Reporters Without Borders condemns lawsuits to close “Nasha Niva” and “Narodnaya Volya”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the Information Ministry’s request to the Supreme Economic Court to shut down two newspapers, “Nasha Niva” and “Narodnaya Volya”.

In the statement of April 28, Reporters Without Borders underlines that “he closure of the newspapers would be an “extremely grave decision”, because “the loss of these two major weeklies, representing nearly half the independent national media circulation, would be a fatal blow to the already extremely limited pluralism of the Belarusian press”.

The press freedom organization has on several occasions condemned this appalling law, which is used as a major weapon for intimidating the independent media.

The Reporters Without Borders called on the judges at the Supreme Economic Court to throw out this request.

As BelaPAN reported earlier, Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, expressed her concern about the lawsuits.

The Ministry of Information took a decision to send request to court under article 51, subsection 2.2, of the Law on Mass Media on the ground of issuing two or more written warnings during one year to the newspapers.

“Nasha Niva” and “Narodnaya Volya” are going to appeal against the Ministry’s request. If the papers are closed down, they will need a new registration to start working again.