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Independent magazine Arche receives two warnings from information ministry

The Belarusian-language intellectual monthly magazine Arche is under the threat of closure, as the Ministry of Information has issued at once two official warnings to the publication.

The official grounds for both warnings, signed by First Deputy Minister Liliya Ananich and dated February 12, were that the Arche published three issues in January after a three-month pause.

As Editor-in-Chief Valer Bulhakaw explained to BelaPAN, if that had not been done, RUP Belposhta, Belarus' state postal services monopolist, would have canceled the delivery contract and the subscribers would be left without Arche issues that they had paid for. He noted that the magazine had no issues in October, November and December because the information ministry suspended the publication for three months in response to the September issue, which featured on the cover a photograph of police officers dispersing anti-government protesters in central Minsk. The ministry then accused the magazine of publishing articles about politics in violation of its license. Article 11 of the Media Law requires publications to notify the ministry one moth in advance about changes in coverage subjects. In 2005, the magazine filed a request with the ministry for permission to publish articles about politics but never received any reply. According to Mr. Bulhakaw, the ministry disliked an article run in the history section, in which former lawmakers recalled a brutal police crackdown on hunger-striking MPs in 1995.

Mr. Bulhakaw pointed out that the real reason for the new warnings were articles critical of top-ranking government officials. For instance, he said, "In the first issue this year, we published several such articles, including an article titled 'How to Overcome the Belarus Deadlock' by Hans-Georg Wieck, who headed the OSCE Advisory and Monitoring Group in Belarus between 1998 and 2001, in which the retired German diplomat assessed Belarus' elections and the country's authorities and criticized the German government for failing to set up a fund for support of Belarus' civil society."

Mr. Bulhakaw said that the magazine would not change its editorial policy and the next issue would carry a number of articles about January's local elections.

He noted that a new suspension would mean ruin to the magazine. "To resume publication, we would need to get the sanction of the ideology department of the Minsk City Executive Committee, which is impossible in the present situation," he said.

Mr. Bulhakaw predicted that the magazine would have to cease its existence because launching an online version would require a drastic change in its format and printing abroad would require unaffordable expenses. "To show our stance and emphasize the barbaric nature of the crackdown on the Arche, we'll most likely close this publication," he said.

The Arche was founded in 1997 by Andrey Dynko, currently editor-in-chief of the Nasha Niva. With a print run of 700 to 900 copies, the magazine is especially popular with pro-opposition intellectuals, and culture and language revival advocates.