’Mahiliouski Chas’ denied registration third time
The Ministry of Information for the third time refused to register the private newspaper Mahiliouski Chas. This time the officials stated that the building where the legal address of the edition was placed didn’t meet the legal requirements.
The owner of the building, Naladka-service, proposes to break the rent agreement. If it won’t be done by mutual agreement by 15 January, Naladka-service intends to make it unilaterally.
The head of the editorial board Hanna Iliina is convinced that the owner of the building is pressurized by the local authorities. On the New Year eve the activities of Naladka-service were checked up by the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The officials state that the dwellers of the district where the legal address of the newspaper is situated are dissatisfied with the establishment of a printing house there and are even against the registration of the newspaper.
’I don’t know from which sources the information about the printing house appeared, but it seems to have provoked the check-up of our lessor. We aren’t going to break the rent agreement, but it will be annulled anyway. The authorities are blankly against the registration of the newspaper. Maybe we chose a wrong time for it – the eve of electoral campaigns. At first they refused to register us within the frames of the laws on mass media, now they proceeded to pressurizing the lessors,’ commented Hanna Iliina.
The first time the official reason for non-registration of the newspaper was that its editor didn’t have a higher education, the second time – that there was no copy of the agreement of the founder with the editorial board among the documents that were filed for the registration.
Mahiliouski Chas has been issued as an unregistered socio-political periodical since 2007 with the circulation of 299. The attempts to obtain the state registration started on 10 September 2009, Nasha Niva informs.
