On October 31, the Gomel Regional Court in Belarus sentenced members of the rock band Tor Band to prison terms ranging from 7.5 to 9 years, as reported by the human rights project "Gomelskaya Viasna." Dmitry Golovach was sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security penal colony, Yevgeny Burlo received an eight-year sentence, and Andrey Yaremchik was sentenced to seven and a half years. The court hearings were held in closed sessions.
The musicians were found guilty of four criminal charges under the Belarusian Criminal Code: incitement to social hatred (Part 3 of Article 130), creating an extremist group or participating in it (Part 1 and Part 3 of Article 361-1), discrediting the Republic of Belarus (Article 369-1), and insulting Alexander Lukashenko (Article 368).
The band Tor Band originated in the city of Rogachev in 2017, but they gained significant popularity in 2020. According to the "Zerkalo" media, their songs became one of the symbols of protests in Belarus. Their song "Мы не народец" ("We Are Not Little People") in the summer of 2020 "could be heard from every speaker and at every march."
Despite the repression against protest participants, the band members remained in Belarus.
At the end of October 2022, Belarusian law enforcement detained three musicians and the wives of two of them. Soon after, all the videos on the group's official YouTube channel, which had amassed over five million views by that time, disappeared. On November 4, the court decision from Gomel was added to the Republican list of extremist materials. Social networks, the group's YouTube channel, and ten of their songs were declared "extremist." It's worth noting that the court had reached this decision on August 29. Since their administrative arrest in October, the musicians had not been released.
On January 20, 2023, the KGB of Belarus officially declared Tor Band an "extremist formation."
