Forced subscription to state-owned press continues

The subscription campaign has started in Belarus. The ideological departments of the district executive committees are again sending Plans of organizational measures to conduct subscription to printed mass media to state enterprises and institutions.

A teacher of a secondary school in the Barysau district told RFE/RL that orders to provide the institutional subscription and a certain number of subscribers to state-owned editions among the school workers come from the local educational department during each subscription campaign.

Mailmen are also ordered to make some 10-15 people subscribe to Sovetskaya Belorussiya, Zviazda and Belaruskaya Niva.

According to an RFE/RL listener from Minsk, the administration of the Belarusian Railway orders workers to subscribe to Zheleznodorozhnik Belorussii (as a result of which 80% of them become subscribers of the newspaper). Those who refuse to do it are threatened with the reduction of the wage bonuses or dismissal. The same happened to the anti-flu vaccine: the workers were told that up to 50% of them needed to undergo the vaccination (taking into account that the vaccine was from China) and those who didn’t want to do it had to write refusals.