The Belarusian government is threatening three HAM radio operators with the death penalty, detained at least seven people, and has accused them of “intercepting state secrets,” according to Belarusian state media, independent media outside of Belarus, and the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. The arrests are an extreme attack on what is most often a wholesome hobby that has a history of being vilified by authoritarian governments in part because the technology is quite censorship resistant.
The detentions were announced last week on Belarusian state TV, which claimed the men were part of a network of more than 50 people participating in the amateur radio hobby and have been accused of both “espionage” and “treason.” Authorities there said they seized more than 500 pieces of radio equipment. The men were accused on state TV of using radio to spy on the movement of government planes, though no actual evidence of this has been produced.
State TV claimed they were associated with the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR), a long-running amateur radio club and nonprofit that holds amateur radio competitions, meetups, trainings, and forums. WhatsApp and email requests to the BFRR from 404 Media were not returned.
On Reddit, Siarhei Besarab, a Belarusian HAM radio operator, posted a plea for support from others in the hobby: “MAYDAY from Belarus: Licensed operators facing death penalty.”
“I am writing this because my local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide,” Besarab wrote. “They have detained over 50 licensed people, including callsigns EW1ABT, EW1AEH, and EW1ACE. These men were paraded on state television like war criminals and were coerced to publicly repent for the “crime” of technical curiosity. Propagandists presented the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR) as a front for a ‘massive spy network.’”
“State propaganda unironically claims these men were ‘pumping state secrets out of the air’ using nothing more than basic $25 Baofeng handhelds and consumer-grade SDR dongles,” he added. “Any operator knows that hardware like this is physically incapable of cracking the modern AES-256 digital encryption used by government security forces. It is a technical fraud, yet they are being charged with High Treason and Espionage. The punishment in Belarus for these charges is life in prison or the death penalty.”
The Belarusian human rights group Viasna and its associated Telegram channel confirmed the detention and said that it spoke to a cellmate of Andrei Repetsi, who said that Repetsi was unable to talk about his case in jail: “The case is secret, so Andrei never told the essence of the case in the cell. He joked that his personal file was marked ‘Top secret. Burn before reading,’” Viasna wrote.
Most HAMs operate amateur radios for fun, as part of competitions, or to keep in touch with other HAMs around the world. But the hobby has a long history of being attacked by governments in part because it is resistant to censorship. Amateur radio often works even if a natural disaster or political action takes down internet, cell, and phone services, so it is popular among people interested in search and rescue and doomsday prepping. Amateur radio has been used to share information out of Cuba, for example, and in 2021 the Cuban government jammed HAM radio frequencies during anti-government protests there.