PEN Belarus’s fight for freedom of literary expression and human rights

Forbidden Voices

Under the present Lukashenko regime, freedom of literary expression in Belarus has ceased to exist. Writers are persecuted and locked away, some have fled. In exile, PEN Belarus continues to fight for Belarusian voices to be heard and read. Tonight, our panel will shed light on this ongoing struggle.

PEN Belarus was banned by a Supreme Court decision on August 9, 2021, but reorganized itself in Warsaw. The organisation counts Nobel laureate in Literature Svetlana Alexievich and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aleś Bialacki (currently a political prisoner) among its members. In this program, PEN Belarus president Taciana Niadbaj will tell about the ongoing fight for freedom of expression in Belarus. She is joined by Peter Vermeersch, scholar and writer of non-fiction, whose most recent book Polsslag (May 2025), deals with the role of music in the 2020 protests in Minsk again the Lukashenko regime.

About the speakers

Taciana Niadbaj is president of the PEN Belarus board, human rights activist, and a poet. She works tirelessly to support Belarusian writers in prison and campaign for their freedom, while keeping their work available to the public. She is the author of the poetry collection Sirens Are Singing Jazz, for which she received the Maksim Bahdanovič Debut Award, and is the founder of the publishing house Połackija Łabitynty.

Peter Vermeersch is a professor of politics at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, and a writer of narrative non-fiction. His work focuses on minority politics, memory politics, and pro-democracy movements in Central and Eastern Europe. His most recent book, Polsslag (De Bezige Bij, 2025), tells the story of a group of Belarusian musicians caught in the violent repression of dissent. Through their experience, Vermeersch explores how artists confront autocracy, how cultural memory is contested and reclaimed, and how music can carry the embers of democratic hope.

Nina Targan Mouravi is a Dutch-Georgian artist and translator. She has lived in the Netherlands since 1991 and compiled multiple anthologies of translated poetry, winning the Aleida Schot prize in 2024. She was a board member of PEN Nederland from 2020 to 2024.

Jesse van Amelsvoort (moderator) is a scholar of comparative literature, and a lecturer in European Studies, University of Amsterdam