Information about the issued official warnings appeared on the Web-site of Ministry of Information of Belarus on 18 November 18.
Narodnaja Vola was warned according to article 38: “Distribution of banned information in the media.” In particular, the Ministry officials found “propaganda of extremist activities” in the article Don’t Prevent Others from Defending Their Rights (A Point of View section, ##169–170, 30 October – 2 November, 2009). The article was written by Ihar Drako, a Minsk resident, who presented his opinion as for the preferable scenario of actions for the Belarusian opposition at the upcoming Presidential elections.
Iosif Siaredzich, Narodnaja Vola editor-in-chief, thinks that “there is no logic in ministry’s warning [to his publication].
We did not mean that people should restore to extremism. We meant that if laws and Constitution were violated then Belarusian citizens would have a right to defend laws and Constitution. We also know that in his interview Lukashenka confessed that the law was violated: he ordered to change the number of a vote count. And if the president himself violated the law do ordinary people have the right to demand that he obeys this law?”
Both Naša Niva and Komsomolskaja Pradva v Biełarusi were warned for articles, dedicated to the problem of swine flu epidemic in Belarus. In particular, Naša Niva was accused of violating article 34 of the Belarusian Law on Mass Media. According to this legal norm, a journalist of any media has to verify truthfulness of distributed information in order to disseminate correct information. Thus, Naša Niva presented information about the death-rate of swine flu in the country and Komsomolskaja Pradva v Biełarusi distributed information about the absence of Tamiflu medicine in the Homiel Regional TB Clinic.
The Ministry of Information officials were certain that the news paper statistics about the swine flu death-rate “does not correspond to real numbers provided by the Ministry of Health.”
The Va-Bank founder and editorial office (an advertising and information newspaper, published by BelKP-Press Corporation and distributed free of charge) were officially warned for breaking article 14 (Re-registration of Mass Media), article 38 (Distribution of banned information in the media), and article 49 (Written Warnings) of the Belarusian Media Law.
All four media organizations were urged to eliminate the violations within a 10 day term by the Ministry of Information, according to information on the Ministerial Web-site.
“The truth about swine flue angered the officials? Or was it Medvedev’s invitation for an interview? Otherwise, it is difficult to explain four written warnings to different publication at a time,” journalists were pondering on the Naša Niva web-site.
