It’s impossible to buy free press
3- 15.11.2007, 17:17
“Novaya Gazeta”, “Maskouski Kamsamolets”, “Kommersant” and “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” are no longer available for Belarusians. Russian newspapers have been excluded from the subscription catalogue for the year 2008 of the republican unitary enterprise Belposhta (a state monopoly distributing printed media on subscription). Though Belposhta has stated that the decision has been taken independently, without an order from higher authorities, it is obvious that such decision cannot be adopted by departments independently, “Novaya Gazeta” writes.
It is impossible to buy Russian newspapers in kiosks of Belsayuzdruk for a long time. Yesterday old ladies were energetically selling newspapers that have fallen from grace in pedestrian subways, but today a license for “entrepreneur activities” is demanded from them…
The rare Russian newspapers that are trying to cover the events in Belarus in an unbiased way, cannot be a part of the informational space formed by Lukashenka according to his taste and preferences.
A year ago, on November 28 journalists of “Moskovskiy Komsomolets” and “Kommersant” were not allowed to attend the CIS summit in Minsk. A press photographer of Kommersant Dmitry Azarov and a journalist of Moskovskiy Komsomolets Natalya Galimova were told unofficially that “Azarov makes indecent pictures of Lukashenka, and Moskovskiy Komsomolets writes indecent articles”.
A correspondent of “Novaya Gazeta” in Belarus Iryna Khalip many times received warnings of Belarusian prosecutors for publications in the Russian newspaper, for instance, for the article “Time to throw away the rake”. The regime decided that “a call for destabilization of the public order and change of the constitutional system of the Republic of Belarus in an illegal way”.
“Prosecutors are backward people. They still think that we are living in the Soviet Union. For them the Russian press is the same thing as the Belarusian one,” Iryna Khalip said after one of the visits to the prosecutor’s office. And she was far-seeing.
