Article 368 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus

Article 368 punishes public insult of the President of the Republic of Belarus: up to three years under Part 1 and up to four under Part 2, for a repeat offence or an insult combined with an accusation of a grave crime. The element is the insult itself; no threat, call or falsehood is needed. There is no equivalent protection for any other person in Belarusian law.

The documented cases are comments. A rude word under a news post, a meme, a caption on a photo, a sticker, a voice message in a chat, a remark on a personal page. Investigators identify authors through seized phones and through the administrators of chats who are pressured to hand over data, and the charge is almost always brought together with Article 369 (insulting an official) and often 130 (incitement) for the same text, which turns a single comment thread into a five-year sentence. Prosecutions continue years after the comment was posted.