of letters as Yanka Kupala, Yakub Kolas, Kuzma Chorny, Kandrat Krapiva, Mikhas Lynkou, Pyatrus Brouka, Maksim Tank, Arkadz Kulyashou, Pimen Panchanka, Andrey Makayonak, Yan Skryhan, Uladzimir Karatkevich, Ales Adamovich, Vasil Bykau, Ivan Shamyakin, Yanka Bryl, Ivan Navumenka, Ryhor Baradulin, Nil Hilevich and others contributed to its activity and work.
It is not the first time that the pro-independence position of the public association has drawn the ire of the regime. In 1997, by the personal order of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the Union was deprived of the opportunity to use the Minsk-based House of Author as its headquarters and venue; in 2006, the association was from the office and stripped of its legal address. Earlier, in 2002, a number of literary and social periodicals which the UBW had launched were taken away from the organisation.
In 2005, a group separated from the Union of Belarusian Writers and set up an alternative body, the Union of Writers of Belarus led by USSR sympathizer Mikalai Charhinets, which is under control of the Lukashenka regime.
In early August, the Belarusian authorities forced the Belarusian PEN Centre, another NGO linked to the country’s writers and poets, to stop their activity.
belsat.eu
