Police: You can photograph buildings, but you can also get arrested

"This requirement is intended only to provide security in the country and is designed to make  police officers more vigilant with regard to the prevention of possible threats of different nature: from provocations to terrorist acts... We are not talking about banning video recording or photographing office buildings, the instruction exclusively regulates the actions of the police staff," told BelTA Head of Police Information and Public Relations department, Kanstantsin Shalkevich.

The Interior Ministry also reminded that when there is a suspicion that the photographer has something to do with provocative or other activities threatening public security, police officers have the right to take the photographer to the station and deal with him there. Under the law, any person can be kept in police custody for no more than three hours.

The issues of taking pictures of the administrative buildings surfaced at the end of February, when an employee of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus, Dzmitry Lasko, spent more than three hours in Zavodski rayon police station for taking photographs of the Academy of Sciences.