"BDG" Case to Be Dealt with on June 10, 16 :: Charter'97 :: News

At its June 10 and 16 sessions the Supreme Economic Court will examine the lawfulness of the reprimand, entailing the “BDG” publishing suspension, passed by the country’s Information Minister Mikhail Podgainy. In an interview to the newspaper “Sovietskaya Belorussiya”, published on June 3, 2003 Mikhail Podgainy didn’t rule out a possibility that this decision can get invalidated by court.

According to his information, in the year 2003 the Ministry of information of Belarus issued 26 reprimands to mass media outlets. “It isn’t much, it isn’t little: usually in one year we pass about 70 reprimands,” – he says: “It’s a normal phenomenon, when the Ministry of information, guided by the law, passes adequate measures in case of the law violations,” – emphasized the Minister.

The Minister deems that following the issue of reprimands to “BDG” the “journalists started provoking a conflict, using the newspaper’s leverages in order to exert pressure on public and court before the problem’s consideration”. It is namely because of that, he noted, that there was passed a decision on the newspaper’s suspension for the period of three months.