Ministry of Information warns Intex-press. Beldruk kiosks refuse to sell the paper

On May 4, the team received a writ­ten warn­ing from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion. It came by email. The doc­u­ment states that Baranavichy dis­trict and city court rec­og­nized the inter­view with Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya, pub­lished on April 14, as extrem­ist, and there­fore the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion «warns the legal enti­ty pub­lish­ing the news­pa­per, i.e. OOO Intex-Press Pub­lish­ing House, about the inad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of vio­lat­ing the require­ments of Arti­cle 38 of the Law on Mass Media» and informs that the com­pa­ny is to rem­e­dy teh breach­es and noti­fy the Min­istry of this by May 14.

The edi­to­r­i­al board removed the inter­view with Tsikhanouskaya from its web­site and removed it from the YouTube chan­nel on April 29, when the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office pub­lsi­hed the court deci­sion rec­og­niz­ing the the inter­view with Tsikhanouskaya as extrem­ist. Intex-Press is not aware of the time or day of the court hear­ing, and whether there was an expert exam­i­na­tion of the inter­view.  The edi­to­r­i­al team was actu­al­ly deprived of the right to defend itself in this civ­il case.

In addi­tion, on May 4, the edi­to­r­i­al team received a let­ter from direc­tor of the Brest branch of Bel­sayuz­druk net­work, Tat­siana Zinevich. It says that from May 5, 2021, the state-owned dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny «refus­es to deliv­er on its con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions uni­lat­er­al­ly.» Intex-Press is going to appeal this deci­sion.

Anoth­er state monop­oly — Belpochta — noti­fied the edi­to­r­i­al gteam on April 28 that the news­pa­per would not be includ­ed in the sub­scrip­tion cat­a­log for the sec­ond half of 2021. Retail chains also refuse to sell the news­pa­per.