Online lifeline
With protest nowadays unthinkable in Belarus, Wikipedia remains a vital resource for Belarusians who value the truth
For many Belarusians, Wikipedia remains an essential source of uncensored information about their country, available thanks to the efforts of experienced contributors, many of whom continue to edit political content from outside the country due to the risk of persecution.
Indeed, the Belarusian authorities have come down very hard on certain veteran Wikipedians, as frequent contributors to the site are known. In one case, a court in Minsk sentenced Mark Bernshtein, one of Wikipedia’s top 50 Russian-speaking contributors, to three years of home confinement in 2022 for creating a Wikipedia page about the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier that year.
Prior to Bernshtein’s arrest, Wikipedian Pavel Pernikau was imprisoned for two years after being found guilty of “discrediting” Belarus for adding a paragraph about the death of a protestor at the hands of the police to an article about the mass demonstrations against the stolen 2020 election, according to a report by human rights organisation Viasna.
Even Wikipedia recognises the gravity of the situation its contributors in Belarus now face, to the extent that they have overridden their own protocols and deleted the entire edit history for Belarus-related articles that could land its users in trouble.
Roman*, a Wikipedia contributor, says that the company’s list of its own potentially problematic articles was “unfortunately only increasing” as more and more topics become taboo or “extremist” in the eyes of authorities.
Though the Belarusian authorities have to date not announced any plans to block Wikipedia, should they decide to, they would need to block the entire website, much as China did in 2019, as simply making the Russian and Belarusian pages unavailable isn’t possible.
Preventing propaganda
One of Wikipedia’s fundamental principles is that all entries and articles should be presented in a neutral and impartial tone. For example, since Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner of the clearly stolen 2020 presidential election, Belarusian Wikipedia has stopped referring to him as “the president of Belarus” and has started using “the self-proclaimed partially recognised president of Belarus”.
When deciding how best to describe controversial figures, Denis, another Wikipedia contributor, says that editors will meet to discuss the issue, and that while there are always those that seek to use more forceful or more delicate language, in most cases they can eventually all agree on the final phrasing to be used.
Once the wording is added, the article will be closed to further edits, and from then on only administrators can edit the page and anybody who wants to add further information will have to first submit suggested new content via Wikipedia’s administrative pages, which, if approved, will be added to the main article.
When editing Wikipedia articles, Wikipedians typically use reputable sources such as encyclopedias, reference books, and scientific articles to maintain “an objective picture of what is happening”, but according to Mikhail, an experienced Wikipedian himself, this is not always possible because such resources do not contain up-to-date information about current events.
What’s in a name?
Following a petition that was signed by some 82,000 people, the Russian-language Wikipedia article about Belarus has recently changed its spelling of the country’s own name from Belorussia to Belarus, a contentious move that was the subject of debate for over a decade before the change was finally implemented.
Many Belarusian Wikipedians see their mission as maintaining free access to impartial information in Belarus, as well as information about Belarusian culture.
