Police confiscated circulation of another edition of ‘Vitebskiy Kuryer’

The car of Vikar Ramniou, the founder of Vitebskiy Kuryer, was stopped by policemen in the Mahiliou region, on the way from a Smolensk printing house.

According to information of RFE/RL, in the Horatski police department the print run of the newspaper, 10,000 copies, was seized from Viktar Ramniou.

The policemen drew up a new report for allegedly illegal dissemination of printed materials. The date of the court trial wasn’t said to Ramniou. He was told to wait for a summons.

Exactly on 8 April, the court of the Pershamaiski district of Vitsebsk was to consider the charges that were brought against Ramniou last time, on 1 April, when Vitsebsk policemen found in his car and confiscated 53 copies of Vitebskiy Kuryer. However, Judge Valiantsina Kismiaroshkina postponed the trial to 20 April, as she had to get prepared for the trial.

Viktar Ramniou has been punished for dissemination of independent newspapers many times already. Policemen consider transporting newspapers from Russia as dissemination.

On 25 March, policemen from the Liozna police department detained the car of the Vitebskiy Kuryer publisher not far from the Russian-Belarusian border and confiscated the entire print run of the newspaper, 10,000 copies. On the evening the same day the founder of the newspaper was sentenced to a fine of 1.2 million Belarusian rubles. On 26 March the Vitsebsk regional court also fined Viktar Ramniou for transportation of the unregistered newspaper Nash Dom.