BAJ Protests Shutdown of Pagonya :: Charter'97 :: News

Belarusian Association of Journalists protested today against the arbitrary closure of newspaper “Pagonya”, one of the first independent editions in Belarus. BAJ press-service reports that the journalistic association connects the newspaper’s shutdown with Alexander Lukashenko’s recent promise to deal with the independent press after the ballot. They also point out the continued investigation of the criminal case, initiated against the “Rabochy” newspaper and the refusal of the Supreme Economic Court to consider the lawsuit, brought by the “Brest courier” newspaper against the Ministry of information, in which the paper required to invalidate the warning.

BAJ claims that although the alleged basis for closing the newspaper and liquidating its editorial board, mentioned by the procuracy, was numerous warnings, in reality the periodical received only one official reprimand by the moment the petition had been filed (for publishing the appeal of an unregistered organization “Civil initiative”).

When the jury found out that this isn’t enough to close the newspaper, the Grodno region procuracy reprimanded the newspaper for the second time in a row (on September 21, 2001) for publishing the same materials, which were used as a pretext to open criminal proceedings against the newspaper. According to BAJ, the procuracy doesn’t seem to care about the fact that the investigation on the matter is unaccomplished and that there’s no judicial decision, confirming the fact that the paper violated legislation. Nor was it stopped by the fact that the whole print run of the newspaper, containing the afore-mentioned publications, was seized from the publishing house, which is the reason why the paper never reached the audience.