Publisher Deprived of License for Publishing Belarus Press Photo 2011

The doc­u­ment was signed by Liliya Ananich, deputy of the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion. The license was with­drawn because of “rough vio­la­tions of the leg­is­la­tion on licens­ing”. The mat­ter deals with pub­lish­ing of the Belarus press Pho­to 2011 pho­to album which had been rec­og­nized extrem­ist by the Ash­mi­any court on April 18, 2013.

“We think that the license had been sus­pend­ed unlaw­ful­ly, with many vio­la­tions, so we have already sent a let­ter to the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Aleh Praliask­ous­ki,” said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny.

Accord­ing to Andrei Bas­tunets, the deputy chair and lawyer of BAJ, the law does not enti­tle the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion to tak­ing such mea­sures, and also the pro­ce­dure of license sus­pen­sion has been vio­lat­ed.

“I would like to draw atten­tion to the fact that the pub­lish­ing house was not involved in the Belarus Press Pho­to 2011 case in any sta­tus. But now the deci­sion of the tri­al has been made the ground for with­draw­ing the license,” remarked the lawyer. “If the Min­istry does not change their mind, the sit­u­a­tion can be resolved only in court.”