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  • Narodnaya Volia chief editor announces resignation

    This morning, Iosif Siaredzich, the editor-in-chief of one of the oldest independent newspapers, published a farewell letter on its Telegram channel. In the letter, he announces his resignation prompted by his age. The letter also states that he has transferred the site’s rights to another person and the online media will remain active.

    “I will turn 75 in a cou­ple of months. Like it or not, your age and health make you stop the heavy dai­ly work. The cir­cum­stances also do not favor vig­or­ous activ­i­ty,” Iosif Siaredzich wrote.

    He remem­bers the chal­lenges that the pub­lish­ing team of one of the old­est inde­pen­dent news­pa­pers had to over­come.

    “You, the loy­al back­ers of Nar­o­d­naya Volia, are well aware of the dis­grace­ful tac­tics employed by cer­tain fac­tions to divide us. Ini­tial­ly, they declined print­ing ser­vices and, recent­ly, they revoked the reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cate of the news­pa­per. Notably, the news­pa­per had not received any warn­ings from the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, or the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion for over a decade.”

    These sad lines touch the hearts of read­ers, jour­nal­ists, and speak­ers. Nar­o­d­naya Volia has been a sym­bol of the free press in Belarus for many years. It appeared to with­stand the test of time and gov­ern­ment oppres­sion. Yet, the news­pa­per faced issues with print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, fol­lowed by attacks on the web­site.

    Iosif Siaredzich sum­ma­rizes that the pub­li­ca­tion, which was a mod­el for all Belaru­sian media, was destroyed with­out rea­son.

    The for­mer edi­tor-in-chief empha­sizes in his farewell let­ter:

    “We at Nar­o­d­naya Volia have not betrayed our integri­ty, free­dom of speech, or our moth­er­land! We will con­tin­ue to remain the same!”

    The leg­endary Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist thanks his read­ers and promis­es to stay con­nect­ed to them, but is leav­ing the edi­to­r­i­al office.

    What will become of Nar­o­d­naya Volia which now oper­ates as an online media? Iosif Siaredzich offi­cial­ly trans­ferred the own­er­ship rights for the web­site nv-online.info to anoth­er indi­vid­ual, whose name was not spec­i­fied.

    He assures that the dig­i­tal plat­form will remain the source of truth­ful infor­ma­tion for Belaru­sians.

    Iosif Siaredzich has been in charge of Nar­o­d­naya Volia news­pa­per for 28 years, ever since it start­ed in July 1995. In his good­bye mes­sage, he described him­self as a jour­nal­ist who has spent 56 years in this pro­fes­sion.

    Thank you, Mr. Siaredzich! Your work was use­ful, infor­ma­tive, and inter­est­ing!

    Read more:

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    Reporters Without Borders expressed solidarity with imprisoned Belarusian journalists in 12 countries

    Ministry of Information blocks Plan B media

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