Ministry of Information cancels registration of Narodnaya Volya newspaper
The Ministry of Information has canceled the certificate of state registration of the newspaper Narodnaya Volya.
«The registration was revoked since the newspaper hasn’t been published in print for six months in a row,» reads the statement of the agency.
Narodnaya Volya faced problems as early as August 2020. After coverage of the protests appeared on the front pages of the newspaper, the Press House that used to print the edition refused to do so allegedly due to a break of machines. The same happened with Komsomolskaya Gazeta. The contract with the newspaper was later canceled, and it was printed in Russia for a while. Belarusian Post stopped distributing the paper.
In November 2020 it became known that Narodnaya Volya stopped publishing the paper edition. The Moscow printing house annulled the contract with the edition after Russian consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor came with an inspection and suspended its work. At the same time, law enforcement officers came to the editorial office of Narodnaya Volya in Minsk and confiscated the entire print run of a new issue. They also detained the driver and the volunteers who delivered the publication.
The website of Narodnaya Volya was blocked in August 2022. At the end of December last year, the Ministry of Information lifted the block. In April this year, the publication terminated the issue of the PDF version of the newspaper.
Read more:
“I stay so that those who have been imprisoned or forced to leave have a place to return to”. Motivations of journalists who choose to stay in Belarus
“If one of us is imprisoned, the other one takes the child and leaves the country.” The key from the report of human rights activists on the psychological state of political emigrants
«We stand by the truth, we stand together!» A marathon of solidarity with the imprisoned journalists started in Vilnius