Shved: number of extremist crimes in Belarus continues to decline

The number of extremist crimes continues to decline in Belarus – as noted by Belarus’ Prosecutor General Andrei Shved at the 21st meeting of the SCO prosecutors general in the Chinese city of Xi’an, with details reported in the Department of Interaction with Mass Media and Editorial Activities of the Prosecutor General’s Office

In his speech on the role of the prosecutor’s office in countering extremism, Andrei Shved, in particular, focused on the situation in the country in 2020. The official drew the attention of his colleagues to the goals of the mass riots, which were organised using the technologies of ‘colour revolutions’ – the overthrow of the legitimate government and the deprivation of the country’s real sovereignty.

“Thanks to timely measures taken, the goal was not achieved. During that difficult period for our country, the efforts of the prosecution authorities were focused on countering extremism and preventing destabilisation of the socio-political and socio-economic situation in Belarus. Under the prosecutor’s supervision, a set of measures was implemented to immediately investigate crimes of an extremist nature, ensure efficient and co-ordinated activities of the law enforcement unit, identify and suppress sources of financing of extremist activities, and establish the causes and conditions that contributed to the crimes. When maintaining state prosecution in criminal cases, the implementation of the principle of inevitability of responsibility was ensured, which also played an important preventive role in establishing order,” Andrei Shved underlined.

The head of the supervisory agency noted that more than 70 percent of crimes of an extremist nature in the country were committed using information technologies, so special attention is paid to the information space today. By decisions of prosecutors, access to Internet resources and online publications through which extremist content is distributed is promptly limited. At the same time, he noted, the timely reaction of law enforcement officers made it possible to restore order, the number of extremist crimes in the country has significantly decreased and continues to decline, and the socio-political situation has stabilised.

The meeting was attended by delegations of the prosecutor general’s offices of India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as observer states and dialogue partners: Belarus and Mongolia.