The editor of a fourth paper, Svoboda, said Thursday that he also fears closure in the aftermath of an article published last summer alleging that police officers were building dachas for their leaders rather than keeping the streets free of crime.
"This is just as bad as the old days," Igor Germenchuk, editor-in-chief of Svoboda, said in a telephone interview. He said the government froze the bank account of the paper in August.
Like several of his colleagues, Germenchuk now believes that printing his paper outside Belarus is the only way to ensure that it survives.
Valentin Zhdanko, editor of Belarusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, was equally outraged. Like its companion Imya, the paper received word from its printers Wednesday that it could no longer be produced because the printing house was undergoing technical reconstruction. Both papers are printed by the state-owned firm Gomily.
Another paper, Narodnaya Volya, suspended publication Wednesday after its printers, the state-owned Dom Pechat, said the Justice Ministry had forbidden them from publishing the paper because it was "destabilizing society."
Oleg Snitko, the paper's manager, said: "You can say anything's destabilizing society. It's just that all the papers that are in state hands write only what the government wants them to write. We're not a particularly daring paper, we just want to give objective information. But it seems even that was too much for the authorities."
Lukashenko's office could not be reached for reaction Thursday and a Justice Ministry spokesman refused to comment.
The effective closure of these papers comes just a month before Belarus' parliamentary elections.
Contrary to Lukashenko's wishes, the Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that the parliament he has long battled to suppress is legally empowered to sit.
"The elections are reaching a critical stage and so they want to neutralize the freedom of the press," Zhdanko said. "Lukashenko's fighting for his power and he wants the elections to be under his control."
By law, Snitko said, the authorities have to issue at least two warnings before shutting down a newspaper, and only a court is entitled to make it close.
But according to Nikolai Parshuto, technical director of Dom Pechat, the order was perfectly justified."This does not present any sort of problem for me because I work for a state firm so my job is to carry out the state's orders," he said.
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