OSCE Media Representative criticizes list of banned authors in Belarus

VIENNA, 20 June 2002 - In a report to the OSCE Permanent Council, Freimut Duve, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, today strongly criticized the recent statement made by a Presidential Administration official in Belarus listing authors who should not be published and read in that country.

"This list is something unheard of in Europe in years", he told the 55 OSCE Delegations in Vienna. "It represents a dramatic challenge and is unacceptable in an OSCE participating State".

In a mid-May meeting with reporters in Minsk, Eduard Skobelev, the Editor-in-Chief of the Presidential Administration's news bulletin, urged state-controlled literary magazines not to publish writers critical of the government, listing among those he termed "politically retarded" such well-known Belarusian writers as Vasil Bykov, Ryhor Baradulin, Nil Gilevich and Sergei Zakonnikov.

Moreover, several independent Belarusian web-sites have published statements on this matter by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neman, Nina Chaika, who was recently named to this post by President Alexander Lukashenko. In an interview in Belorusskaya Gazeta, Chaika declared that she would not allow Vasil Bykov to be published in Neman until he wrote something about the present situation in the country which would be acceptable to the authorities.

"In my opinion, intellectuals and writers express their views on the profound occurrences taking place in a country", Mr. Duve noted. "And in Belarus, which is undergoing so many historical changes, writers of all types can contribute significantly to a better civil understanding within their nation."