Mahiliou: Independent candidate faces censorship of her campaign materials

Candidate in Mahiliou-Kastrychnitskaya district # 86 Natallia Zaitsava faced censorship of her campaign materials.

Without her knowledge members of district election commission # 87 made changes in the information poster with her bio.

They deleted information that Natallia Zaitsava lost her job not on her own will but due to Edict 760 which forbade individual entrepreneurs to hire anyone but their close relatives from the text.

Instead, they wrote “temporally unemployed”. Information that Natallia’s father was a worker for 50 years and grandfather headed a group of city partisans and was killed by the Nazis was deleted too.

“There is no certain pattern how the biography should look like, -- Natallia says. – I did it my own way, but they edited it the way unfavorable to me”.

“The fact that information about candidates stands not in the alphabet order is another violation of the election law, -- human rights defender Barys Bukhel points out, -- they put the pro-governmental candidate Tatsiana Isachanka first, and Natallia Zaitsava after her.”

In school # 32, where two poling stations ## 81 and 82 are located, information posters are torn in two parts and posted in different places. The Isachanka part of the poster hangs in a lit and convenient place, while Zaitsava’s part could hardly be found.”, -- the human rights defender continues.   

 Besides that, Natallia Zaitsava claims she encountered elements of sabotage while producing her campaign materials in the private printing press of Mr. Hardziyenka.

“I ordered black-and-white leaflets and four kinds of posters, one of which was on the white-red-white background, -- Natallia Zaitsava says. – When I concluded the agreement with the private printing press they promised to print the leaflets during two days. However, I received only a small amount of the materials on that day. The rest of the print run was printed only in 10 days. They explained the procrastination by technical breaks of the equipment then -- by the fact that water was accidentally poured on paper, etc. As for the poster with the white-red-white background, they suggested they would change it to green first. Then they sabotaged its production giving different reasons. As a result, I received it only after 10 days”.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections