Keep still, they are spying upon you

• 13.08.2008, 10:49

An article with such an article was published in the newspaper “Kurjer iz Vitsebska”. The cause for it was a document describing activities of oppositionists from Vitsebsk region, signed by the head of the ideology department of the regional executive committee.

As said by the author of the article, a journalist Syarhei Butkevich, a copy of the official document “Information on oppositional structures of Vitsebsk region” was given to him by one of the officials of the regional executive committee. It is not completely clear who is the author of the report, security service of the head of the ideology work department of Vitsebsk regional executive committee Mikhail Kuzmich. However, the document signed by him “prove that the state is spying on all those who has oppositional views or potentially could become dissenter as for the policy of the regime”, Butkevich states.

Butkevich’s article has become a real bombshell, and it caused troubles to the editor-in-chief of the “Kurjer iz Vitsebska” Uladizmir Bazan. He is summoned either to the KGB, or to the Economic Crime Department, or to the Tax investigation department all the time, Deutsche Welle informs.

A person, who sells the independent newspaper, Barys Khamajda, was detained by law-enforcers. A report was drawn up against him “for selling independent newspapers in unauthorized places”. “As a result of that, I am fined, but I do not count fines, it is easier to count the days I have spent under arrest,” the oppositionist said.

The words: “in an unsanctioned place” equates newspapers to hot buns, but it is known to everybody that there are no authorized places for selling independent newspapers in Vitsebsk, as well as all over the country. But soon there would be no use to speak about that at all, Uladzimir Bazan says: “independent and unregistered printed media still can be released somehow until the new law on press hasn’t come into force. But the noose is being tightened, and the end is near”.