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Theme: Belarus

Article

NOTES FROM THESE TROUBLED TIMES

This text, signed by the pseudonym E.V., closely describes the course of events surrounding the liquidation of the Belarusian PEN and the Writers' Union. The liquidation was part of the massive...

Text: E.V. December 06 2021
Article

With my head lying on a plastic bottle - prison diary.

More than 36,000 people have been arrested in Belarus over the past year for political reasons. The author, Andrej Dyńko, is still under criminal investigation. His colleagues, the editors of Naša...

Text: Dynko Andrej November 15 2021
Poetry

Protest poems by Dmitry Strotsev

Dmitry Strotsev's poetry moves in its very own border country in between political themes, issues of power abuse, religiosity, and spirituality. He illustrates the government’s abusive violence and...

Poems: Dmitry Strotsev November 15 2021
Article

Children of the Dictatorship

Near the Janka Kupala Park in central Minsk there is a statue of the child soldier and war hero Marat Kazei. Children play around the enormous stone fundament, on which the fourteen-year-old Kazei is...

Text: Nadya Kandrusevich-Shidlovskaya February 07 2021
Article

To stage a Revolution

The array of theatres in Minsk when we lived there 1997-99 was perfect for a family with smaller children. Within walking distance, we had them in a row: the circus, the puppet theatre, the cinema...

Text: Jacob Hirdwall February 02 2021
Poetry

Rose Pandemic

We woke up. We heard voices calling us, we heard our own voices crying out. The people’s uprising in Belarus became a mighty wave erupting from somewhere that looked like nowhere, which wasn’t true...

Poems: Valzhyna Mort January 20 2021
Article

Belarus - A Nation Being Reborn

“He blocked the sun.” This is what Uladzimir Njakljajeu said in 2012 when the then Swedish Ambassador Stefan Eriksson was forced to leave Belarus. The one blocked was of course the President. Yes, the...

Text: Stefan Eriksson January 13 2021
Poetry

Prison Poems

In early September, the poet, musician, and PEN member Uladzimir Liankevich was arrested during a peaceful manifestation in Minsk. He was sentenced to six days in prison. He was again arrested in...

Poems: Uladzimir Liankevich December 15 2020
Poetry

Unprotected

The crackdown on the peaceful protesters during the first days of August was strikingly violent. Many were arrested and beaten, at least one person was killed. In ”The Unprotected”, a series of poems...

poems: Hanna Komar December 15 2020
Article

Fascism as Memory

Introducing a well-known author to a new audience is not easy. Let us therefore get it over and done with. Alherd Bakharevich is one of the best authors in Belarus. Despite the fact that he does not...

Text: Alherd Bakharevich December 07 2020
Poetry

Protest poems

On October 21, one of Belarus' foremost poets, Dmitry Strotsev (b. 1963) disappeared without a trace. The day after, his name appeared on a list of interns at the infamous Akrestsina Detention Centre...

Poems: Dmitry Strotsev November 29 2020

Theme: Hatespeech

Editorial

When Hatred Becomes the Air We Breathe

What is hate speech? Hate speech differs from any other use of language since it is used only to threaten, silence, and...

Text: Casia Bromberg September 17 2020
Poetry

A poem by Linnea Lind-Jonsson

Linnea Lind-Jonsson from “Skrivande 20” (“Creative Writing Class 20”), a small group of students in year two on the upper secondary school writing programme at Film & Musikgymnasiet (The Film and...

Poem: Linnea Lind-Jonsson February 11 2022
Poetry

We are only people

Axel Hagström is one of the students at “Skrivande 20” (“Creative Writing Class 20”), a small group of students in year two on the upper secondary school writing programme at Film & Musikgymnasiet...

Text: Axel Hagström February 05 2022
Article

LGBTQ is Not a Question of Politics

Many right-wing news companies, parties, politicians, and activists say more or less the same things: either that LGBTQ...

Text: Liam Larsson January 28 2022
Article

An echo

Freedom of expression is the fundament of a democratic society: it is central in terms of information, debate...

Text: Maria Fagerberg January 28 2022
Article

”We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.”

What difference does it make in what way we label minority groups? When language is perpetually in flux how do we know which words or expressions we should use? In her research Anna Vogel studies how...

Text: Anna Vogel November 24 2020
Article

“My Name is Melusi Simelane”

Swaziland or the Kingdom of Eswatini as it is formally called is an absolute monarchy freed from British colonial rule in 1968. In Swaziland, to be homosexual and to be open with your identity as an...

Text:Melusi Simelane November 11 2020
Interview

An Interview with Betlehem Isaak on Hate Speech

Betlehem Isaak is a writer and activist. Her debut My Life without You, came out in March 2020 and is the story of her childhood in Sweden and Eritrea, about living in the shadow of her father, the...

Interview: Casia Blomberg October 27 2020
Article

The Sowers of Fear

“Are we witnessing the death of journalism or the end of the courage to speak the truth?” The appraised writer, human rights activist, and journalist Lydia Cacho writes about a brutal climate in...

Text: Lydia Cacho October 20 2020
Article

Why Ukraine Today is More Dangerous for Journalists

Each year journalists worldwide who ask unwanted questions, who investigate those in power, and who simply are doing their job are persecuted and killed. But even in this dangerous profession there...

Text: Yuliana Skibitskaya October 07 2020
Poetry

Two poems by Aaiún Nin

Aaiun Nin, Angolan spoken word poet and artist, was born in Luanda but currently lives in Copenhagen. Nin’s work touches on themes of racism and sexuality and it is an ongoing examination of pain and...

Text: Aaiún Nin October 06 2020
Article

Breath, air, contagion

“..I’ve lived in India for over forty years, and the last ten have been a steady, brutal immersion into an ocean of hate, so constant and so all-pervasive that we no longer notice it as ‘hate speech.’...

Text: Nilanjana Roy September 28 2020
Article

A snapshot of Rwanda’s Genocide Law

Has the historically weighty Rwanda Hate Speech Genocide Law, intended to thwart hate speech in Rwanda, transformed into a tool now used against dissidents in the country? The Human Rights lawyer...

Text: Louis Gitinywa September 22 2020
Poetry

Four poems from Hong Kong

Matthew Cheng — poet, critic, and editor of the magazine Voice and Verse. He has published three collections of poetry and is the co-author of Wait and See, an anthology of poetry by six young Hong...

Text: Matthew Cheng September 17 2020
Article

Fighting with words

“I explained as thoroughly as I could that one of the words was the name of my lands, the other of my hometown, and that Newroz is a festivity that Kurds have celebrated for thousands of years. At...

Text: Nurcan Baysal September 17 2020

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