“Belavezhskaya Puscha” VS Presidential Administration :: Charter'97 :: News

Editorial board of the independent Belarusian newspaper “Belavezhskaya Puscha” addressed the public organization “Ekopravo” with a request to help defend the newspaper’s rights.

BelaPAN was told by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Valery Dranchuk that on May 21 last year the editorial board forwarded to the presidential Administration and the Ministry of natural resources and environmental protection a letter, laying out the initiative to hold in July-August 2001 the press-tours of journalists and representatives of the ecological public in the national forest reserves “Prypyatsky”, “Berezinsky” and the “Belzvezhskaya Puscha”. The authors of the letter stressed that numerous critical publications in press make them worry over the destiny of the national natural resources.

According to V.Dranchuk, soon the newspaper’s editorial board received a letter from the Ministry of natural resources, reading that the authorities upheld the initiative and manifested readiness to help prepare the press-excursions given the issue gets positively resolved in the presidential Administration, which is a legitimate proprietor of the territories in question. “The president’s Administration didn’t react to the newspaper’s appeal. Despite public reminder (in the “Narodnaya Volya” newspaper of August 1, 2001), along with numerous phone requests by the authors of the collective appeal, the officials from the Administrations determined not to answer the editorial board,” – said Dranchuk. In this connection the newspaper addressed the “Ekopravo” with a request to “consider the possibility of the organization’s filing a lawsuit against the Administration over their lack of interest in the citizens’ complaints.”