Zhanna Litvina: “Official Minsk quells all attempts to establish dialog with Europe”

“If this regressive draft law is adopted, the official Minsk will quell all attempts to establish a dialog with the European institutions,” Zhanna Litvina, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), said commenting on the adoption the Law on Media by the “house of representatives” in the first reading.

“The situation with the media is of top priority for all European institutions and international organisations. They watch closely the situation with the press in our country,” the BAJ press service quotes Z. Litvina.

"This is one of the most important laws for the society. The question is why they try to adopt this law so hastily. The only explanation I see is that we approach the next political campaign that will change the composition of the parliament to some extent. So all the responsibility for adoption of such a regressive law will be placed on present MPs, so that newly elected parliament will be able to say it was not them to blame for that", Mrs. Litvina thinks.

“The MPs’ feeling of responsibility is becoming weaker at the end of their term. For me this is the hallmark of weakness of our parliament that is willing to be obedient up to the last day and to ignore the need for a public discussion of the draft la,”, Zhanna Litvina believes.