Lohvinau Publisher Moves Temporarily to Vilnius

“We have busi­ness com­mit­ments with our part­ners, so we decid­ed to orga­nize book pub­lish­ing in Vil­nius where no licens­es or per­mits are required. Mean­time, we are prepar­ing a spe­cial­ist who will be sit­ting a qual­i­fy­ing exam this spring already in order to get the right to pub­lish books here.

Ihar Lohv­in­au con­sid­ers that mov­ing the pub­lish­ing busi­ness to Lithua­nia is not the best idea: logis­tics and tax expens­es will make books at least 20 per cent more expen­sive.

The pub­lish­er thinks that licens­ing book pub­lish­ing in Belarus has been intro­duced not only for ide­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, but also with the view of lob­by­ing inter­ests of state-run pub­lish­ing hous­es.

The pri­vate pub­lish­er Lohv­in­au was ripped off the license in Octo­ber 2013 by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion “because of rough vio­la­tions of the law on licens­ing”. The so called vio­la­tion stemmed from the fact that Lohv­in­au pub­lished the Belarus Press Pho­to 2011 album which was declared extrem­ist by the Ash­mi­any court in 2013. The court deci­sion was wide­ly crit­i­cized as being biased and unground­ed.