Forced Subscription Continues

Press Service of the Belarusian Association of Journalists reports, last week private entrepreneurs and businessmen of Hlybokaye region received a letter from Hlybokaye administration. The letter prescribes to subscribe to state-owned newspapers until 19 March. Every company is to subscribe for a minimum of three journals, and every employee – at least for one national and one local edition. The administration refers to the message of the state leader which he spread on 27-28 February 2003 on the seminar for national and local power bodies “About the state of the ideological work and methods to improve it”.
Attached to the letter was the list of newspapers recommended for subscription: “Sovetskaya Belorussiya”, “Narodnaya Gazeta”, “Respublika”, “Zviazda”, “Narodnoye Slovo”, “Vitbichi”, “Vitebski Rabochi”, “Vesnik Hlybochyny”, etc. Businesses are to subscribe for the 2nd quarter and continue the subscription in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2004. The administration recommends to encourage employees to subscribe for state newspapers “through a public spreader, appointed among employees” or “through an employee of post service”, who the companies are to request to come and “provide assistance in carrying out organized subscription”.
Businesses are proposed to report in writing about the results of subscription campaign to Information Department of Hlybokaye administration.
The letter, dated 15 March, was signed by administration deputy head V. I. Siamchonak and deputy head of Hlybokaye post service S. H. Khrol. Most likely, the state companies were also ordered to organize a subscription campaign. This conclusion can be made from the list of institutions mentioned in the letter: “every workshop, production section, farm, department, station, kindergarten, school, class, hospital, clinic, shop, etc.”