Physicist from the Institute of Nuclear Problems Convicted for Politics. He Developed Supercollider Models and Translated Ubuntu into Belarusian
Viktor Havrylavyets worked on complex and pressing scientific problems. But he was convicted for what is called "abetting extremist activity" and thrown behind bars.
Viktor Havrylavyets. Photo from his VKontakte page
Viktor Havrylavyets is 39 years old. He comes from the village of Milashavichy, on the Ubart River in the Lelchytsy district. Viktor graduated from the Faculty of Physics at BSU in 2008, and simultaneously received a second higher education in "economic cybernetics".
In recent years, Viktor worked as a researcher in the Sectoral Laboratory of Radiation Safety at the Institute of Nuclear Problems of BSU, where he conducted research. He wrote about mathematical modeling of physical processes and studied radiation in crystals.
Viktor is a co-author of publications for the Future Circular Collider (FCC) project. This is an ambitious European supercollider project designed to replace the Large Hadron Collider. Viktor was involved in modeling the passage of particles through bent crystals.
His works are cited in prestigious international journals — one of the works, where he is listed as a co-author, has been cited almost 1100 times, which is a lot for a scientific article. In total, he has over 3000 citations — an excellent result for a Belarusian scientist.
Viktor Havrylavyets. Photo: VKontakte
Besides science, Viktor is a member of the Open Source community and a popularizer of the Belarusian language in IT. In comments, he wrote that he is involved in translating and integrating the interfaces of Ubuntu, Inkscape, and GNOME so that Belarusians can comfortably use free software in their native language.
He not only translated but also proofread others' texts, explaining it as a desire to use a quality product: "I joined because I wanted to use Ubuntu without problems."
Viktor was tried in the Minsk City Court under parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code of Belarus — "abetting extremist activity". Presumably, the persecution is related to the Hayun case, but this is not precisely known.
The Belarusian authorities consider "extremism" to include subscriptions to independent channels, media, the presence of links to them on social media, or the presence of Belarusian national, pre-Lukashenka symbols on social media or on personal belongings. Also considered "extremism" is virtually any criticism of the authorities, official historical narratives, or expressions of solidarity with Ukraine. Activities not controlled by the authorities are also considered "extremist". Specifically, the authorities retroactively criminalized the collection of information about the activities of Russian troops in Belarus during the 2022 attack on Ukraine, which was carried out by the "Belaruski Hayun" initiative. Thousands of people wrote to the Hayun bot, and now all of them are being searched for.
Repressions of various kinds have already affected about 150,000 people, and several hundred thousand more have been forced to leave Belarus.
Havrylavyets was sentenced to restriction of freedom (non-custodial sentence).