Information ministry accuses newspaper of producing content threatening national security

The min­istry said that con­tent that may harm nation­al inter­ests is banned under the Media Law’s Arti­cle 38.

It was refer­ring to an inter­view with a for­mer class­mate of a Min­sk man who was killed dur­ing Tuesday’s raid by Com­mit­tee for State Secu­ri­ty (KGB) offi­cers on his apart­ment.

In the inter­view, which was post­ed on the web­site on Tues­day night, a woman who went to school togeth­er with Andrej Zieĺcer described him as a good per­son who “always stood up for truth.” Access to the web­site was blocked short­ly after the inter­view was post­ed.

In a state­ment on Sep­tem­ber 29, the edi­to­r­i­al team of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da v Belorus­sii said that it was ready to “cor­rect” the irreg­u­lar­i­ties detect­ed by the min­istry.

The team said that the pub­li­ca­tion pro­vid­ed bal­anced cov­er­age of devel­op­ments in the coun­try and worked to give full infor­ma­tion to their audi­ence. It denied that the news­pa­per may seek to cre­ate ten­sion in soci­ety.

It offered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of the KGB offi­cer who was killed by Mr. Zieĺcer before the lat­ter was shot dead.