During the last years Belarusian independent press has been violently pressurized by the authorities. Half a year remains to the presidential election of 2006, but the few surviving Belarusian mass media feel the activation of the repressive actions well enough
On 31 October the police detained the car with three members of United Civil Party and confiscated from them 3 400 copies of Narodnaia Volia newspaper. Two days later the newspapers were returned. The public activists consider these actions of the police lawless (the editorial board of the newspaper and UCP concluded agreement for distribution of Narodnaia Volia newspaper, each copy of which has the seal “For promotion purposes” on) and complain against them to procurator’s office.
Despite its being officially registered, since 4 November Narodnaia Volia has been printed in Smolensk (Russia) as all Belarusian printing houses refused to collaborate with it. The main part of the circulation is distributed on subscription. The remaining several thousands are handed out free of charge by public organizations and oppositional parties. The newspaper distributors are regularly detained by the police.
There are also other forms of persecution. One of the recent examples is the annulment of registration to Kuryer iz Borisova newspaper by the Ministry of Information. Recently the large independent newspapers Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, Belorusskiy Rynok and Belorusskaya Gazeta had to change their names to BDG. Delovaya Gazeta, Belorusy i Rynok and Belgazeta and undergo the complicated procedure of re-registration, (in one of his recent decrees Lukashenka prohibited newspapers to use the words “Belarusian” and “National” in their names).
– A new period has come for Belarusian non-state press, comments Zhanna Litvina, chair of Belarusian Association of Journalists. – In the present situation it is impossible to consider independent press as a stable system and an independent institution of the civil society. We are rudely pushed out of the legal information space into underground and “non-traditional” forms of mass-media activity. But even in such conditions we must executed our professional duty. Nobody will do it for us, Litvina says.
