Talk:Brest Voblast
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Paris-based Reporters Without Borders 2004 report on Belarus (from www.c97.org/ on 6 May 2004)includes:
"President Lukashenko thinks the media should help build a 'state ideology'. The regime prevented a dozen independent media from appearing in 2003 using imaginative administrative harassment. A hundred or so journalists staged a 'A Day of Closed Newspapers' on 19 September 2003 to stress their rights, which had been particularly abused during the year. The authorities suspended and punished a dozen newspapers over several months, mostly because they had printed articles from the banned independent newspaper Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta (BDG). Every administrative excuse was used to block publication of the independent press and several printers were punished and some sacked for working with the papers.
The regime also targeted human rights groups and shut down several organisations that gave valuable help to the media. It also refused to cooperate with international organisations which firmly criticised the worsening conditions and did not allow the press freedom representative of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Freimut Duve, into the country in September.
A new press law was drafted in secret and aimed to further reduce press freedom. Registration fees for newspapers and radio and TV stations rose sharply in June. The government presented a new law in mid-December requiring government employees to ask permission before giving any information to the media.
