Vitsebsk: Police Fail to Find Persons Who Pose Threats to Non-state Newspaper

12.09.2006.

Source: www.baj.ru

On 5 September the editorial office the non-state newspaper Vitsebski Kuryer got a reply from the police to their request to find the authors of the threats they had received. It was stated that ˜it turned out to be impossible to find the person who had sent you that letter. You will be informed if the person is found.’ The reply was signed by the deputy head of Vitsebsk Kastrychnitski District Board of Internal Affairs.

Let us remind you that on 10 August Vitsebski Kuryer received a letter containing threats. The letter was sent by the Russian National Unity, unregistered Russian neo-Nazi organization. ˜Your newspaper is financed by American and German enemies of Russia. It breaks the unity of Slavonic nations’, -- was stated in the letter. Its authors demanded that the editorial staff changed the newspaper's informational policy and ˜stopped publishing articles that discredit the present Belarusian authorities and A.Lukashenka who is struggling to make Slavonic nations superior in comparison with Jews and all kinds of liberals who are trying to enslave Russian people’. Otherwise the organization is going ˜to use all its contacts’ in order to close the edition down as soon as possible.

The letter also contained a picture of a military man with a fylfot on his uniform holding a hanged man in one hand and a sword in the other. The hanged man had the Star of David painted on his breast and dollars in his pockets. The inscription below the picture said ˜Let us make Russia clean!’. The editor-in-chief Uladzimir Baran claimed that the edition was going to lodge a suit about it in order to find the authors of the letter.

On 18 July journalists working for the Intex-Press newspaper (Baranavichy) found leaflets containing threatening and two door-plates with the inscription CIA's nest on the door of the edition's office. The police did not manage to find those who were responsible for it. A month ago the head of the Vitsebsk affiliate of the UDP received similar threats from the RNU.