BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Thursday, 24 November, 2005

Polish media black-out front pages in protest

WARSAW: Poland's two top-circulation broadsheet daily newspapers and three popular Internet portals blacked-out their front pages yesterday in protest against what they charged was the gross violation of press freedom by the authoritarian government of President Aleksander Lukashenko in neighbouring nation Belarus.

"This is what freedom of speech looks like in Belarus," reads a caption at the bottom of front pages where photos and entire paragraphs have been obscured by a thick black marker.

The Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza dailies as well as media websites onet.pl, gazeta.pl and rmf.fm blacked-out printed texts which were visible on other pages.

"We are protesting against the violation of human rights and the total war on freedom of expression being waged by the regime in a neighbouring country," Gazeta Wyborcza wrote.

The protest is part of the "Freedom of Speech in Belarus" campaign organised by international human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI).

Photographs of thousands of Belarus politicians and journalist who have suffered repression in Belarus will be displayed in larger Polish cities and at European Union headquarters in Brussels as part of AI's campaign for freedom of speech in Belarus.

The organisation is also calling for signatures on a petition on its website.

Poland became one of the most outspoken critics of Lukashenko - who has been dubbed as "Europe's last dictator" - after his regime took action against the Union of Poles in Belarus, an organisation of ethnic Poles in the country.

Source:

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=61977&version=1&template_id=39&parent_id=21