Iosif Syaredzich: “If the law is violated, people of Belarus have the right to uphold justice”
- 19.11.2009, 14:10
The “Narodnaya Volya” editor-in-chief is indignant at warning issued by the Ministry of Information to his newspaper.
On November 18, the Ministry of Information of Belarus issued mass warnings to four independent newspapers: “Narodnaya Volya”, “Nasha Niva”, ““Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus” and “Va-Bank”.
“Narodnaya Volya” was warned under article 38 “Distribution of information which distributing is prohibited in mass media”. The Ministry found propaganda of extremist activities in the article “Don’t hinder others to uphold freedom” (“Point of view” column, № № 169–70 of October 29).
The article signed by reader Ihar Draka says that in case of rigging election results in 2011 Belarusians should defend their choice at the square. To gather 100,000 people on the square, the work with voters should be started now. It is also written in the article about the necessity to nominate a single oppositional candidate.
“Narodnaya Volya” editor-in-chief Iosif Syaredzich says the reaction of the Ministry of Information for this article was a surprise for him.
“This started from nothing. We didn’t mean any extremist activity,” the editor-in-chief told in an interview to Radio Svaboda. “We meant that if laws and the Constitution are violated, the people of Belarus will have the right to defend the Constitution and law. As we know from Lukashenka’s interview, the law had been violated and he had given an order to change the voting results.
Then if the ruler violates the law, why can’t people have the right to demand that he should keep to the law? When we published that article by Ihar Draka from Minsk, he meant that if our laws were violated, why couldn’t people make the Election Commission and other institutions count the votes in a fair way? We saw the same situation in Ukraine. Now Lukashenka meets with Yushchenko. But Yushchenko came to power due the same situation, when people are fighting for justice. So, I don’t understand this warning, it is illogical.”
