(RSF/IFEX) – On 6 February 2003, RSF strongly protested a court’s cancellation of Romuald Ulan’s commercial licence. Ulan is founder of “Novaya Gazeta Smorgoni”, an independent weekly in the town of Smorgon. The court decision threatens the paper’s very survival. “Your government is systematically using bureaucratic and legalistic means of obstruction to censor and gag […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 6 February 2003, RSF strongly protested a court’s cancellation of Romuald Ulan’s commercial licence. Ulan is founder of “Novaya Gazeta Smorgoni”, an independent weekly in the town of Smorgon. The court decision threatens the paper’s very survival.
“Your government is systematically using bureaucratic and legalistic means of obstruction to censor and gag the independent press,” RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Justice Minister Viktor Golovanov. “We protest strongly against the Grodno Commercial Court’s 3 February decision, which amounts to a death sentence against a paper that has become too much of a nuisance to local authorities on the eve of next month’s regional elections. We are not fooled by this legal farce and ask that you use all your influence to ensure that this decision is reversed on appeal,” Ménard added.
The court decision came in response to a complaint filed by the Smorgon town board, accusing Ulan of not respecting labour and tax laws and fire regulations in 2000 and 2002. The town authorities have been harassing “Novaya Gazeta Smorgoni” for several years. They have also obstructed the publication of two other newspapers run by Ulan, “Novaya Gazeta Astrautsa” and “Novaya Gazeta Ashmyan”. The Grodno Commercial Court condemned the town authorities’ obstruction on two separate occasions, in 2001 and 2002.
RSF recalls that the government controls the country’s publicly-owned media outlets and the independent press is systematically harassed by regional and national authorities. In 2002, three journalists were sent to a labour camp for insulting the president. They had either denounced President Alexander Lukashenko’s corruption or implicated him in the July 2000 disappearance of journalist Dmitri Zavadski.
