“Sovetskaya Belorussiya” deleted lilbel about Yana Paliakova from its website

An article about Yana Paliakova published a day before the suicide of the human rights activist, has disappeared from “Sovetskaya Belorussia” website.

On March 6 the newspaper of the presidential administration of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, “Sovetskaya Belorussiya” ((№42 (23186)), with a circulation of 500,000 according to its editor-in-chief Pavel Yakubovich, published an article “We have many oddities, and every oddball here is Beethoven!” The article in the genre of feuilleton, told about the human rights activists from Salihorsk, Yana Paliakova. The author of the newspaper libel, who called himself Ksenofont Superfosfatov, described pressure on the human rights activist by Salihorsk police in a condescending and even mocking tone.

The feuilleton and denunciation was published in the largest newspaper of Belarus. The author of the article insulted not only the concrete person, but smeared all Belarusian human rights activists. On the next day after the article was published, March 7, the human rights activist committed suicide.

After the death of Yana Paliakova neither the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pavel Yakubovich, nor the journalist who took the penname Superfosfatov, offered apologies. Moreover, on March 9 the article “We have many oddities, and every oddball here is Beethoven!” disappeared from the website of the “Sovetskaya Belorussiya”. The link to the article www.sb.by/post/82019 shows the words “Information not found”.

As we have informed, earlier human rights activists stated that the actions of the regime against Yana Paliakova and pressure on her fall under the Article of the Criminal Code “Incitement to suicide”.