Pickets in support of "Volnaye Hlybokaye" are banned

Hlybokaye district executive committee refused to authorize the pickets in defense of a non-state newspaper Volnaye Hlybokaye at the town market, where the newspaper is distributed.

Yaraslau Bernikovich, an activist of For Freedom movement, has received from the authorities a written answer concerning his application for authorization of pickets on 11 February and 26 March. The district executive committee referred to its own ruling, according to which it the holding of mass actions was prohibited and mass actions could be held only at the outskirts, near the district Culture House – a desolate place, where usually one can meet only a few passers-by.

The civil activists of Hlybokaye believe that picketing in the aforementioned location will give no result and intend to continue defending the newspaper’s rights by other means. In particular, in January 2008 they collected signatures under the letter to the district communications unit Aleh Pachkouski, in which they demanded explanations why the subscription to Volnaye Hlybokaye had been liquidated and still hadn’t been renewed, as, for instance, the subscription to Narodnaya Volia and Nasha Niva. They haven’t received an answer to the letter yet.

Vitsebsk members of the Belarusian Association of Journalists joined the actions of support to Volnaye Hlybokaye. They addressed the head of Hlybokaye district executive committee and the head of the committee’s ideological department requiring explanations why the state district newspaper Vesnik Hlyboccchyny and the non-state newspaper Volnaye Hlybokaye had different rights, which resulted in restriction of the constitutional right of the readers to receive true and all-sided information.