Independent newspapers overboard of subscription campaign

Campaign of subscribing to periodicals for 2009 began in Belarus a week ago -on October 15. A number of independent public-political newspapers weren’t included into the Belposhta company subscribing catalogue again.

In spite of written requests of editors’ offices to include them into a catalogue of the state-owned post company, national newspapers “Narodnaya Volya”, “Nasha Niva”, “Novy Chas”, “SNplus. Svobodnye Novosti plus”, “Tovarishch”, and regional editions “Borisovskie Novosti”, “Vitebski Kuryer-M”, “Volnae Hlybokae”, “Hazeta Slonimskaya”, “Hantsvitski Chas”, and “Intex-press” (Baranavichy) are overboard of the subscription campaign again, the press service of the Belarusian Association of Journalists informs.

“Nasha Niva”, printed in Belarusian, is rejected distributing via subscription traditionally invoking to “economic inexpediency”.

Officers of Belposhta company phoned to “Hazeta Slonimskaya” (the Hrodna region) in September and asked to apply for including the edition into a catalogue, but didn’t do it later by unknown reasons. “Not we, but company’s administration in Minsk decides if “Hazeta Slonimskaya” should be returned into the catalogue,” Mikhail Mandrynkevich, officer of the Slonim post department, told to the BAJ press service.

“Intex-press” and “Hantsvitski Chas” were answered by the Brest office of Belposhta that “expediency” of signing a contract on distribution of the editions would be considered.

Other newspapers didn’t receive any answers at all, as, for example, “Volnae Hlybokae” (the Vitsebsk region), whose editor applied for including them into the subscribing catalogue yet in late September.

In the mean time, two more independent newspapers, “Lyakhavitski Chas” and “Myastsovy Chas” (Pinsk) had to stop printing in 2008 due to the absence of a possibility for normal distributing.